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mind finally opened," he said. He looked at the newspaperman. "It was this gentleman that gave me the key."
    The reporter was surprised. " I gave you the key?"
    "Ye did," O'Hara told him. "Ye said of the river: Clear as a mirror, isn't it? Do ye remember saying that, while we were together at the rail?"
    "I do. But I don't see—"
    "It was the word mirror ," O'Hara said. "It caused me to think of reflection, and all at once I was recalling how I'd been able to see me own image in the pilothouse windshield soon after the robbery. Yet Chadwick claimed he was sitting in the pilot's seat when he heard the door open just before he was struck, and that he didn't turn because he thought it was the captain and Mr. Bridgeman returning from supper. But if I was able to see me reflection in the glass, Chadwick would sure have been able to see his—and anybody creeping up behind him.
    "Then I recalled something else: Chadwick had his coat buttoned when I first entered the pilothouse, on a warm night like the last. Why? And why did his trousers look so baggy, as though they might fall down?
    "Well, then, the answer was this: After Chadwick broke open the safe and the strongbox, his problem was what to do with the gold. He couldn't risk a trip to his quarters while he was alone in the pilothouse; he might be seen, and there was also the possibility that the Delta Star would run into a bar or snag if she slipped off course. D'ye recall saying it was a miracle such hadn't happened, Captain, thinking as ye were then that Chadwick had been unconscious for some time?"
    The captain said he did.
    "So Chadwick had to have the gold on his person," O'Hara said, "when you and Mr. Bridgeman found him, and when Hattie and I entered soon afterward. He couldn't have removed it until later, when he claimed to be feeling dizzy and you escorted him to his cabin. That, now, is the significance of the buttoned coat and the baggy trousers.
    "What he must have done was to take off his belt, the wide one decorated with war-issue coins that I found in his cabin, and use it to strap the gold pouches above his waist—a makeshift money belt, ye see. He was in such a rush, for fear of being found out, that he failed to notice when one of the coins popped loose and rolled under the stove.
    "Once he had the pouches secured, he waited until he heard Mr. Bridgeman and the captain returning, the while tending to his piloting duties; then he lay down on the floor and pretended to've been knocked senseless. He kept his loose coat buttoned for fear someone would notice the thickness about his upper middle, and that he was no longer wearing his belt in its proper place; and he kept hitching up his trousers because he wasn't wearing the belt in its proper place."
    Hattie took her husband's arm. "Fergus, what did Chadwick do with the gold afterward? Did he have it hidden in his quarters all along?"
    "No, me lady. I expect he was afraid of a search, so first chance he had he put the gold into the calfskin grip and then hung the grip from a metal hook inside the gallows frame."
    The Stockton sheriff asked, "How could you possibly have deduced that fact?"
    "While in the pilothouse after the robbery," O'Hara said, "I noticed that Chadwick's coat was soiled with dust and soot from his lying on the floor. But it also showed streaks of grease, which couldn't have come from the floor. When the other pieces fell into place this morning, I reasoned that he might have picked up the grease marks while making preparations to hide the gold. My consideration then was that he'd have wanted a place close to his quarters, and the only such place with grease about it was the gallows frame. The hook I discovered inside was new and free of grease; Chadwick, therefore, must have put it there only recently—tonight, in fact, thus accounting for the grease on his coat."
    "Amazing detective work," the reporter said, "simply amazing."
    Everyone else agreed.
    "You really are a fine