"No; Griggs was the man I wanted, and I got him. He will testify in court, if he is obliged to. He would have done it at the time if Geddis and Whitredge hadn't discovered him and scared him stiff with a threat to put him in the prisoner's dock with you, as an accomplice. After I had secured Griggs's affidavit I wanted one more thing, and I got it--bought it. That was a map of the Lawrenceburg underground workings, corrected up to date. I knew Geddis and Withers must have one, and by a piece of great good luck I found a young surveyor's clerk who had made a tracing for Geddis from one of Blackwell's blue-prints. He had spoiled his first attempt by spilling a bottle of ink on it, so he made another. He didn't see any reason why he shouldn't sell me the spoiled copy." "I know what you are going to say!" I shouted. "I imagine you do," he laughed. "The Lawrenceburg workings have never gone downhill at all. They've been burrowing in the opposite direction all the time, and according to their own map they never touched pay-ore until they cut the Little Clean-Up vein below your hundred-and-fifty-foot level. Now you know why they have been fighting us so desperately, and why, as a final resort, they are willing to pay us five million dollars for a quit-claim to the Little Clean-Up. We've got them by the neck, Jimmie. We can make them pay for every dollar's worth of ore they have stolen from us." It was too big to be surrounded at the first attempt. I completely lost sight of my own involvement in the upflash of joy at the thought that at the long last the two old scoundrels who had robbed others right and left were going to get what was coming to them. Benedict went on with his story quietly and circumstantially. "I guessed at once what Whitredge was up to when I found that he was circulating that pardon petition. He was aiming to make you a self-confessed criminal before we could have time to turn a wheel. At that, I wired a Cincinnati detective agency, and a young man who knew his business was put on the job. The detective's reports showed the whole thing up. Geddis, Withers and Whitredge were hustling like mad to make capital out of your recapture by the prison authorities. Whitredge was to advise you to urge the sale of the Little Clean-Up upon Barrett and Gifford, and your reward was to be a pardon, by the asking for which you would be virtually confessing your guilt. Thus the past would be buried beyond any possibility of a resurrection. Nice little scheme, wasn't it?" "You have those two papers--the letter and the petition," I said, with an uncontrollable shudder. "You'll never know how near Whitredge came to winning out. I was just about to sign when you came."