“You see!” Trant exhibited to the customs officers a bit of bent wire, wound with string, precisely like that the girl had given him that morning and he had used in his test of Welter the hour before. “It was almost exactly as we knew it must be! This spring was stuck through a hole in the protecting post so that it prevented the balance beam from rising properly when bales were put on the platform. A little pressure just at that point takes many pounds from each bale weighed. The checker had only to move his knee, in a way we would never have noticed if we were not watching for it, to work the scheme by which they have been cheating for ten years! But the rest of this affair,” he glanced at the quickly collecting crowd, “can best be settled in the office.” He led the way, the customs men taking their prisoners at pistol point. As they entered the office, Rowan first, a girl’s cry and the answering oath of her stepfather told that the dock superintendent’s daughter had arrived. But she had been almost overtaken by another powerful car; for before Trant could speak with her the outer door of the office opened violently and President Welter, in an automobile coat and cap, entered. “Ah! Mr. Welter, you got here quickly,” said Trant, meeting calmly his outraged astonishment at the scene. “But a little too late.” “What is the matter here?” Welter governed his voice commandingly. “And what has brought _you_ here, from your phrenology?” he demanded, contemptuously, of Trant. “The hope of catching red-handed, as we have just caught them, your company checker and your dock superintendent defrauding the Government,” Trant returned, “before you could get here to stop them and remove evidences.” “What raving idiocy is this?” Welter replied, still with excellent moderation. “I came here to sign some necessary papers for ships clearing, and you—” “I say we have caught your men red-handed,” Trant repeated, “at the methods used, with your certain knowledge and under your direction, Mr. Welter, to steal systematically from the United States Government for—probably the last ten years. We have uncovered the means by which your company checker at scale No. 3, which, because of its position, probably weighs more cargoes than all the other scales together, has been lessening the apparent weights upon which you pay duties.” “Cheating here under my direction?” Welter now bellowed indignantly. “What are you talking about? Rowan, what is he talking about?” he demanded, boldly, of the dock superintendent; but the cadaverous little man was unable to brazen it out with him.