So close to the dock that ships lay broadside before its doors, moored to the piles by steel cables, the Western Cereal Company plant scattered its mills and warehouses over two city blocks. Freight trains ran through arcades into the buildings to fetch and carry its products; great trucks, some gas driven, some with four- and six-horse teams, loaded sacks or containers that shot in endless streams through well worn chutes, or emptied raw materials that would shortly be breakfast foods into iron conveyors that sucked it up and whined for more. It was a place of aggressive activity among placid surroundings, this plant of Dykeman's, for its setting was the Italian fisherman's home district; little frame shacks, before which they mended their long, brown nets, or stretched them on the sidewalks to dry; Fisherman's Wharf and its lateen rigged, gayly painted hulls, was under the factory windows. We pulled up before the door of a building separate from any of the mills or warehouses, and I followed Cummings through a corridor, past many doors of private offices, to the large general office. Here a young man at a desk against the rail lent Cummings respectful attention; the lawyer asked something in a low tone, and was answered, "Yes, sir. Waiting for you. Go right through." Down the long room with its rattling typewriters, its buzz of clerks and salesmen we went. Cummings was a little ahead of me, when he checked a moment to bow to some one over at a desk. I followed his glance. The girl he had spoken to turned her back almost instantly after she had returned his greeting; but I couldn't be mistaken. There might be more than one figure with that slim, half girlish grace about it, and other hair as lustrously blue-black, but none could be wound around a small head quite so shapely, carried with so blossomlike a toss. It was Barbara Wallace. So this was where her job was. Strange I had not known this fact of grave importance. I went on past her unconscious back, left her working at her loose-leaf ledgers, beside her adding machine, my mind a whirl of ugly conjecture. Dykeman's employee; that would instantly and very painfully clear up a score of perplexing questions. Dykeman would need no detectives on my trail to tell him of my lack of success in the Skeels chase. Lord! I had sent her as concise a report as I could make--to her, for Worth. I walked on stupidly. In front of the last door in the big room, Cummings halted and spoke low. "Boyne, you and I are both in the employ of the Van Ness Avenue Bank. We're somewhat similarly situated in another quarter; I'm representing the Gilbert estate, and you've been retained by Worth Gilbert." I grunted some sort of assent. "I brought you here to listen to what the bank crowd has to say, but when they get done, I've something to tell you about that young employer of yours. You listen to them--then you listen to me--and you'll know where you stand."