"You old hypocrite!" muttered the clerk, shaking his fist at the oaken panels. "You miserable, canting fraud. Never would I have believed you to be what you are had I not witnessed your duplicity and double dealing now daily for the past two weeks with my own eyes."
And the assumed Mr. Maxwell, in whom no one, not even, we venture to say, Caleb Hook himself, had he not been in the secret, would have recognized our young friend, Frank Mansfield, resumed his seat at the desk behind the glass partition, and began figuring away upon a large book of accounts.
Yes, it was Frank Mansfield.
Detective Hook's plan had succeeded to the letter.
For two weeks he had been an inmate of the business office of the man who had plotted his ruin.
And during that short lapse of time many things had occurred.
Let us narrate them briefly, as they are highly essential to a correct understanding of subsequent events.
In the first place, the matter of the Webster bank robbery remains still a mystery. It is generally believed that Frank Mansfield was at least a participant in the crime, a guilty tool of the thieves.
From the moment of his escape from Officer Schneider, the whereabouts of that young gentleman have been a matter of mystery to the world.
When, through the accident which had happened to Detective Hook, the burglar Joe Dutton had been captured with his basket of stolen dollars at the Catherine Market, it had been thought by the police authorities that a speedy solution of the mystery was at hand.