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DIAMOND TOLLS

lost people merely because there were so few diamonds lost compared to the number of lost people.

Urleigh picked up a list of more than thirty people who had dropped out of sight within a year in that locality. A little inquiry revealed the fact that the list was far from complete—there were people right in his own circle, for example, who had packed up their duds and vanished from their boarding houses and left no trace behind them. Whole families changed their address from Known to Unknown. Even the post office delivery department received a steady stream of mail which they were obliged to turn back to the senders, or to the Dead Letter Office undelivered.

Thus the diamond robbery led to forty or fifty columns of stories suggested by the missing Goles and the double raid on precious gems. It was, from Urleigh's standpoint, a very satisfactory news story to begin with, and he recalled none that had given him a better income. It led to his reassorting the one hundred thousand clippings which were a chief part of his capital and indexing the six hundred box-drawers in which he stored them for ready reference. This same collection was very embarrassing to sundry people, for Urleigh was enabled to recall episodes in their lives which few remembered.

Literally hundreds of stories led down to the bank