Masters raised a pair of nerveless hands in a deprecatory gesture. "I was drinking. I had certain memoranda in the same bag and I took it up to my room to run over some details--then he came and knocked at the door." "Who came?" "I don't know. He called me by name and seemed to be a man of means and cultivation. We drank and chatted together. It was in my bedroom in a city hotel, mind you. I didn't drink much.... The bag was locked ... the key was on the table by my hand.... Of course in some fashion he had learned of the money being turned over to me. How?" The response was dry. "I don't know. What happened?" "God knows. I suppose it was some variation of the old device of knock-out drops or some sort of drug. I awoke sitting in my chair--very sick at my stomach--and had just time to make my train by rushing off without breakfast. I had been there all night. I glanced in the bag and seeing the packet there with the rubber bands around it right as rain, I failed to suspect. It was when I got here that I found it had been rifled." "And the man?" "I talked with the hotel by long distance. No one by the name he gave me had been registered there. The description meant nothing to them." "Why," inquired the Colonel presently, "didn't you tell me of this plan of yours in advance--this enterprise?" Masters shook his head. "You'd only have laughed at me like the rest. I was getting fed up on being laughed at. It gets on a man's nerves in time. For just once in my life I wanted to be the one who could say 'I told you so!'" "What steps have you taken--toward catching the thief?" The victim groaned. "Don't you see that I couldn't take any? To report to the police would be an admission to the company. The whole thing was trusted to my hands after much reluctance. Can't you see that my story would seem a bit thin?" Masters' words ended with a gulp, and in his eyes was the stark terror of panic reacting after the comatose silence of lethargy. Colonel Wallifarro's face, too, had become drawn and distrait. For a time he paced the floor up and down without a word, his hands tight held at his back and his head bowed low on his breast. As he walked, Masters, from his chair by the table, followed his movements with eyes that held no light except that of fear and wretchedness. Finally the lawyer halted before the chair. His brow was drawn, but in face and attitude was the pronouncement of a decision reached. Tom Wallifarro had been wrestling with complex and intermingled elements of the problem as he walked. When he halted, the shifting perplexities had resolved and settled into determination.