"Yes, we took it; and you're going to tell us where he got that suitcase."
"What have your own detectives—those you hired on the side—to say about it?" I countered on him, and saw instantly that the Whipple end of the crowd hadn't known of Dykeman's spotters and trailers.
"Well, why not?" Dykeman shrilled. "Why not? Who wouldn't shadow that crook? One hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars! Worked us like suckers—come-ons—!" he choked up and began to cough. Cummings came in where he left off.
"See here, Boyne; we don't want to antagonize you. You've said from the first that this crime was a conspiracy—a big thing—directed by brains on the outside. Clayte was the tool. Whose tool was he? That's what we want to know." And Anson trundled along,
"These men who have been in the war get a contempt for law, there's no doubt about it. Captain Gilbert might—"
"No names!" Whipple's hand went up in protest. "No accusations, gentlemen, please; Mr. Boyne—this is a dreadful thing. But, really, Captain Gilbert's manner was very strange. I might say he—"
"Swaggered," supplied Cummings coolly as the president's voice lapsed.
"Well," Whipple accepted it, "he swaggered in and put it all over us. There he was, a man fresh from the deathbed of a suicide father; that father's funeral yet to occur. I, personally, hadn't the heart to question him or raise objections. I was dazed."
"Dazed," Dykeman snapped up the word and worried it, as a dog worries a bone. "Of course, we were all dazed. It was so open, so shameless—that's why he got by with it. Making use of his position as heir, less than forty eight hours after his father was shot."
"After his father shot himself," Whipple's lowered tone was a plea. "After his father shot himself."