“I dunno about plenty,” doubted Racey.  “One would be enough.”

Dolan rasped a hand across his stubbly chin.  “One would be enough,” he admitted.  “If you could find the one.”

“It wouldn’t have to be a mistake having to do with this particular case, either, would it?”

“Not necessarily.  Of course it would be better to trip him up on this case, but if you can get hold of something else Luke has done that can be proved anyways shady it would be four aces and the joker.  Luke would have to pull in his horns about this mortgage.  And if I know Luke, he’d do it.  He’s got nerve, but it ain’t cold enough nor witless enough to go up against the shore thing.”

“If only McFluke would talk.  He knows the ins and outs of this business.”

Dolan nodded.  “Shore as yo’re a foot high Dale gave him that black eye.”

“And shore as yo’re a foot high he downed Dale.”

“I guess likely.  But circumstantial evidence is amazing queer.  You can’t ever tell how the jury’s gonna take it.  But anyway we got McFluke, and he’ll do to start in on.”

Entered then Kansas Casey with a serious face.  “McFluke has sloped,” said he without preliminary.

“What!” cried Judge Dolan.

But it was characteristic of Racey Dawson that he did not say “What!” He asked “How?”

“Because the jail was burned down,” said Kansas; “you know we had to put him in yore warehouse, Judge, as the next strongest place, and they dug him out.”

“‘Dug him out?’” Thus Judge Dolan.

“That’s what they did.”

“‘They!’ ‘They!’ Who’s ‘they?’” Again Judge Dolan.

“If I knowed who they was,” Kansas replied, “I’d dump ’em just too quick.  Way I know it’s a ‘they,’ is because the job of diggin’ is bigger than a one-man job.”

“We’ll go look into this,” Dolan exclaimed, wrathfully, and reached for his hat.

“He’d never ‘a’ been pulled out of the calaboose so easy,” said Kansas, as he led Dolan and Racey up the street to the rear of the Dolan warehouse, “but yore foundation logs ain’t sunk more’n six inches, and diggin’ under and in was a cinch.”

“But why didn’t you handcuff this sport to a roof stanchion inside?” demanded the Judge.

“We did, man, we did.  We got a log chain and the biggest pair of handcuffs in our stock and we ironed McFluke by the ankles to a stanchion in the middle of the warehouse.  Besides that his hands was handcuffed, and no matter how he stretched he couldn’t reach nothing.  We seen to that.”

“But, my Gawd, hownell did they have time to file through that log chain or them cuffs?  A log chain ain’t made of wire an’ them cuffs is all special steel.”

“They didn’t file neither the chain nor the cuffs,” explained Kansas, wearily.  “They unlocked the cuffs.”

“Unlocked ’em, huh?  Where’d they get the key?  Lose one of yores, did yuh?”

“Ours is all safe.  They must ‘a’ had a key.  Anyway, there’s the handcuffs wide open when I found McFluke gone this mornin’.”