As he gave apparently studious and unbroken attention to a stretch of defective wiring, he was in fact making casual mental note of the familiar tones of the distant voices, listening impersonally and dreamily to each question and answer and suggestion that passed between that quietly talking group.

One of the talkers, he soon found, was a Supreme Court judge on his vacation, equable and deliberative in his occasional query or view or criticism; another was apparently a secret agent from the office of the New York district-attorney, still another two were either Scotland Yard men or members of some continental detective bureau--this Durkin assumed from their broad-voweled English voices and their seemingly intimate knowledge of European criminal procedure.

The fifth man he could in no way place.

But it was this man who interrupted the others, and, apparently taking a slip of paper from some inside pocket or some well-closed wallet, read aloud a list which, he first explained, had been secured from some undesignated safe on the night of a certain raid.
"Three hundred and twenty shares of National Bank of Commerce," read the voice methodically, the reader checking off each item, obviously, as he went along.

"One certificate of forty-seven shares of United States Steel Preferred; two certificates of one hundred shares each of Erie Railroad First Preferred; eighteen personal cheques, with names and amounts and banks attached; seven I.O.