“Pleasure,” muttered the Yankee briefly, offering his match-box with his left hand, while his right closed menacingly about the haft of the weapon in his pocket. “Thanks,” returned the stranger, “can I offer you a cigar?” and he passed over his case, from which Haverly selected a weed. Some thought of drugged cigars flashed over the Yankee’s mind, but he dismissed the idea, arguing to himself that the adventurers could not have foreseen the loss of their letter, so could not have prepared for it. Yet this good-fellowship did not deceive the millionaire for a moment. That there was some purpose in the conspirators’ action he did not doubt; but it would never do to let the fellows think he feared them. Therefore, keeping a wary eye upon the movements of the twain, he withdrew his hand from his pocket and proceeded to light up. He was holding a match to the end of the cigar when the stranger’s hand shot out suddenly. Match and cigar were dashed from Haverly’s lips, and a rag, soaked with some sickly-smelling chemical, was pressed over his mouth and nose. Holding his breath, he struggled to remove the suffocating thing, mad that he should have been caught napping when he imagined himself on the alert for an attack. With all his might he strove, but the second conspirator came to the aid of his friend, pinioning Haverly’s arms, and soon the chloroform did its work. Helpless and unconscious, the Yankee sank back on to the cushions; and while the express still rattled on at full speed, the two ruffians went through their victim’s pockets. Everything they replaced save the letter they had taken so much trouble to secure, despising the American’s cash as game too much beneath them. With repeated applications of the chloroform rag, they kept Haverly unconscious until the train reached Stanwich. Almost ere it came to a standstill, they alighted, and, supporting their victim between them, led him to a train waiting alongside the opposite platform. Into one of the carriages of this they hustled him. Then, while one remained in the carriage, the other moved off to the booking-office, returning presently with a ticket, which he fixed prominently in the American’s hat-band. Very few people were upon the platform, and doubtless those that observed the movements of the conspirators thought that their unconscious companion was drunk. A final application of the rag, and the scoundrels left the carriage, closing the door upon the sleeping figure of the millionaire. Within a few moments the latter was whirling northward, leaving further and further behind him each instant the men who were commissioned to rob his friend of the fruits of his genius, and perhaps of his life. With every mile the train advanced the Yankee’s chances of warning Garth lessened. An hour passed ere he recovered from the stupefying effects of the drug, and by that time he was forty odd miles from Stanwich.