CHAPTER IX. CHANCE PLAYS INTO GORDON’S HANDS. The newspaper proprietor nodded gloomily in response to Gordon’s question. “Yes,” he answered, “Simpson disappeared four days ago.” “Has he a family?” “A wife.” “And she knows nothing about him, or professes to know nothing?” “I feel sure she’s as much in the dark as we are.” “Perhaps—perhaps not,” murmured the bogus detective, joining the tips of his fingers as he had seen Nick do. “Please tell me now how the fellow managed to get hold of the money, to get it out of the bank or banks in which it had been deposited to the credit of the fund. Surely, his wasn’t the only signature required, was it? The checks drawn against the fund must have been countersigned by some one else?” “They were—by Mr. Driggs, the vice president of our organization.” “Then how——” “In a very ingenious way. I wouldn’t have thought John Simpson capable of so much adroitness. I was away at the time, but he prevailed upon Mr. Driggs to withdraw the fund from the two New York banks in which it had been deposited—the Broadway Exchange Bank, and the Hudson National—and to transfer everything to the Cotton and Wool National at Hattontown.” “Thus making it possible to deal with only one bank, and that a smaller one whose officials presumably were not so wary,” Green Eye commented judicially. “What excuse did he give?” “A most plausible one. He pointed out that the Hattontown sufferers and the citizens generally would feel more comfortable, more sure of the reality of the fund if they knew that it had been transferred to one of their local banks. ‘We aren’t ready to pay the money all over to them,’ he told Driggs. ‘Most of them would like to have it all at once, of course, and they’re somewhat dissatisfied, even though the more sensible among them realize that mere temporary relief isn’t a solution to their problems. If we transfer the fund to Hattontown, however, that will encourage them. They will feel it is almost in their hands.’