"Well, move and move fast," snapped the chief. "I'll wire Columbus that you've been given complete charge of the case; but try to keep it away from the papers as long as you can. The department has come in for enough criticism lately without complicating the issue from the outside. Good luck." And Allison was out of the door almost before he had finished speaking. Allison reached Columbus that night, but purposely delayed reporting for work until the following morning. In the first place there was no telling how long the case would run and he felt that it was the part of wisdom to get all the rest he could in order to start fresh. The "poison-pen" puzzle hadn't been exactly easy to solve, and his visit to Washington, though brief, had been sufficiently long for him to absorb some of the nervous excitement which permeated the department. Then, too, he figured that Postmaster Rogers would be worn out by another day of worry and that both of them would be the better for a night's undisturbed sleep. Nine o'clock the next morning, however, saw him seated in one of the comfortable chairs which adorned the postmaster's private office. Rogers, who did not put in an appearance until ten, showed plainly the results of the strain under which he was laboring, for he was a political appointee who had been in office only a comparatively short time, a man whose temperament resented the attacks launched by the opposition and who felt that publication of the facts connected with the lost one hundred thousand dollars would spell ruin, both to his own hopes and those of the local organization. Allison found that the chief had wired an announcement of his coming the day before and that Rogers was almost pitifully relieved to know that the case was in the hands of the man who had solved nearly a score of the problems which had arisen in the Service during the past few years. "How much do you know about the case?" inquired the postmaster. "Only what I learned indirectly and from what the chief told me," was Allison's reply. "I understand that approximately one hundred thousand dollars is missing from this post office" (here Rogers instinctively winced as he thought of the criticism which this announcement would cause if it were made outside the office), "but I haven't any of the details." "Neither have we, unfortunately," was the answer. "If we had had a few more we might have been able to prevent the last theft. You know about that, of course." "The fifty thousand dollars? Yes. The chief told me that you had wired."