“The stuff,” his friend, the late Edward Finglass, had written, “is in the top back bedroom. You’ve only to lift the third board from the window and put your hand in, Chimpie, and there it is.” And after this had come a lot of foolish stuff about sharing with Soapy Molloy. A trifle maudlin old Finky had become on his deathbed, it seemed to Chimp. And, hurried though he was, Chimp Twist had time to indulge in a brief smile as he thought of Soapy Molloy. He also managed to fit in a brief moment of complacent meditation, the trend of which was that when it comes to a show-down brains will tell. He, Chimp Twist, was the guy with the brains, and the result was that in about another half minute he would be in possession of American-bearer securities to the value of two million dollars. Whereas poor old Soapy, who had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wished to eat, would go through life eking out a precarious existence, selling fictitious oil stock to members of the public who were one degree more cloth-headed than himself. There was a moral to be drawn from this, felt Chimp, but his time was too valuable to permit him to stand there drawing it. He gripped his chisel and got to work. Mr. Braddock, peering in at the door with the caution of a red Indian stalking a relative by marriage with a tomahawk, saw that the intruder had lifted a board and was groping in the cavity. His heart beat like a motor-bicycle. It gave him some little surprise that the fellow did not hear it. Presumably the fellow was too occupied. Certainly he seemed like a man whose mind was on his job. Having groped for some moments, he now uttered a sound that was half an oath and half a groan, and as if seized with a frenzy, began tearing up other boards, first one, then another, after that a third. It was as though this business of digging up boards had begun to grip him like some drug. Starting in a modest way with a single board he had been unable to check the craving, and it now appeared to be his intention to excavate the entire floor. But he was not allowed to proceed with this work uninterrupted. Possibly this wholesale demolition of bedrooms jarred upon Mr. Braddock’s sensibilities as a householder. At any rate, he chose this moment to intervene. “I say, look here!” he said. It had been his intention, for he was an enthusiastic reader of sensational fiction and knew the formulæ as well as anyone, to say “Hands up!” But the words had slipped from him without his volition. He hastily corrected himself. “I mean, Hands up!” he said. Then backing to the window, he flung it open and shouted into the night. “Sam! Hi, Sam! Come quick!” CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT THE MISSING MILLIONS