“What else? Isn’t that enough? I’ve got it all doped out. That’s the manner in which—” “ Don’t you see, sergeant?” Beaver said. “While she was chewing gum with a certain amount of nervousness natural to a young woman under those circumstances, she was able to feed large quantities of gum into her mouth without exciting suspicion.”

  “ I think you’re getting unduly excited over a very obvious matter, Beaver,” Sergeant Ackley said. “I had figured all that out just as soon as you told me Leith insisted upon a secretary who was an inveterate gum chewer and a promiscuous parker.”

  “ Well?” Sergeant Ackley asked in a voice well calculated to chill even the most loyal supporter.

  “ Oh,” the undercover man said, and then after a moment added: “I see. You thought of it first.”

  “ Well,” Beaver went on, speaking slightly slower and with less assurance, “you can see what happened. While she was chewing gum, she sat there on the table, swinging her legs. She’d chew for a while, and then she’d take a wad of gum out of her mouth and stick it on the under side of the table. Then she’d start chewing more gum. Now, she had those emeralds with her. While they were searching the baggage and asking questions of Mainwaring, she stuck those emeralds in the gum on the under side of the table in the customs inspector’s office right under his very nose. Then, after they’d finished searching her and her baggage and Mainwaring and his baggage, she made an excuse to run back to the office of the customs inspector. You’ll remember that the newspaper said she thanked him for his courtesy. Well, while she was thanking him, she reached her hand under the table, and slipped out the emeralds and walked out with them. It was cleverly done.”

  There was a long pause while the undercover man waited, listening; and Sergeant Ackley remained thoughtfully silent.

  “ That’s right,” Sergeant Ackley said. “By the way, Beaver, how did you happen to think of it?”

  “I just thought it out,” the spy said wearily. “ No, no, Beaver. Now don’t hang up. There must have been something which brought the idea to your mind.”

  “I reasoned it out,” the spy said.

  “But something must have given you a clue.”

  “What was it gave you your clue?” the undercover man asked. “ I,” Sergeant Ackley said with dignity, “have risen to greater heights in my profession than you have, Beaver. It stands to reason that my mind is trained to arrive at conclusions more rapidly than yours. Also, I have more time for concentration. You were busy with your duties as valet. I feel certain that something must have given you the tipoff. Now what was it? Don’t be insubordinate, Beaver.”

  “Well,” Beaver asked at length, “are you there, sergeant?” “ Oh, all right,” the undercover man said wearily. “I happened to find where Leith had been rehearsing the secretary. He’d given her a wad of gum and a piece of green glass about the size of a good big emerald. She’d practiced sticking the gum on the under side of a chair arm, and then slipping the emerald up into the chewing gum. Evidently, they’re rehearsing an act they’re going to put on later.”

  employed secretary to get aboard before lurching into creaking motion.

  Leith settled down in the drawing room, opened his bag, and took out a case of chewing gum in assorted flavors. “I want you,” he said, “to try these and see which you prefer.”

  “ You should have told me that,” Sergeant Ackley said reproachfully, “as soon as you had me on the line, and not tried to make a grandstand with a lot of deductive reasoning. Don’t let it happen again, Beaver. Do you understand?”

  Back in the depot, a plainclothes man telephoned ahead to Sergeant Ackley, who was waiting at Ninetythird Street. “O.K., sergeant,” he said, “You’ve got thirty minutes to get things fixed up and get aboard. Your drawing room is all reserved.”

  “I understand,” the spy said, as he dropped the receiver into its cradle.

  “He took the train?” Sergeant Ackley asked.

  CHAPTER V THE RUBBER SUIT

  Evelyn Rae was standing by the train gate when Lester Leith arrived. Her jaws were swinging with the rhythmic ease of a habitual gum chewer. Despite the fact that it was only two minutes before train time, she showed no nervousness whatever, but raised her eyes to Lester Leith and said casually:

  “Hello, there. I was wondering if you were going to leave me at the altar.” “ He’s aboard all right. He played it pretty slick. He had his watch set right to the second, and waited to be certain he and the girl were the last people through the gates. He did that so you couldn’t follow him aboard the train, but he overlooked the fact that it stopped at Ninetythird Street.”

  “ Well, I haven’t overlooked it,” Sergeant Ackley said gloatingly. “The time will come when that crook will realize that he’s fighting a master mind. It’s only luck that’s enabled him to slip through my fingers so many times before. When it comes to brains, I’ll match mine with his any day in the week.”

  “ Hardly,” Leith said, “but I’ve been rather busy. Here, give your bags to this redcap. Let’s go.”

  “ Atta boy, sergeant!” the detective exclaimed approvingly, dropped the receiver into place, and then, running out his tongue, showered the transmitter with a very moist but heartfelt razzberry.

  The conductor was yelling, “All aboard,” as Leith grabbed Evelyn Rae’s arm and rushed her through the gates. And as soon as the porter had juggled the baggage through behind them, the gateman snapped the brass chain into position, and swung the big doors shut—the seventwenty limited had officially departed. Actually it waited for Leith and his newly

  Lester Leith took off his shoes, put on bedroom slippers, hung up his coat and vest, slipped into a lounging robe, and took a book from his suitcase.

  Evelyn Rae watched him with cautious, appraising eyes. As Lester Leith became engaged in his book, she slowly settled back against the cushions.

  “ I won’t,” she told him, and pressed the chewed Juicy Fruit against the under side of the table.

  Leith rang for the porter, ordered a table, and when it was placed in position in between the seats, put the case of chewing gum on it.

  At Ninetythird Street, Sergeant Ackley gave lastminute instructions to the undercover man and two detectives who were pacing the platform.

  Evelyn Rae moistened her thumb and forefinger, slipped out the wad of gum she had been chewing, and absentmindedly pushed it against the under side of the table. She tore open a package of Juicy Fruit and fed two sticks into her mouth, one after the other.

  “Pretty good stuff,” she said, between chews. “This must be pretty fresh.” Leith said: “It’s direct from the wholesalers, and they say it left the factory less than a week ago.”

  After she had chewed for several minutes, Leith said: “I’d like to have you try some of that Doublemint and then contrast that flavor with the pepsin.”

  “ Now listen,” Ackley said. “Remember he may be looking out of the window, or he may get out and walk up and down the platform. We’ve got to get aboard without him seeing us. You two birds stand out on the platform when you hear the train coming. He doesn’t know you. His reservation is Drawing Room A in Car D57. You two get aboard, go on back to that car and make sure he’s in his drawing room. Then signal with your flashlight, and Beaver and I will come aboard and go directly to our drawing room which is in D56, the car ahead. Do you get me?”

  “O.K., sergeant,” the older of the two detectives said. “ O.K.,” she said. “Give me a few more minutes with this. I haven’t got the good out of it yet.”

  The train rumbled along through the darkness. Evelyn Rae began to make herself at home.

  “Gotta magazine or anything?” she asked. Leith nodded, and took several magazines from his suitcase. She settled down with a motionpicture magazine to casual reading. Soon she became interested.

  “Don’t forget that Doublemint,” Leith said.

  “Get ready,” Sergeant Ackley warned. “Here she comes.” A station bell clanged a strident warning. The big yellow headlight of the thundering locomotive loomed up out of the darkness. Passengers for the limited swirled into little excited groups, exchanging last farewells as travelers picked up their baggage.

  The big limited train rumbled into the station. While Sergeant Ackley and Beaver hid in the waiting room, the two detectives spotted Lester Leith’s stateroom, flashed a goahead signal, and the officers dashed aboard. The brassthroated bells clanged their warning, and the long line of Pullmans creaked into motion.

  In Drawing Room A in Car D57, Lester Leith merely glanced at his wrist watch, then took a cigarette from the hammered silver case in his pocket, tapped it on his thumbnail, and snapped a match into flame.

  kneaded the sticky substance over the imitation gems.

  On the opposite seat, Evelyn Rae, her back bolstered up with pillows, her mind absorbed in the picture magazine, slid around to draw up her knees to furnish a prop for the magazine. Absentmindedly, she slipped the gum from her mouth, pressed it against the under side of the table, and groped with her fingers until she found a fresh package. Without taking her eyes off the article she was reading, she tore off the wrappers and fed sticks of gum into her mouth.

  The train, having cleared the more congested district of the city, rumbled into constantly increasing speed.

  The train slowed for Beacon City, and Evelyn Rae was not even conscious that it was slowing. Busily absorbed in reading the adventures of an extra girl who came to Hollywood and attracted the romantic interest of one of the more popular stars, she barely looked up as Lester Leith slipped out of the door and into the corridor.

  As the junction point, Beacon City represented an important stop in the journey of the limited. Here two passenger coaches were transferred from one line and two Pullmans added from another. The station rated a fifteen minute stop.

  Belting Junction at eight ten and Robbinsdale at eight thirty were passed without incident. At five minutes past nine, Lester Leith said:

  “I think I’ll take a stroll on the platform when we get to Beacon City.” Evelyn Rae might not have heard him. She was reading an absorbing article on one of her favorite motionpicture stars. The article told of the gameness, courage, the moral stamina of the star, and Evelyn Rae occasionally blinked back tears of sympathy as she traced the star’s unfortunate search for love and understanding through the tangled skein of Hollywood’s romance.

  Lester Leith picked up a porter and hurried to the baggage room. “ I’m on the limited,” he told the man in charge of the baggage counter. “I have a suitcase I want to pick up. I haven’t the check for it, but I can describe the contents. It came down on the night of the thirteenth on the limited, and was put off here to wait for me. The whole thing was a mistake. I got in touch with the claim office, and they located—”

  “ Yes, I know all about it,” the baggageman said. “You’ve got to put up a bond.”

  “A what?” Lester Leith picked up his shoes, dropped one of them, and bent over to retrieve it.

  Looking up at the under side of the table, he saw wad after wad of moist gum pressed against the wood.

  “A cash bond.”

  “ That’s an outrage,” Leith said. “I can describe the contents. There’s absolutely no possibility that you can get into any trouble by delivering that suitcase to me, and what’s more—”

  Slipping two of the imitation emeralds from his pocket, he pushed them up into the soft gum. Wetting the tips of his fingers, he

  “ No bond, no suitcase,” the man said. “I’m sorry, but that’s orders from headquarters. They came from the claim department.” “How much bond?” Lester Leith asked.

  “Fifty dollars.” The two detectives who had followed Leith into the baggage room were busy checking articles of hand baggage. Apparently, they paid no attention to the conversation which was going on.

  “ All right, redcap, rush this aboard the train, put it in Drawing Room A in Car D57. There’s a young woman in there. So knock on the door and explain to her that I had the suitcase put aboard. She’s my secretary.”

  “Yassah, yassah,” the grinning boy said. “Right away, suh.”

  Leith opened his wallet, took out ten fivedollar bills, and said: The detectives took no chances. One of them followed the suitcase aboard the train. The other waited for Leith to get his receipt.

  “This is an outrage.” “ O.K.,” the baggageman said. “You can get this money back later on. You’ll have to take it up with the claim department. This is just the nature of a bond to indemnify the railroad company. Now, what’s in the suitcase?”

  At this point the detectives seemed suddenly to become absentminded. They lost interest in their baggage and moved surreptitiously closer.

  “All aboard. All aboard for the limited,” the brakeman cried.

  The station bell clanged into sharp summons. The baggageman looked up from the receipt he was writing. “You’ve got a minute and a half after that,” he said.

  “All aboard. All aboard,” cried the conductor. Leith said, without hesitating. “It’s part of a masquerade costume joke that was played on some friends. There’s a costume in there by which a thin man can make it appear he’s enormously fat.”

  The baggageman scribbled a hasty receipt. The bell of the locomotive clanged into action. The baggageman thrust the receipt into Leith’s hand.

  “ O.K.,” he said, “you’d better hustle.” “You win,” the baggageman said. “I’d been wondering what the devil those pneumatic gadgets were for. Regular rubber clothes. I couldn’t figure it. I guess you pump them up with a bicycle pump, and that’s all there is to it, eh?”

  “ Not a bicycle pump,” Leith said, smiling. “It’s quicker to stand at the nozzle of a pressure hose at a service station. All right, make me out a receipt for the fifty dollars, and I’ll be on my way. I have to catch this train.”

  Leith sprinted across the platform. Porters were banging vestibule doors. The long train creaked into motion.

  A porter saw Leith coming, opened the vestibule door, and hustled Leith aboard. The detective caught the next car down.

  The minute the detective had vanished into the vestibule, Leith suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, I forgot my wallet!”

  He turned to the porter, handed him a dollar, and said:

  “You can’t get off now, boss,” the porter said. “ The hell I can’t!” Leith told him, jerked open the vestibule door, and stepped down to the stairs. He swung out to the platform with the easy grace of a man who has reduced the hopping of trains to a fine art.

  Sergeant Ackley twisted the cigar between trembling lips. Suddenly he jumped to his feet.

  “O.K., boys,” he said. “We make the pinch!” The engineer, knowing he had a straight, uninterrupted run during which he must smoothly clip off the miles, slid the throttle open, and the powerful engine, snaking the long string of Pullmans behind it, roared into rocking speed as Lester Leith, left behind on the station, saw the red lights on the rear of the train draw closer together and then vanish into the darkness.

  He jerked open the door of his drawing room.

  “Do I stay here?” Beaver asked. “ No,” Sergeant Ackley said, “you can come with us. You can throw off your disguise, and face him in your true colors. You can get even with him for some of these taunts and insults.”

  In the stateroom of Car D56, Sergeant Ackley sat hunched over a table, his elbows spread far apart, his chin resting in his hands, chewing nervously at a soggy cigar. His eyes, glittering with excitement, stared across at Beaver, the undercover man. The two detectives made their report.

  “ Hell, sergeant,” the man who had followed the suitcase aboard said, “the thing’s all cut and dried. Leith pulled that stickup himself. He’s got a bunch of rubber clothes he can put on and inflate with air, and they made him look like a big fat guy. He stuck on a cap and mask, and—”

  The burly undercover man’s fist clenched. “ The big thing I want to get even with him for,” he said, “is his calling me Scuttle. He Scuttles me this, and Scuttles me that. He says that I look like a pirate, and keeps asking me if perhaps some of my ancestors weren’t pirates.”

  “ As far as I’m concerned,” Sergeant Ackley said, “the sky’s the limit. My eyes aren’t very good, and if you say he was resisting arrest and took a swing at you, I’ll be inclined to help you defend yourself.”

  “ Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Sergeant Ackley interrupted. “Leith didn’t pull that stickup himself. Leith is pulling a hijack.”

  “ Well, that’s what’s in the suitcase, all right,” the detective said, “and Leith knew all about it.”

  “I don’t want any help,” Beaver said. “All I want is three good punches.” Sergeant Ackley turned to the other two officers. “Remember,” he said, “if Beaver swears this guy made a swing at him, we’re all backing Beaver’s play.”

  “ That’s right,” the second officer chimed in. “He spoke right up and described the stuff in the suitcase—a masquerade costume to make a thin guy look fat.”

  Two heads nodded in unison.

  “ Come on,” Sergeant Ackley said, putting his star on the outside of his coat, and led the procession which marched grimly down the swaying aisle of the Pullman car where the porter, struggling with mattresses and green curtains as he made up the berths, looked up to stare with wide eyes.

  “Do we knock?” Beaver asked, as they swayed down the aisle of Car D57. Sergeant Ackley’s laugh was scornful and sarcastic. “Try and get me to fall for that one. You must think I’m crazy. Beaver, open the door to the lavatory. Jim, dust out and cover the train.”

  “ Don’t be silly,” Ackley commented. He twisted the knob of the stateroom door, slammed it open. The car porter watched them with wideeyed wonder. A moment later he was joined by the porter from the car ahead.

  The undercover man jerked open the lavatory door.

  “No one here,” he said. Evelyn Rae was sprawled comfortably on the seat, her left elbow propped against the table, a pillow behind her head, her right instep fitted against the curved arm of the upholstering. She looked up with casual inquiry, then suddenly lowered her knees, pulled down her skirt, and said: