Montague took out his purse and gave the woman a bill; and she
stammered her thanks and went off with her pail and broom.

He shut the door and went and sat down at his desk, and stared in
front of him, gasping, "My God!"

Then suddenly he struck his knee with an exclamation of rage. "I
told him everything that I knew! Everything! He hardly had to ask me
a question!"

But then again, wonder drowned every other emotion in him. "What in
the world can he have wanted to know? And who sent him? What can it
mean?"

He went back over his talk with the old gentleman from Seattle,
trying to recall exactly what he had told, and what use the other
could have made of the information. But he could not think very
steadily, for his mind kept jumping back to the thought of Jim
Hegan.

There could be but one explanation of all this. Jim Hegan had set
detectives upon him! Nobody else knew anything about the Northern
Mississippi Railroad, or wanted to know about it.

Jim Hegan! And Montague had met him socially at an entertainment--at
Mrs. de Graffenried's! He had met him as one gentleman meets
another, had shaken hands with him, had gone and talked with him
freely and frankly! And then Hegan had sent a detective to worm his
secrets from him, and had even tried to get at the contents of his