"No one knows of my big secret deal.

But from this fellow's dispatch to Hugh, he certainly intended to go out and see Edson at Bay Ridge.

Now, did he start in good faith?
I must set some good outside detectives at work on that.
"Then this dispatch to Alice, I wonder if she had still left a sneaking fondness for him! Who can read a woman's heart?
It's like judging the depth of water by its smoothness: all mere conjecture.
Half the women are liars, and the other half hide more than half the truth under their silken breastplates.

They fight with double-edged lies as their keenest weapons.
"Unless Clayton was a very deep rascal, he certainly intended to go on West.

Where the devil is he?
Kidnapped, and held till the swag is safe?
Dead?
No!" A guilty spasm of conscience suggested that the missing cashier might have secreted the funds and fled, to make private terms later from his hiding place, with the wary Hugh.
"He knew nothing, he suspected nothing of the Detroit land deal," finally decided Ferris.