"Eh?" he drawled. "You've—what?"
His friend's peppery temper broke loose.
"For thunder sakes wake up!" he roared. "I tell you I've lost four hundred dollars of the fourteen hundred I told you I collected from Sylvester Sage over to Wapatomac this mornin'. I had three packages of bills, two of five hundred dollars each and one of four hundred. The two five hundred packages were in the inside pocket of my overcoat where I put 'em. But the four hundred one's gone. What I want to know is, did it drop out when I took off my coat here in the shop? Do you get that through your head, finally?"
It had gotten through. Jed now looked as troubled as his friend. He rose hastily and went over to the pile of boards upon which Captain Sam had thrown his coat upon entering the shop on his previous visit that day. Together they searched, painstakingly and at length. The captain was the first to give up.
"'Tain't here," he snapped. "I didn't think 'twas. Where in time is it? That's what I want to know."
Jed rubbed his chin.
"Are you sure you had it when you left Wapatomac?" he asked.
"Sure? No, I ain't sure of anything. But I'd have sworn I did. The money was on the table along with my hat and gloves. I picked it up and shoved it in my overcoat pocket. And that was a darned careless place to put it, too," he added, testily. "I'd have given any feller that worked for me the devil for doin' such a thing."
Jed nodded, sympathetically. "But you might have left it there to Sylvester's," he said. "Have you thought of telephonin' to find out?"
"Have I thought? Tut, tut, tut! Do you think I've got a head like a six-year-old young-one—or you? Course I've thought—and 'phoned, too. But it didn't do me any good. Sylvester's house is shut up and the old man's gone to Boston, so the postmaster told me when I 'phoned and asked him. Won't be back for a couple of days, anyhow. I remember he told me he was goin'!"