CHAPTER TWO OF ARK OF THE COVENANT 
Clues and False Leads 


IT WAS around quarter past eight o'clock when I got back to the National 
Metallurgical. I found it difficult to realize that only an hour had passed 
since I had landed with my father at the seaplane jetty on the west side of 
Battery Park, and I had a feeling that the time should have been close to noon 
at least, for the hour had been crammed with incident and impression. 
A number of the bank executives had arrived, and the place already had a 
flustered air of activity. The chief accountant was with my father, and judged 
by the look of him that he was a very scared man. Apparently he and the 
president had been calculating the bank's losses, for as I came into the room 
the old man drew a firm line under two rows of figures he had written on a small 
piece of paper. 
"A good haul, Risbridger," my father was saying casually. "Two hundred and 
fifty-three thousand, five hundred dollars in gold. Two hundred and thirty-four 
thousand, seven hundred in securities. But God knows they didn't take all we 
had. You had better see about broadcasting the descriptions and numbers of the 
securities, and inform the police. If the thieves have not succeeded in getting 
out of the country, we may get a line on them, should they attempt to dispose of 
the scrip. See to this at once, will you?" 
The white-faced official scurried away, glad to have something to occupy his 
mind, and my father turned to me. 
I told him everything I had picked up, and he listened without comment until I 
had finished. 
"M'm," he said. "That's a queer thing about the gold tarnishing. What do you 
make of it, son?" 
"I don't know quite what to make of it," I told him. "My mind somehow connects 
it with whatever was used to dope the watchmen and the police. The stuff would 
have to be distributed in such a way that its fumes could be breathed. The whole 
affair has such unusual features, it might even prove that if we were to 
discover what had sent everyone to sleep, we might land on the thing that 
tarnished Jaxon's watch and the policeman's locket. I don't know of anything 
that has such an effect on gold, nor of anything capable of producing the 
anaesthesia. I'm inclined to think some sort of gas was used. The first 
difficulty we're up against is that none of the sufferers were conscious of even 
the slightest smell." 
"Whew!" my father whistled. "A new gas, eh? If you're right, Jimmy, we're up 
against a big thing. When a gang of crooks can put the whole of the Wall Street 
district to sleep and get away with it, can you prophesy where the game finds 
its limit?" 
"It opens up limitless possibilities," I agreed. 
"There's no saying where this morning's work will end," the old man mused. "As 
it stands, if the other banks have been as easily entered as we have, there's 
the makings of a fine old panic." 
"If there's going to be ructions, dad--don't you think you'd better meet them in 
comfort? What about a bath and breakfast?" 
The old man surprised me by letting out a sudden little laugh, with a queer note 
in it, as if some hidden chord in his memory had been struck. 
"You're like your mother, Jimmy," he said, after a pause. "You have her fair 
hair and grey eyes, and when you said that--I could fancy it was she who spoke. 
You see, son, life was pretty full of ructions in the old days, and you said the 
very thing she would have said when trouble was brewing. You don't remember your 
mother?" 
I shook my head. My mother died when I was an infant, and I had never created 
any definite picture of her, to a great extent, because my father seldom spoke 
of her. I expect it was that he missed her too much. She had been dead close on 
thirty-five years, but I could see, even then in his presidential room, how much 
she still meant to him. He looked at me queerly, and I have never seen him so 
softened either before or since. 
"No," he said slowly. "You were only a very little fellow when--" 
He broke off and lifted his shoulders in a sigh. 
"You're right," he said. "Breakfast's the idea." 
I anticipated that by this time there would be a jam in the subways and on the 
street cars, and as I wanted him to have as little physical exertion as 
possible, I telephoned for an automobile. While we waited my father issued 
instructions for carrying on in his absence. 
When the car came, we rode uptown through the rapidly filling streets to a quiet 
hotel where he would not be recognized, and we both had a bath and shave before 
breakfast. I was wishing now that I knew enough about banking to stand by during 
the crisis I felt was imminent; not that I fancied my father could not stand 
alone, but I think my wish came largely out of the new realization of how much I 
cared for the old man. I wanted to be of some assistance, but I did not know 
just how. I spoke to him about it as we were finishing breakfast. 
"Look here, dad," I said. "I want to stand by. I can be of no use to you on the 
banking side, but I could be a fairly good watch-dog. If I can do anything to 
keep trouble some people off you, or if I can run errands or attend to the 
commissariat--just say the word. I'll do anything I can." 
"I know that, son," the old man smiled, "but I'm well supplied with watch-dogs 
and messengers, who know my ways. No. Listen. I'll give you better than that to 
do. My hands will be full of the complications that are bound to rise from this 
raid on the banks, and I won't have time for anything else. In that tarnishing 
of the gold idea you've hit on something that maybe will give you further ideas, 
and I'd like you to follow up your theory of the gas and see what it leads to. 
You're an engineer, and you'll attack the problem from a different angle from 
that of the average detective. You can have a free hand in the matter of 
expense." 
The old man's suggestion almost took my breath away, and I fancy my face got 
red. I must explain that while my father and myself had been good enough friends 
up to this, our way had lain very much apart. He was devoted to his banking 
business, and I was immersed in aeronautical research. There had been times when 
we did not meet for months and when we came together again it had simply been, 
"Hullo, Jimmy!" and "Hullo, dad!" -- pretty much as if we had parted overnight. 
I knew all right what I thought of him. What he thought of me had been another 
story. That he had a good enough opinion of me to hand me a job of this sort, 
and give me the run of his purse with it, put me in such a way that I could only 
nod acceptance. 
"Good boy," said he. "Now here's another point. During the day you'll be free to 
conduct your investigations, but I shall want you to fly me into the country 
every evening. I'm not going to stop in town and have the telephone buzzing in 
my ear all night. I'll keep Hazeldene open and live there. Can you do it?" 
"Do it!" I cried. "Why, dad, there's nothing I'd like better--and if at any time 
I should be called away on this job, you'll find Milliken a first-class man." 
"That's settled then. I take it you have something better in your shed than the 
old seaplane you used this morning?" 
"You bet. There's my own Merlin. Three hundred kilometres and more an hour are 
nothing to her. I'll have her tuned up for you right away. I can get you from 
the Battery to Hazeldene well inside the half-hour." 
"Bully!" said the old man, and rose with a cigar going strong. "Now I must get 
back to the back, son." 



Some Powdered Glass 
WE drove back to the Metallurgical through streets that seethed with excited 
humanity. Newsboys were running about, offending the car with unlawful and 
raucous yells, flourishing newsbills that smote the eyeballs with their flaming 
scarelines. One journal, apparently despairing of adjectives sufficiently lurid 
to describe the reported enormity of the raid on the banks, had printed a sheet 
containing nothing but one large exclamation mark. Broadway was Babel. At every 
other corner policemen were trying to move on the crowds that inevitably 
clustered round each fortunate with a newspaper, and so dense was the press at 
the lower end of Broadway that it took two mounted men nearly a quarter of an 
hour to drive a path for the car through the last hundred paces to the bank 
door. 
Once we were inside, I immediately got through to my mechanic, Milliken, on the 
telephone, and told him to tune up the Merlin. Wise fellow that he is, he had 
anticipated the order, and could promise to have the plane ready in a couple of 
hours. Next I spoke to the housekeeper at Hazeldene and arranged for the place 
to be kept open for my father and myself. In the ordinary way I lived in a hut 
close to the hangar and workshops on the beach, only joining my father at 
Hazeldene when he went there for the week ends. He had been at the cottage on 
one of these visits when the news of the robbery had pulled him out of bed for 
our flight this Monday morning. 
I was on the point of stepping out to make what investigations I could when my 
father called me into his room. He had come upon an old Eastern piece of gold 
money which he kept as a curiosity in one of the drawers of his desk. It was not 
of the ordinary disc shape, but was like two little beans stuck together 
crosswise and turned over each other. I had seen it before as a shining piece of 
particularly pure gold, but now it was sadly dulled to a colour with which I was 
becoming familiar. 
"You had better keep that, Jimmy, my father said. "I expect you'd like to have a 
sample of the tarnishing." 
I was glad to have it, and I wrapped it in a scrap of tissue paper before 
placing it in an empty matchbox to keep it from being rubbed. I intended to have 
the tarnishing analyzed in the hope that the result would furnish some clue to 
the anaesthetic used by the crooks, for to my mind the crux of the whole affair 
lay in the mystery of the two lost hours. This was the thing I determined to 
follow up in the best way I could. I had no other notion of where to make a 
start. 
When I reached the street, the crowd in front of the bank was thining before the 
manoeuvres of the police, and I waited in the doorway until there was room to 
move. In a little I was able to cross Broadway, and it was when I had reached 
the opposite sidewalk that a slight accident happened to me which was the means 
of furnishing another step in the development of my theories. 
To avoid bumping into a fellow who was hurrying past on the sidewalk, I stepped 
short on the curb. My foot slipped and I came down on my hands. I felt my palms 
sting, as though I had landed on some sharp sand, but when I stood up to brush 
the stuff off, I saw that my skin was full of little splinters of glass. It was 
no conscious alertness that made me look down on the curb, but just the ordinary 
human foolishness that always makes a fellow turn to look when he has trodden on 
a banana skin. My interest was caught by a smear of powdered glass along the 
curb and in the gutter--like the result of breaking an electric bulb, only 
bigger. There was something about the pulverization and distribution of the 
stuff that made me look closer still. I was suddenly taken with a notion of what 
the stuff stood for, and I swept a few grains of the powder together and wrapped 
them in tissue paper, placing the tiny packet beside the coin in the match-box. 
My next idea was to have a look round the outside, at least, of the other banks. 

I walked down Broadway to the Guaranty Trust and, acting on the idea that was 
simmering in my head, I scrutinized the sidewalks and the roadway round about. I 
half expected to come upon another of the smears I had discovered opposite the 
National Metallurgical, but was disappointed. There had been, however, a fairly 
dense crowd all down Broadway that morning, and I was not ready to dismiss the 
possibility that the same sort of smear had been in the street sure enough, 
until the trampling of many feet had dispersed it. 
By the Subtreasury, at the corner of Pine Street and Nassau Street, I had better 
luck. Here again the height of the curb had saved the smear of powdered glass 
from being completely obliterated. I took a sample of this, too, and numbered 
the package in which I folded it. 
Next I went on down Pine Street until I came to the Dyers' National, but this 
time, although I worked as closely and as carefully as I could, I found no 
reward for my search. Remained then the last of the raided banks, the Trade 
Bank, and I walked round to take up my investigations there. 
Right in the middle of Broad Street where it joins Wall Street, I found another 
sprinkle of powdered glass. Passing feet had made it very faint, but luckily the 
morning had been dry, and the traces left were unmistakable. I reckoned now that 
I had reasonable grounds on which to work out my notion, and I contented myself 
with picking up what I could of the powder on a finger-tip to test its nature. 
It had the same character as my two samples. 



A Pop Added 
BY this time I had four ideas firmly fixed in my head, and could not be quit of 
them; that the crooks had used an anaesthetizing gas; that this gas probably had 
tarnished the gold; that the gas, in liquid form, had been held in glass 
containers; and that the smears of powder outside the three banks were what was 
left of the containers after the release of the gas had shattered them. 
These were a weirdly fanciful lot of notions, I admit, but like the rest of 
those concerned, I was more absorbed by the idea of the mysterious sleep that 
had fallen on the district during those two dead hours, than by the magnitude of 
the robbery itself. It was all guess-work, and probably mad guess-work at that, 
but at the time guess-work was about all anyone had to start from. 
In any case, I thought the coincidence that smears of pulverized glass should be 
outside three of the robbed banks sufficiently strange to be worth working on, 
and in pursuit of the ideas it gave birth to I went in search of the policeman 
of the tarnished locket. 
I was afraid he would have gone off duty, but my luck held, and I came upon him 
practically on the same spot where I had parted with him earlier in the morning. 
He had just been relieved and was going home. I walked with him up Broadway in 
the direction of the National Metallurgical. 
"There is a point on which I'd like to ask you a question or two, McGrath," I 
said. 
"Shoot !" 
"Before you fell asleep or became unconscious this morning, did you hear 
anything of an explosion?" 
He stopped dead in his tracks to stare at me. 
"Faith--now you mintion ut," he said slowly, "I believe I did hear a bit of a 
pop. Nothing to startle ye, mind--just a quiet little pop, like ye'd be hearin' 
when a child burst a paper bag." 
"Where were you when you heard this pop, as you call it ?" 
"Let me see, now," he mused. "I'd be standin' right foreninst th' Exchange when 
I heard ut." 
"You didn't hear more than one?" 
"I might have. But, d'ye see, ut was the sort av noise that might be comin' from 
the uptown traffic, and not at all the noise that would swing ye round to see 
what ut was." 
"How long after hearing the noise would it be before you became unconscious?" 
"Now ye've got me, for ut's a thing I can't tell ye," the big fellow said. "I'm 
told that I was asleep for two hours--but, if ye ask me, I say ut was a bare 
five minutes from hearin' the pop until I woke up and found myself lyin' on the 
sidewalk." 
"After the noise, did you become conscious of any peculiar odour--even of the 
slightest?" 
"No, divil a whiff av any sort," he said positively--then with a twinkle, 
"unless maybe what was left behind from the big cigars av the millionaires." 
"That might make your eyes water, but would hardly send you to sleep," said I. 
"Before you became unconscious, did you see any haze or mist coming up?" 
"There was nothin' but maybe a kinda blueness in the Street--" he began, then 
broke off: "B' the holy piper!" he exclaimed. "Come to think av ut, ut was an 
odd kinda haze, too!--like nothin' so much as the way the letters on me watch 
would show in a dark corner, or like wan av thim old fashioned matches would be 
if ye was to spit on ut in the dark--but more spread about and thinned down." 
"Ah, phosphorescent !" 
"I wouldn't be puttin' a name like that to ut, so I wouldn't," he said 
carefully. "If ye understand me, ut was almost too faint to notice. All I say is 
the Street looked like ghosts might " 
"Thank you, McGrath," I told him. "You've given me just what I wanted to know." 
"Is ut a bit av detectin' you're after?" he asked me. "Faith, Mr. Boon, ye've 
got things out av me that none av thim--polis or private--had the since to 
remind me av. One of me mates was sayin' that there's been some queer on-goin's 
up at the Post Office. Have ye heard anythin' at all about ut, Mr. Boon?" 
I had forgotten Dick Schuyler's casual reference to the Post Office and my 
interest was reawakened. 
"Commander Schuyler said something about-it," 
I said to McGrath. "Was the Post Office gassed and robbed, too?" 
"No. I wouldn't say that. I haven't got the rights av ut yet, but ut's just 
queer on-goin's that's rumoured." 
"Ut's a queer affair, so ut is," he went on, "and the more ye think av ut, the 
queerer ut is. There's me locket, now. D'ye think I can get the polish back on 
the thing? Not wan bit av ut. Ut's all pitted an' dirty-lookin'. What the girl 
will say, Hivin knows." 
"If you don't mind letting me have it," I volunteered, "I'll give you enough to 
buy another like it, and something for the girl as well. I'm interested in it." 
"Have ut, and welcome," said McGrath. "I'd been thinkin' I'd better get a new 
wan, an' say nothin' to Norah about ut, for I wouldn't like her to see ut that 
dirty. I know the store where ut was bought. Let me get the photy av her out av 
ut, an' ut's yours." 
He handed over the damaged trinket, and I gave him two ten-dollar bills. He was 
mightily pleased, for with the twenty dollars he could buy half a dozen lockets 
of the same kind, and when I turned into the bank he was grinning broadly as he 
went off to shoulder his way up the street. I added the locket to my 
tissue-wrapped trophies. 
My next concern was to interview Jaxon and his five men again. Normally they 
would have left the bank by this hour, but they were still hanging around in 
some faint hope of cheering news. I collected the six of them in a spare room, 
and questioned them along the same lines as I had used with McGrath. They all 
reiterated their former statement that there had been no odour, but three of 
them, including Jaxon, recalled having heard a faint pop before dropping off to 
sleep, and their descriptions of the noise were, on the whole, fairly close to 
that given me by the policeman. Four of them, also including Jaxon, now 
positively remembered a faint luminosity, and the other two thought they did. 



Jimmy Takes Counsel 
I NOW took my exhibits, as the police would call them, and my theory uptown to a 
friend of mine who has a great reputation in chemistry and physics, a clever 
little fellow called Dan Lamont, so well off that he can afford to have a 
first-class laboratory, and keep a big staff of assistants working on valuable 
but unremunerative research. He is a perfect little wizard, and many a time I 
had gone to him to be pulled out when the physics side of my work had me bogged. 

"Hullo, Jimmy !" he said, as soon as he saw me. 
"What's the trouble this time? Won't the coefficients come unstuck from the 
dihedrals, or is it that the helicopter still refuses to copt?" 
"You're wasted as a physicist, Dan," I told him. "You ought to go into 
vaudeville as the Unfunniest Back-chat Comedian Alive. Haven't you heard about 
the robbery?" 
"I'll bite--and then you can say your smart answer," he grinned. "What robbery?" 

There are days when Dan doesn't see a daily journal, and I guessed from his 
readiness to chaff that he had not heard about the banks. I told him. 
As I expected, he at once showed the liveliest interest. 
"Well, Jimmy!" he exclaimed. "What do you know about that? Most interesting; 
Christopher Columbus and the hard-boiled egg! Are you telling me that Wall 
Street was put to sleep for two hours while a gang of crooks helped themselves?" 

"That's just what I do tell you." 
"Phew!" He stood up and stared at me. Then he took out his loose change and 
rattled it in his cupped hands--a trick he has when very excited. 
"What makes you think the crooks used gas?" he demanded. 
"I can think of no other way in which they could dope the district," I said. 
"Can you?" 
"They might have fixed the water supply," he said softly. "No. Water isn't 
popular enough with the police and the watchmen to make that method effective. 
But, gas!" 
"What's your kick at the gas theory, Dan?" 
"Haven't you said that the people who went to sleep smelled no odour?" 
"That's right. Not a thing." 
"Then there isn't any gaseous anaesthetic known could do it," said Dan. "Let's 
see. The absence of odour rules out chloroform and ether straight off. Ethyl 
chloride--no--too smelly--and too lethal. You say nobody's dead?" 
"Not a soul so far." 
"Queer, queer! Nitrous oxide has no smell, but its effects last barely a minute. 
There may be a gas could do it, Jimmy, but I've never heard of it. What makes 
you so keen on the gas idea, anyhow?" 
I told him about the powdered glass, and showed it to him. Then I brought out 
the locket and my father's gold coin. Dan's excitement grew. 
"This is mighty interesting, Jimmy--mighty interesting," he purred. "I never 
heard of anything to tarnish gold in this way. Chlorine?--chlor--Hey?" he broke 
off as he examined McGrath's locket. "Who told you this was gold?" 
"It is gold," I insisted. 
"Looks more like copper to me." 
"Oh, shucks, Dan! It probably has a large percentage of copper in the alloy." 
I brought forward the instance of Jaxon's watch, but he took little notice of 
what I said. He was off on some scientific daydream. 
"This coin, too," he brooded. "At first sight I'd say it was copper." 
"That's where you fall down, young fellow," I said. "That coin was kept by my 
father as being a remarkably pure piece of gold. He had it tested." 
"May be so, my dear Jimmy--may be so," he said absently. "I'll tell you what. 
I'll analyze this tarnishing. Leave the locket and coin with me. They look to me 
to be impure alloys of copper--both of them. Most interesting! I can think of 
nothing to affect gold so." 
"No more can I, Dan," I said, "but I can think of none more likely to find out 
than yourself. When can I come back?" 
"Eh? Oh--ah--yes! Come back, eh? Oh, sometime this afternoon," he muttered, his 
gaze fixed on the coin and locket. "Gas, eh? Must think about it. Good fellow, 
Jimmy--to give me these. A new thing--mighty interesting. Good-bye, old man--" 
He wrung my hand and made a bee line for his laboratory, with the coin and 
locket held out in front of him in his cupped palms. I chuckled to think I had 
made Dan Lamont so interested, for I knew that the chemistry side of any 
investigations I wanted to make was in the most skillful hands in New York. I 
had enlisted the services of a powerful ally. 



An Official Whispers 
THE next thing I had to do was to get the Sieve back to Long Island and see how 
Milliken was getting on with the Merlin, but on the way down to the jetty I 
stopped to look in at the Post Office. There was a jam about the place, and the 
counters were crowded up. I wrote the name of the bank on one of the cards under 
my own name---which is the same as my father's--and handed the pasteboard to a 
messenger. 
"Are you Mr. Boon?" he asked suspiciously. "I am," said I. 
"Who is it you want to see?" he demanded. 
"Anybody in authority who has a minute to spare--" 
"Will Mr. Glover do?" 
"Fine," I said. "Lead the way to Mr. Glover." 
He conducted me along a passage into a nest of private rooms and tapped at a 
door. 
"Wait here" he said, and went into the room. He was out in a second. 
"Mr. Glover will see you." 
A bald-headed man at a desk in the centre of the room looked up with an 
ingratiating smile as I came in, but when he saw me his grin froze, and he rose 
in angry surprise from his chair. 
"What trick is this?" he demanded. "You are not Mr. Boon, sir! You are an 
impostor, sir--an impostor! Let me inform you that I am familiar with the 
appearance of the president of the National Metallurgical! I am an acquaintance 
of Mr. Boon!" 
"That's fine," said I. "Allow me to introduce to you his son, James Vandersluyt 
Boon, whose card you have in your hand." 
He looked at me suspiciously for a moment, then smoothed down, and held out his 
hand. I wondered at the change in his reception of me, but next moment it was 
explained. 
"Of course, of course !" he said heartily. "I might have known!" He waved a hand 
at the flying-kit I still was wearing. "You are the young conqueror of the air, 
our modern Icarus--though I trust not doomed to the same fate. I trust not," 
said the pompous ass. "Well, Mr. Boon, and what can I do for you?" 
I told him pretty snappily that I wanted a line on what had happened in the Post 
Office that morning, explaining that I was investigating everything that seemed 
to have any connection with the robbery of the banks. 
Mr. Glover looked hurriedly around the room, as if he were afraid somebody might 
be lurking in a corner. He dropped his voice mysteriously. 
"This is, of course, strictly entre nous," he said. "I can say nothing 
officially, you understand? It must go no further?" 
I said I quite understand--and found myself whispering like a fool when I said 
it. 
"Very well, then," said he. "I will tell you, Mr. Boon. A very strange thing 
happened here this morning. Five little packages, extremely heavy for their 
size, were dropped into the local collection box during the night or in the 
early hours. The box was cleared at seven, Mr. Boon, and it was then that they 
were found. They would have escaped notice, I do not doubt, had it not been for 
the peculiar circumstance that they were all without the requisite 
stamps--unstamped, Mr. Boon! The sorter put them aside, and when he came to deal 
with them later, he found that there were also five bulky envelopes, similarly 
without stamps. Now, here is a curious fact, Mr. Boon"--with another 
apprehensive glance about the room--"both the envelopes and the packages were 
all addressed to important hospitals and research institutions in the city, an 
envelope and a package to each of five institutions!" 
He leaned back to see the effect on me of this thrilling revelation. 
"You amaze me, Mr. Glover," said I. "Certainly a peculiar and suspicious 
circumstance." 
"Wasn't it!" Mr. Glover agreed. "The packages were all alike, and appeared to 
consist of heavy little boxes wrapped in corrugated cardboard and brown paper. 
Well, now. Naturally the Office was agog with the news of dastardly outrages in 
Wall Street, and the sorter somehow connected these envelopes and packages with 
the crime, Mr. Boon. He summoned his immediate chief, and the result of their 
colloquy was that packages and envelopes were held over for investigation by our 
police department." 
"Have they been opened yet?" I asked. 
Mr. Glover looked pained at my lack of finesse. 
"Not officially, Mr. Boon--not officially. Special authority is needed for 
that." He dropped his voice to a whisper more confidential than ever. "But I can 
tell you--quite unofficially, of course--that the square packages contained 
black boxes of wood, inside which were what at first sight appeared to be lumps 
of solid lead. Closer investigation, however, proved these last to be lead cases 
with extremely thick sides." 
"What was in the lead cases?" 
Mr. Glover shook his head. 
"I cannot say," he said ponderously. "But as I am inclined to think some outrage 
is contemplated, I should say--explosives! But, as you may know there is a 
special department of the Post Office primarily concerned with the handling of 
such contingencies, and at the moment, Mr. Boon, an investigation is going 
forward--behind closed doors!" 
"You don't know what was in the envelopes?" 
Once more Mr. Glover was pained at my bluntness. 
"No. That I cannot tell," he said severely. "You now have all the information I 
can lay at your disposal, Mr. Boon--and that, sir, I beg you to remember, is 
quite unofficial--and sacrosanct. It must not be bruited abroad!" 
I admit that I saw little ground for connecting this mystery with the robberies 
round Wall Street, nor any need for secrecy. I was inclined to think Mr. 
Glover's love for the mysterious had led him into a fantastic interpretation of 
some silly joke on the institutions, but I thanked him with every appearance of 
being impressed, and took a speedy leave of him. I was not a little annoyed with 
myself for having wasted my time on the pedantic fool. But subsequent events, 
since made public, were to show me that Glover, for all his absurd pomposity, 
had got nearer the truth than I imagined, and that I had underestimated what was 
to prove one of the most surprising of a chain of happenings that ultimately 
were to baffle the whole world. Yet, as I say, at the time I thought the thing 
some ill-conceived joke on the institutions, or perhaps the result of an error 
on the part of some manufacturer's dispatch clerk, and I took little stock of 
it. Without pausing to look into the bank, I made for the seaplane jetty and the 
Sieve. 
Round the landing stage now, in addition to the bronze-painted machines of the 
police, a number of privately owned boats were moored. Luxuriously appointed 
craft, with their closed cabins and the silk or brocade curtains on their 
windows, they made the old Sieve look more disreputable than ever; but when I 
noticed that one or two of these swell conveyances belonged to bank presidents 
like my father, I smiled to think that my old tub, like a mongrel pup to a 
dog-fight, had been first on the scene of action. And as I set the old girl 
skimming down the Bay, I smiled still more when I thought how ornamental all 
that swagger fleet would look, once I got back in its midst with my lovely 
silver Merlin. 
She not only had the whole bunch beaten for sheer good looks, but--in the matter 
of speed--she was to the best of them what the hawk is to the peacock.