Page:Bedford-Jones--The Mardi Gras Mystery.djvu/262

 He sat fingering the postal from the Legion, and turning over events in his mind. Against Fell he had particular animosity. All that the little gray man had done had been done with the thought of Lucie Ledanois as a spur.

"Yet he can't realize that Lucie wouldn't have the money if she knew that it came from criminal sources," he thought, smiling bitterly. "He's been scheming a long time to make a fortune for her, and now he's determined to push it through regardless of me. It was clever of him to jail Hammond! He guessed that I'd do a great deal to save the redhead—more even than to save myself. Mighty clever! And now he's pretty sure that he's got me between a cleft stick, where I can't wriggle.

"If I'm to strike a blow, I'll have to do it to-morrow—before noon to-morrow, also. I'll have to leave here mighty early, and get there before Gumberts does. What was it Hammond said that day about him—that nobody in the country had ever caught Memphis Izzy? I bet I could do it, and his whole gang with him—if I knew how. There's the rub! Fell won't hesitate a minute in