It was well that they did, vacating the room more cheerfully and sympathetically than they had entered it, or Hall’s manifest disturbance over Van Loo’s visit would have been noticed.  When the last man had disappeared Hall turned quickly to Steptoe.  “Well, what did he say?  Where has he gone?”

“Don’t know,” said Steptoe, with uneasy curtness.  “He was running away with a woman—­well, Mrs. Barker, if you want to know,” he added, with rising anger, “the wife of one of those cursed partners.  Jack Hamlin was here, and was jockeying to stop him, and interfered.  But what the devil has that job to do with our job?” He was losing his temper; everything seemed to turn upon this infernal Van Loo!

“He wasn’t running away with Mrs. Barker,” gasped Hall,—­“it was with her money! and the fear of being connected with the Wheat Trust swindle which he organized, and with our money which I lent him for the same purpose.  And he knows all about that job, for I wanted to get him to go into it with us.  Your name and mine ain’t any too sweet-smelling for the bank, and we ought to have a middleman who knows business to arrange with them.  The bank daren’t object to him, for they’ve employed him in even shadier transactions than this when they didn’t wish to appear.  I knew he was in difficulties along with Mrs. Barker’s speculations, but I never thought him up to this.  And,” he added, with sudden desperation, “You trusted him, too.”

In an instant Steptoe caught the frightened man by the shoulders and was bearing him down on the table.  “Are you a traitor, a liar, or a besotted fool?” he said hoarsely.  “Speak.  When and where did I trust him?”

“You said in your note—­I was—­to—­help him,” gasped Hall.

“My note,” repeated Steptoe, releasing Hall with astonished eyes.

“Yes,” said Hall, tremblingly searching in his vest pocket.  “I brought it with me.  It isn’t much of a note, but there’s your signature plain enough.”

He handed Steptoe a torn piece of paper folded in a three-cornered shape.  Steptoe opened it.  He instantly recognized the paper on which he had written his name and sent up to his wife at the Boomville Hotel.  But, added to it, in apparently the same hand, in smaller characters, were the words, “Help Van Loo all you can.”

The blood rushed into his face.  But he quickly collected himself, and said hurriedly, “All right, I had forgotten it.  Let the d——­d sneak go.  We’ve got what’s a thousand times better in this claim at Marshall’s, and it’s well that he isn’t in it to scoop the lion’s share.  Only we must not waste time getting there now.  You go there first, and at once, and set those rascals to work.  I’ll follow you before Marshall comes up.  Get; I’ll settle up here.”