Page:Top-Notch Magazine, May 1 1915 (IA tn 1915 05 01).pdf/53

 him of Ruthven's private mark, and McKenzie duplicates it on the other package.


 * Wednesday, nine-thirty a m. Package weighed again. Six pounds.


 * Wednesday, ten-thirty a.m. Reeves drives to station with outgoing freight for Seventeen. McKenzie there with a satchel, ostensibly to meet Lois. Lois had gone east at eight-thirty, that morning, to catch Seventeen at Williamsburg, and ride back with Weasel Morrison, so as to explain the situation to him. While Reeves is unloading wagon, McKenzie exchanges counterfeit parcel with added revolver, putting package containing boots into satchel. Hands this satchel to Morrison when train halts, and Lois gets off. Mails his letter on the train—the one for Jenkins, the deputy sheriff at Dry Wash.


 * Wednesday, ten-fifty a.m. Reeves telephones from station that package weighs ten pounds.


 * Note: Mighty good thing for me that the "canister" was loaded with blanks.

"That," Ruthven remarked, after he had scribbled out this summary, "gets this series of substitutions in black and white, so far as McKenzie and Lois are concerned. Now, what happened after that? Let's see."

Picking up the pencil, he reflected for a few moments, and went on with his writing:

Leaning back in his chair, Ruthven studied this last effort. It was one of analysis, pure and simple. In the light of what he had learned from McKenzie, he believed he had hit off the course of events pretty accurately.

"Now," he asked himself, "what about the attempted holdup on the way to the ranch? Ah, I have it!" Again he seized the pencil and wrote:

"By Jove, I've got it!" exclaimed Ruthven, in a glow over his work. "I have followed those two packages, in all their changes and adventures, from the time the boots were handed over the counter of the express office in Burt City. How blamed simple it all is, when one puts it down in black and white! And yet, what a brain twister when one hasn't got the key to the mystery. I"

He broke off his reflections as the tragic side of the matter forced itself on his attention. His heart sank as he thought of McKenzie and Lois. When Weasel Morrison talked against McKenzie, the Honorable Arlo McKenzie, member of the legislature, the junior partner in the firm of Long & McKenzie, what would happen? Ruthven, who had a big heart and was kindly and considerate to all, felt a clammy hand gripping his brain. How would Summerfield behave toward Lois, when the dread truth came out?

"I think Joe is a real man," Ruthven reflected, "and I'm sure that he'll act like a man. He won't give up the girl, no matter what Weasel Morrison says. What a scoundrel Morrison is, anyhow! McKenzie is caught in a web similar to the one that entangled Mill-