“No. I’m not that kind of a man. But you’re a foolish little moll. Here we’ve gone and laid ourselves open to twenty years in stir for next to nothing. We haven’t even put a dent in ‘The Black Cougar’s’ bank-roll. The chances are that he transferred most of his ill-gotten gains to the Coast National Bank.”
“All I wanted was the sucker-list. That would have put him out of business. He has about twenty thousand preferred names of boobs in this country who will bite at anything.”
Fay scraped the collodium from his finger-tips. He washed his hands, went through the studio rooms, looked everywhere for possible left-over clues, and then said:
“Come on. I’ll carry the money. We might as well leave here.”
She reached down and lifted the spool of iron wire. “You take the money and I’ll take this,” she said at the door. “We’ll separate. I may have to come back here—so give me the key.”
“What for?”
Fay caught a direct stare full of meaning. “You’re not a boob, though you fell like one. My name isn’t Saidee Laurie. It’s Saidee Isaacs of the Secret Service, Post Office Department, at present. We intercepted your note to Charlie Laurie at Dannemora. They had me decipher your rather simple code. The order was out to bring you in. I had been working on ‘The Black Cougar’ case. I thought you might be of more help outside than inside. So I posed as Charlie Laurie’s daughter and got you to help me rob the vault. The rogues’ gallery picture was framed up to make things more convincing.”
Fay’s eyes flashed.
“You see,” went on Saidee Isaacs, “the importance of getting ‘The Black Cougar’s’ sucker-list overshadowed the importance of putting an end to your activities. There was no way, through the law, that would stop the bucket-shop operator. He had the list, and as long as it was in his possession, he could trim the suckers. They’d buy anything, and they wouldn’t squeal on him.”
Fay blurted: “Well, in that case you’ve lost and I have gained. Thirty-seven thousand isn’t going back to him, nor is it going to the Government. I’m going to keep it—for professional services.”