"How did your revolver get away from you?" "Oh! ... I don't know. While I was packing I noticed it wasn't there, but I was too much excited to think about it." "Had Mr. Dongan any enemies?" "No. How should he have? A man like that. Never did a positive act in his life, either good or bad." "A love-affair maybe?" Don shook his head with a smile. "Not Dongan's line at all. He had no luck with the sex." "Who were his friends?" "He had no really intimate friends. Nobody who cared about him particularly. Plenty of associates of course. There was Ernest Riever." "I was going to ask you about him." "You know him?" "Only as a name." "Son of Scott Riever the steel magnate. Scott Riever's one of the richest men in the country. Ernest is rich in his own right, too. He just fluffs around. Has a big place up in Westchester county where he raises peaches and so on. It's his hobby." "What sort of man is he?" "A queer Dick!" said Don deliberating. "A queer Dick! ... Hard to describe offhand." "He has offered five thousand dollars reward for your capture," said Pen. Don was electrified. "What!" he cried. "The devil you say! ... Riever has come out against me! ... By God, that's funny!" "Does that make things clear to you?" Pen asked eagerly. "Wait a minute! ... Let me think! ... It's damn funny! ... Riever! ... My God!" "Tell me," pleaded Pen. "Begin at the beginning. Do you know Riever well?" "Sure! It was I who introduced him to Dongan. He's the same age as me. We were class-mates in college. We passed as pals. But it was a queer sort of friendship. I never could make him out. I couldn't keep my end up with his gilded set. I went in for athletics. But he used to come around me all the time. Flattered me and so on. Yet he didn't seem to like me either. I'd catch him looking at me in no friendly way. He'd let out sneering remarks." "Is he a little man, ill-favored?" asked Pen. "Why yes. How did you know?" Pen smiled to herself. "Nothing. Go on. You were popular in college?" "So they said," Don said offhand. "College popularity doesn't saw much wood in later life." "But you were prominent?" "Oh yes. Captain of the crew in my senior year." "I see. Go on about Riever." "Well, after we got out of college there was a sort of mix-up. Nasty mess. Riever had married upon graduation. Her name was Nell Proctor, daughter of the coal trust. I don't believe he cared anything about her, nor she about him. It was just the union of two powerful families that both sides were trying to bring about. "Meanwhile I'd gone into the brokerage business. Riever would always be asking me up to his place and I went of course. I didn't like him any better than before, but I had to cultivate my graft. I don't suppose Riever's stock operations meant much in his life, but he was far and away the biggest customer Dongan and Counsell had. We got business merely through being associated with him.