They were as glad to see me as I was to see them, for the story of the robbery had interested the financial district perhaps more than any other.

“Where can I find Halsey Haughton at this hour?” I asked.

“Say,” exclaimed one of the men, “what’s the matter?  There have been all kinds of rumors in the Street about him to-day.  Did you know he was ill?”

“No,” I answered.  “Where is he?”

“Out at the home of his fiancee, who is the daughter of Mrs. Courtney Woods, at Glenclair.”

“What’s the matter?” I persisted.

“That’s just it.  No one seems to know.  They say—­well—­they say he has a cancer.”

Halsey Haughton suffering from cancer?  It was such an uncommon thing to hear of a young man that I looked up quickly in surprise.  Then all at once it flashed over me that Denison and Kennedy had discussed the matter of burns from the stolen radium.  Might not this be, instead of cancer, a radium burn?

Kennedy, who had been standing a little apart from me while I was talking with the boys, signaled to me with a quick glance not to say too much, and a few minutes later we were on the street again.

I knew without being told that he was bound by the next train to the pretty little New Jersey suburb of Glenclair.

It was late when we arrived, yet Kennedy had no hesitation in calling at the quaint home of Mrs. Courtney Woods on Woodridge Avenue.

Mrs. Woods, a well-set-up woman of middle age, who had retained her youth and good looks in a remarkable manner, met us in the foyer.  Briefly, Kennedy explained that we had just come in from Pittsburgh with Mr. Denison and that it was very important that we should see Haughton at once.

We had hardly told her the object of our visit when a young woman of perhaps twenty-two or three, a very pretty girl, with all the good looks of her mother and a freshness which only youth can possess, tiptoed quietly downstairs.  Her face told plainly that she was deeply worried over the illness of her fiance.

“Who is it, mother?” she whispered from the turn in the stairs.  “Some gentlemen from the company?  Hartley’s door was open when the bell rang, and he thought he heard something said about the Pittsburgh affair.”

Though she had whispered, it had not been for the purpose of concealing anything from us, but rather that the keen ears of her patient might not catch the words.  She cast an inquiring glance at us.

“Yes,” responded Kennedy in answer to her look, modulating his tone.  “We have just left Mr. Denison at the office.  Might we see Mr. Haughton for a moment?  I am sure that nothing we can say or do will be as bad for him as our going away, now that he knows that we are here.”

The two women appeared to consult for a moment.

“Felicie,” called a rather nervous voice from the second floor, “is it some one from the company?”