"Then what're we wastin' good time over?" inquired the man known as Redney. "This ain't a case o' milkin' coffee-bags from a slip-lighter. This haul's big enough for three." "Well, what _is_ your haul?" demanded the bass voice. Again there was a silence of several seconds. "Cough it up," prompted Redney. The silence that ensued seemed to imply that the younger man was slowly and reluctantly arriving at a change of front. There was a sound of a chair being pushed back, of a match being struck, of a glass being put down on a table-top. "Chuck," said the treble-voiced youth, with a slow and impressive solemnity that was strangely in contrast to his earlier speech, "Chuck, we're up against the biggest stunt that was ever pulled off in this burg of two-bone pikers!" "So you've been insinuatin'," was the answer that came out of the silence. "But I've been sittin' here half an hour waitin' to get a line on what you're chewin' about." "Chuck," said the treble voice, "you read the papers, don't you?" "Now and then," acknowledged the diffident bass voice. "Well, did you see yesterday morning where the steamer _Finance_ was rammed by the White Star _Georgic_? Where she went down in the Lower Bay before she got started on her way south?" "I sure did." "Well, did you read about her carryin' six hundred and ten thousand dollars in gold--in gold taken from the Sub-Treasury here and done up in wooden boxes and consigned for that Panama Construction Comp'ny." "I sure did." "And did your eye fall on the item that all day yesterday the divers from the wreckin' comp'ny were workin' on that steamer, workin' like niggers gettin' that gold out of her strong room?" "Sure!" "And do you happen to know where that gold is now?" was the oratorical challenge flung at the other man. "Just wait a minute," remarked that other man in his heavy guttural. "Is _that_ your coup?" "That's my coup!" was the confident retort. "Well, you've picked a lemon," the big man calmly announced. "There's nothin' doin', kiddo, nothin' doin'!" "Not on your life," was the tense retort. "I know what I'm talkin' about. And Redney knows." "And _I_ know that gold went south on the steamer _Advance_," proclaimed the bass voice. "I happen to know they re-shipped the whole bunch o' metal on their second steamer." "Where'd you find that out?" demanded the scoffing treble voice. "Not bein' in the Sub-Treasury this season, I had to fall back on the papers for the news." "And that's where you and the papers is in dead wrong! That's how they're foolin' you and ev'ry other guy not in the know. I'll tell you where that gold is. I'll tell you where it lies, to the foot, at this minute!" "Well?" "She's lyin' in the store-room in a pile o' wooden boxes, on that Panama Comp'ny's pier down at the foot o' Twenty-eight' Street!" "You're dreamin', Tony, dreamin'. No sane folks leave gold lyin' round loose that way. No, sir; that's what they've got a nice stone Sub-Treasury for."