the half-million dollars that had been put into them would probably
shrink by two hundred thousand or more if the order was carried out.

I read the note again.

Then a suspicion large enough to overshadow the universe grew up in my
brain. I recalled that Doddridge Knapp had given me a cipher with which
he would communicate with me, and I believed, moreover, that he had no
idea where I might be at the present moment.

"It's all right, sonny," I said. "Trot along."

"Where's yer letter?" asked the boy, loyally anxious to earn his
quarter.

"It won't have to go now," I said coolly. I believed that the boy meant
no harm to me, but I was not taking any risks.

The boy sauntered down the hall, singing _My Name Is Hildebrandt
Montrose_, and I was left gazing at the letter with a melancholy
smile.

"Well, I must look like a sucker if they think I can be taken in by a
trick like that," was my mental comment. I charged the scheme up to my
snake-eyed friend and had a poorer opinion of his intelligence than I
had hitherto entertained. Yet I was astonished that he should, even
with the most hearty wish to bring about my downfall, contrive a plan
that would inflict a heavy loss on his employer and possibly ruin him
altogether. There was more beneath than I could fathom. My brain
refused to work in the maze of contradictions and mysteries, plots and