Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/287

 reached down and turned over the closely packed woman's finery and the few articles belonging to Haddon, innumerable packets from the cabinet dropped out.

"Hulloa—what's this?" he exclaimed, as he came to a huge roll of bills and a mass of silver and gold coin. "Trying to double-cross us all the time. That was her clever game—to give him the hours he needed to gather what money he could save and make a clean getaway. Even cocaine doesn't destroy the interest of men and women in that," he concluded, turning over to Carton the wealth which Haddon had amassed as one of the meanest grafters of the city of graft.

Here was a case which I could not help letting the Star have immediately. Notes or no notes, it was local news of the first order. Besides, anything that concerned Carton was of the highest political significance.

It kept me late at the office and I overslept. Consequently I did not see much of Craig the next morning, especially as he told me he had nothing special, having turned down a case of a robbery of a safe, on the ground that the police were much better fitted to catch ordinary yeggmen than he was. During the day, therefore, I helped in directing the following up of the Haddon case for the Star.

Then, suddenly, a new front page story crowded this one of the main headlines. With a sigh of relief, I glanced at the new thriller, found it had something to do with the Navy Department, and that it came from as far away as Washington. There was no reason now why others could not carry on the