Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/169

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A LIBEL ON THE THIEF

people who had trusted and been betrayed. Manling had fallen. The shock to the English was not only because another American visitor had been set upon, robbed, and probably murdered in the secure old Devonshire Inn at Plymouth, but because it was certain that Manling—upon whom the English depended to continue straight in his considerate course—had committed the crime.

It was irrefutable, as the paper spread out the evidence.

A rich American was missing—a broker named Hareston, who was known to have carried considerable funds in easily convertible form. His rooms at the Devonshire Inn had been entered in one of the simple Manling methods. That "Manling" himself had entered was certain, besides, from the identification of a small packet of things which the thief had dropped upon the floor, and which were known to have been part of the last Manling haul two days before.

But this time Mr. Manling had not got

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