“Yes, paying a visit long promised my friends,” I explained. “And you left town--” “On the 5th of July by way of the Hamburg-American Line.” “Sorry I didn’t know it,” said Whiteley, with a laugh. “I felt no discomfort at missing your _bon voyage_,” said I, joining in the laugh. “But seriously, colonel, I can’t just realize why you were so anxious to get your hooks on me. I got that money fairly through my Broad Street office. I sold ten bonds to a customer, and he gave me ten thousand in new money for them. I don’t know why I should suffer all this inconvenience.” “Miles is right, Whiteley,” put in the ex-judge. “But why did you get out of the country?” inquired the colonel. “For a reason--I wanted to avoid trouble. My man Meriam was arrested--wrongfully, and I didn’t want to get in the same box. There’s no telling what you United States fellows will do to a man, once you get him in your toils.” “Well, you gave us a good chase, Miles,” said Whiteley. “I had two hundred men looking for you, and it was lucky that you kept out of sight.” “But you see I came back to you, colonel; that doesn’t look so bad in me, does it?” “If you were innocent, of course you had a right to feel safe in coming back,” was his doubtful remark. “You were cautious enough in making this meeting, too.” “For the same reason that I got out last July. Now that we’ve met, colonel,” continued I, “you will no doubt come to some sort of an agreement, in which I can claim my money in the Stuyvesant Bank. The judge, I presume, told you that a meeting between us would, in all probability, straighten out this very disagreeable tangle.” “You surely don’t mean the seventy-five hundred you deposited in the Stuyvesant Bank?” “I do, colonel--certainly.” “You needn’t worry about getting that dust there,” said Whiteley. “It’s at the district attorney’s office.” “What,” I cried, “not in the Stuyvesant Bank?” “No. I asked Van Orden about the two thousand your man Meriam deposited, and he pulled open a drawer and showed me the rest of the stuff. I took it.” “The devil,” I cried. “So that’s the way Van Orden deals with his friends. He didn’t tell me, in all my visits to him after a settlement, that you had the money.” “I didn’t know that,” said Whiteley. I thought that it would have been a pure piece of scoundrelism on Van Orden’s part to have sent the money to the clearing-house. It seems he hadn’t, but had done worse--had actually betrayed me. Not because he wanted to do me harm, but for fear of endangering his own neck, the coward. All this I said to myself. Aloud I declared that Van Orden would be held to account for his failure to settle with me. “It seems to me that you played a pretty high-handed game,” I continued to Whiteley; “about like the burglary committed on my dwelling and on my safe.” “I wanted the ten thousand five hundred still missing,” replied Whiteley. “I had reason to believe the money was in your safe.”