For a moment Jimmie Dale held there, his eyes on the scene--and the next moment, his hand curved into a clenched fist, he had passed on and entered the adjoining room.
It was a child's bedroom.

A night lamp burned on a table beside the bed, and the soft rays seemed to play and linger in caress on the tousled golden hair of a little girl of perhaps two years of age--and something seemed to choke suddenly in Jimmie Dale's throat--the sweet, innocent little face, upturned to his, was smiling at him as she slept.
Jimmie Dale turned away his head--his eyelashes wet under his mask.
"BENEATH THE MATTRESS OF THE CHILD'S BED," the letter had said.

His face like stone, his lips a thin line now, Jimmie Dale's hand reached deftly in without disturbing the child and took out a package--and then another.

He straightened up, a bundle of crisp new hundred-dollar notes in each hand--and on the top of one, slipped under the elastic band that held the bills together, an unsealed envelope.

He drew out the latter, and opened it--it was a second-class steamship passage to Vera Cruz, made out in a fictitious name, of course, to John Davies, the booking for next day's sailing.