"What kind of a deal do you call this--ripping in here to throw this thing at the boy in such a way? What is your idea? What you trying to put over?" "Go easy, Boyne." Cummings chewed his words a little before he let them out. "There's something queer in this business. I intend to know what it is." "Queer," I repeated his word. "If the lawyers and the detectives get to running down all the queer things--that don't concern them a little bit--the world won't have any more peace." "All right, if you say it doesn't concern you," Cummings threw me overboard with relief I thought. "It does concern me. When I couldn't get--him"--a jerk of the head indicated that the pronoun stood for Worth--"at the Palace, found he'd been out all day and left no word at the desk when he expected to be in, I took my telegram to Knapp, and then to Whipple. They were flabbergasted." "The bank crowd," I said. "Now why did you run to them? On account of Worth's engagement with them to-morrow morning? Wasn't that exceeding your orders? You saw that he intends to meet it, in spite of this." "Why not because of this?" Cummings demanded sharply. "He's in better shape to meet it now his father's dead. He's the only heir. That's the first thing Knapp and Whipple spoke of--and I saw them separately." "Can that stuff. What do you think you're hinting at?" "Something queer," he repeated his phrase. "Wake up, Boyne. Knapp and Whipple both saw Thomas Gilbert a little before noon yesterday. He was in the bank for the final transfer of the Hanford interests. They'd as soon have thought of my committing suicide that night--or you doing it. They swear there was nothing in his manner or bearing to suggest such a state of mind, and everything in the business he was engaged on to suggest that he expected to live out his days like any man." I thought very little of this; it is common in cases of suicide for family, friends or business associates to talk in exactly this way, to believe it, and yet for the deep-seated moving cause to be easily discovered by an unprejudiced outsider. I said as much to Cummings. And while I spoke, we could hear a murmur of young voices from the inner room. "Damn it all," the lawyer's irritation spurted out suddenly, "With a cub like that for a son, I'd say the reason wasn't far to seek. Better keep your eye peeled round that young man, Boyne." "I will," I agreed, and he took his departure. I turned back into the private room. "Worth"--I put it quietly--"what say I go to Santa Ysobel with you? You could bring me back Monday morning." He agreed at once, silently, but thankfully I thought.