"That'll be all right," said he. "But a few minutes after I saw the fellow with the pointed beard coming out of the private office of Norcross, the president of the bank that was robbed of the forty thousand dollars. He went by me like a rocket, as if he were afraid of me."
"Sure it was he?"
"Positive. But the strange part of it was my interview with the banker. He acknowledged that the bank had been robbed of the money, and identified the bill dropped by Checkers in his flight, as one of the shipment, but when I announced that it was a counterfeit, he went all to pieces, and, after trying to bluff me into giving him the note, wanted to buy it, asking me to name my own price."
"What does that mean, I wonder?"
"It means, that this case of the robbery and the murder of the express messenger is not the simple thing I thought. There is a crime within a crime."
"What in the world do you mean?"
"Just this, Norcross, the banker, is mixed in the crime, and Heaven only knows how many more men quite as prominent as he. The express-robbing syndicate is a strong one, and hard to beat."
"But you'll beat it yet. I know you."
"Thank you for your faith and encouragement, Stella. But it's going to be a hard pull, and it will take all of us to do it."
"What do you think of it now?"