As she stopped again, I could not help thinking what a tale of strange plotting the casual conversation suggested.  New York, I knew, was full of high-class international crooks and flimflammers who had flocked there because the great field of their operations in Europe was closed.  The war had literally dumped them on us.  Was some one using a band of these crooks for ulterior purposes?  The idea opened up wide possibilities.

“Of course,” Miss Euston continued, “that is all I know; but I think I am justified in thinking that the two things—­the shipment of gold here and the attack—­have some connection.  Oh, can’t you take up the case and look into it?”

She made her appeal so winsomely that it would have been difficult to resist even if it had not promised to prove important.

“I should be glad to take up the matter,” replied Craig, quickly, adding, “if Mr. Barnes will let me.”

“Oh, he must!” she cried.  “I haven’t spoken to father, but I know that he would approve of it.  I know he thinks I haven’t any head for business, just because I wasn’t born a boy.  I want to prove to him that I can protect the companies interests.  And Mr. Barnes—­ why, of course he will approve.”

She said it with an assurance that made me wonder.  It was only then that I recollected that it had been one of the excuses for printing her picture in the society columns of the Star so often that the pretty daughter of the president of the Continental was being ardently wooed by two of the company’s younger officials.  Granville Barnes himself was one.  The other was Rodman Lane, the young general manager.  I wished now that I had paid more attention to the society news.  Perhaps I should have been in a better position to judge which of them it was whom she really had chosen.  As it was, two questions presented themselves to me.  Was it Barnes?  And had Barnes really been the victim of an attack—­or of an accident?

Kennedy may have been thinking the problems over, but he gave no evidence of it.  He threw on his hat and coat, and was ready in a moment to be driven in Miss Euston’s car to the hospital.

There, after the usual cutting of red tape which only Miss Euston could have accomplished, we were led by a white-uniformed nurse through the silent halls to the private room occupied by Barnes.

“It’s a most peculiar case,” whispered the young doctor in charge, as we paused at the door.  “I want you to notice his face and his cough.  His pulse seems very weak, almost imperceptible at times.  The stethoscope reveals subcrepitant sounds all over his lungs.  It’s like bronchitis or pneumonia—­but it isn’t either.”

We entered.  Barnes was lying there almost in a state of unconsciousness.  As we stood watching him he opened his eyes.  But he did not see us.  His vision seemed to be riveted on Miss Euston.  He murmured something that we could not catch, and, as his eyes closed again, his face seemed to relax into a peaceful expression, as though he were dreaming of something happy.