y.

The man in charge glanced at them and nearly fainted. Ten minutes
later Red Haney, knight of the road, was placed under arrest as a
suspicious character. Uncut diamonds, valued roughly at fifty
thousand dollars, were found in his possession.

"Where did you get them?" demanded the amazed police.

"Found 'em."

"_Where_ did you find them?"

"None o' your business."

And that was all they were able to get out of him at the moment.

CHAPTER X

THE BIG GAME

When the police of Mulberry Street find themselves face to face with
some problem other than the trivial, every-day theft, burglary or
murder, as the case may be, they are wont to rise up and run around
in a circle. The case of Red Haney and the diamonds, blared to the
world at large in the newspapers of Sunday morning, immediately
precipitated a circular parade, while Haney, the objective center,
snored along peacefully in a drunken stupor.

The statement of the case in the public press was altogether
negative. There had been no report of the theft of fifty thousand
dollars' worth of uncut diamonds in any city of the United States;
in fact, diamonds, as a commodity in crime, had not figured in
police records for several weeks--not even an actress had mislaid a
priceless necklace. The newspapers were unanimously certain that
stones of such value could not rightfully belong to a man of Haney's
type, therefore, to whom _did_ they belong?

Four men, at least, of the thousands who read the detailed account
of the affair Sunday morning, immediately made it a matter of
personal interest to themselves. One of these was Mr. Latham,
another was Mr. Schultze, and a third was Mr. Birnes. The fourth
was Mr. E. van Cortlandt Wynne. In the seclusion of his home in
Thirty-seventh Street, Mr. Wynne read the story with puckered brows,
then re-read it, after which he paced back and forth across his room
in troubled thought for an hour or more. An oppressive sense of
uneasiness was coming over him; and it was reflected in eyes grown
somber.

After a time, with sudden determination, the young man dropped into
a chair at his desk, and wrote in duplicate, on a narrow strip of
tough tissue-paper, just one line:

Are you safe? Is all well? Answer quick.
W.

Then he mounted to the roof. As he flung open the trap a man on the
top of the house next door darted behind a chimney. Mr. Wynne saw
him clearly--it was Frank Claflin--but he seemed to consid