"Thirty thousand dollars!" I exclaimed. "Whew! Is this old Bolton’s second contribution?" "I reckon he’s the one that give it," said Clark, "but I can’t be sure. There ain’t any one else with that much money that’s interested in the cause. Habernicht was trying to tell me that it came from the International Treasury, but I’m willing to bet my boots that the International Treasury never had thirty thousand cents in it, let alone thirty thousand dollars." It was Peter Bolton, beyond doubt, who had taken the role of fairy godfather for the Council of Nine, and I raked my imagination in vain to conceive the purpose that had inspired this amazing generosity. "I reckon," continued Clark, "that they’ve got a corner on everything that’ll shoot, except what’s in the arsenals, and they’re counting on getting those when the time comes to rise." "Well," said I, "I don’t see just how this affects Colonel Kendrick, for they could get him with one rifle just as well as with a thousand. But whatever the game is, we can block it right now. Just give me the number of the building where they have stored those guns, and I’ll see the Chief of Police." "Good God!" cried Clark, seizing my arm. "Do you want to get me killed?" "Why," I argued, "you aren’t the only man who knows about them. There must be dozens if not hundreds of men in the scheme, and there would be no more reason to put the blame on you than on the others." Clark shook his head, and his white face showed the fierce grip of terror. "I’m a dead man if you go to the police," he said huskily, gulping down the lump that rose in his dry throat. And no repetition or variation of my argument could move him. So at last I promised to keep the information from the police, and sought Wharton Kendrick’s office to lay this perplexing information before my client. Kendrick was not at his desk. "He went out some time ago, Mr. Hampden," said a clerk. "Where would I be likely to find him? It’s quite important." "He didn’t say, and I got the idea that he wasn’t likely to be back to-day." I wrote a note giving information of the armament, and leaving it on his desk, turned to go, when the door opened and General Wilson bustled in. His round red face glowed in the frame of his short, yellow-gray side-whiskers even more fiercely by day than by night, and his self-importance was even more scintillant than when he had bustled into Kendrick’s library. "What! Kendrick not in?" he cried explosively. "Why, I don’t see how you San Franciscans do any business. I haven’t found a man in his office this morning. Why, God bless me, is this you, Ham--Hamfer--" "Hampden," I said, assisting him to the name. "I’m glad to see you, General Wilson."