and told me he had something to sell; a secret system for beating the customs. But before we got to terms, he began losing his nerve a little; he got it back, however, and was going to tell me when, all at once, he disappeared, and two days later he was dead! That made it hotter for me; so I went after Morse. But Morse denied he knew anything. Then Morse disappeared, too."
"So you got nothing at all out of them?" Rentland interposed.
"Nothing I could use. Landers, one time when he was getting up his nerve, showed me a piece of bent wire—with string around it—in his room, and began telling me something when Rowan called him, and then he shut up."
"A bent wire!" Trant cried, eagerly. "Like this?" He took from his pocket the implement given him by Edith Rowan. "Morse had this in his room, the only thing in a locked drawer."
"The same thing!" Dickey cried, seizing it. "So Morse had it, too, after he became checker at scale No. 3, where the cheating is, if anywhere. The very thing Landers started to explain to me, and how they cheated the customs with it. I say, we must have it now, Rentland! We need only go to the docks and watch them while they weigh, and see how they use it, and arrest them and then we have them at last, eh, old man?" he cried in triumph. "We have them at last!"
"You mean," Trant cut in upon the customs man, "that you can convict and jail perhaps the checker, or a foreman, or maybe even a dock superintendent—as usual. But the men higher up—the big men who are
