When the ex-cowboy had climbed aboard and the homeward run was resumed,
Tarbell made his report. Harding and his posse were following the
automobile tracks on foot. It was the sheriff’s theory that, sooner or
later, the men in the machine would have to stop somewhere, whereupon
the dogs would once more be able to take up the trail. Harding was
convinced now that he was trailing the Weber gang, and he believed that
the start toward Brewster was only a blind.
Sprague smiled again at the mention of the dogs.
“How far is it to Brewster?” he asked.
“About thirty miles, by the wagon road,” Maxwell guessed.
“Good; we’re safely rid of Mr. Harding and his people, and of
Follansbee and his dogs, for some little time, I take it. Now we are
free to do a little business on our own account. I want to know
everything you can tell me about this man Murtrie; what he looked like,
what he did, and all the rest.”
“It’s a sort of thankless job to backcap a dead man,” Maxwell demurred.
“Just the same, Murtrie always looked to me like a hired assassin--the
kind you see on the vaudeville stage, you know. He was a big, beefy
fellow, with a puffy face and a bad eye.”
“Light or dark?”
“Dark; black eyes and a heavy, drooping mustache. To tell the truth,
he looked as little like an expert mining engineer as anything you can
imagine. Wouldn’t you say so, Tarbell?”
The sober-faced young man who had made his record running down cattle
thieves in Montana nodded gravely.
“What time he put in up at the Molly Baldwin wouldn’t count for much,”
was Tarbell’s comment. “Mighty near any hour o’ the day or night you
could find him tryin’ out his ‘system’ at Bart Holladay’s faro game;
leastways, when he wasn’t hangin’ round the railroad depot.”
“Yet you say, Maxwell, that he was sent out here by the New York
mineowners to keep cases on the gold output?” questioned Sprague.
“Why, yes; that is what everybody said.”
“It’s what he said himself,” Tarbell put in.
“But you didn’t believe it?” queried Sprague, turning upon the
ex-cowboy.
“I didn’t know just what to believe,” was the frank admission. “He
was mighty thick with Calthrop and Higgins, the two fellows that are
operatin’ the Molly Baldwin under the lease; but, as I say, he didn’t
stay there none to speak of. And as for his bein’ a minin’ sharp--I
don’t know about that, but I do know that he was a brass-pounder.”
“A telegraph operator, you mean?” said Sprague quickly. “How do you
happen to know that, Archer?”
“’Cause I caught him more than once ‘listenin’ in’ at the commercial
office downstairs in the depot.”
“How could you tell?” demanded the chemist shrewdly.
“If you was an operator yourself, you’d know, Mr. Sprague. You can take
my word for it, all right.”
The man whose recreative hobby was the application of scientific
principles to the detection of crime, smoked in reflective silence for
a minute or two. Finally he said: “You are a much better spotter than
you think you are, Archer. It is a pity that this man Murtrie is dead.
If he wasn’t, I’d like to have you shadow him a bit more for us. Where
did you say he kept himself chiefly--in Brewster, I mean?”
“At Bart Holladay’s road-house, on the Little Butte pike. It’s a tough
joint, with faro and roulette runnin’ continuous in the back rooms, and
half a dozen poker games workin’ overtime upstairs.”
“I see,” said Sprague thoughtfully; “or rather, I’d like to see. Maybe,
before I go home, you’ll take a little time off some evening, Archer,
and drive me out to this road-house. It’s a free-for-all, isn’t it?”
Tarbell grinned. “All you got to do is to give the barkeep’ the high
sign and go in and blow yourself. Anybody’s money’s as good as anybody
else’s, to Bart.”
“All right; we’ll put that down as one of our small recreations, after
this dead-man muddle is straightened out for Mr. Maxwell. Is this
Brewster we’re coming to?”
It was; and when the train shrilled to a stand at the station the
company ambulance was waiting to take the wounded express messenger out
to the hospital. Also, there was a young man from _The Tribune_
office, who was anxious to get the latest story of the sensational
hold-up of the “Flying Plainsman.” Tarbell was detailed to give the
reporter the facts in the case, so far as they had developed, and
Maxwell and his guest climbed the stair to the despatcher’s room in
the second story. Connolly was rattling his key in the sending of a
train-order when they entered, but he “broke” long enough to hand the
superintendent a freshly written telegram.
It was from McCarty, the “Plainsman” conductor, and it was dated from
Angels.
“To R. MAXWELL, G. S.,
“Brewster:
“Can’t find that anybody lost anything. Hold-up in Pullmans was
probably meant to keep passengers bluffed while the others went
through express-car.
“McCARTY.”
Sprague nodded slowly when the telegram was handed him. “That is what I
suspected; in fact, I was morally certain of it, but I thought it would
do no harm to make sure.” Then he turned to the chubby despatcher who
had finished sending his train-order. “Mr. Connolly, has any one been
here to ask questions about this hold-up--since we left, I mean?”
Connolly looked his astonishment and nodded an affirmative.
“Two men from out of town, weren’t they?” Sprague suggested.
Again the despatcher nodded, and it was only his respect for the big
man that kept him from asking how the incident could possibly be known
to one who had been thirty miles away at the moment of its happening.
“Go on and tell us about it,” Sprague directed; and at this Connolly
found his tongue.
“It was them two fellows that are operating the Molly Baldwin mine,
Calthrop and Higgins. They’d heard of the hold-up through the operator
at Little Butte, they said, and they drove down in their auto. They
seemed to be a whole lot stirred up about the taking of Murtrie’s body;
said they felt responsible to his friends in the East. They wanted to
know particularly what we were doing about it, and if there was any
chance of our catching up with the body-snatchers.”
Sprague waved his cigar in token of his complete satisfaction. Then he
went abruptly to something else.
“Mr. Connolly, where can you catch that eastbound train again for us
by wire?”
Connolly glanced at his train-sheet.
“She’s due at Arroyo in eight minutes. It ain’t a stop, but I can have
the operator flag her down.”
“Good. Do it, and send this message to McCarty, conductor. Are you
ready?” And when the despatcher, quickly calling the station in
question, signalled his readiness, Sprague went on, dictating slowly:
“‘Hold your train and have Calmaine, chief clerk, come to the wire.’
Sign Mr. Maxwell’s name--that’s all right, isn’t it, Maxwell?”
“Anything you say is all right,” was the quick response.
“It won’t ball things up--holding your train a few minutes at Arroyo?”
“Connolly will see to that. It’s off time now and running on orders,
anyway.”
“Then we can sit down quietly and wait to hear from the exceedingly
capable-looking young man who has the honor to be your chief clerk,”
said the Government man, and he calmly planted himself in the nearest
chair.
“Calmaine will probably be abed and asleep in the Pullman,” Maxwell
suggested. “I suppose your call is important enough to warrant his
getting up and dressing?”
“It is--fully important enough; as I think you will be ready to admit
when we hear from Arroyo.” Then he extended a handful of cigars. “Have
a fresh smoke; oh, you needn’t look cross-eyed at them; they’re your
own, you know. I swiped them out of your private box in the car when
you weren’t looking.”
Maxwell took a cigar half-absently. His mind was dwelling upon the
mystery surrounding the unexplainable hold-up, with the surface current
of thought directed toward Connolly’s sounder, through which would
presently come the expected message from Arroyo.
It was while he was holding the lighted match to the cigar that the
sounder began to click. He translated for Sprague: “Train here. McCarty
gone to wake Mr. Calmaine.” After that there was a trying wait of
perhaps five minutes. Then the sounder began to chatter rapidly, and
Maxwell bounded from his chair.
“Good God!” he ejaculated, “he says Calmaine isn’t on the train!”
“Ah!” breathed the big-bodied expert, rising and stretching his huge
arms over his head. “Again we get the expected precipitation in the
test-tube. Mr. Connolly, suppose you ask McCarty if Mr. Calmaine has
been on the train at all.”
Connolly hastily tapped out the question, and a moment afterward
vocalized the answer.
“He was on the train when it left Brewster. Nobody seems to remember
seeing him after that.”
Sprague turned to his host.
“I think we can let Mr. McCarty go in peace now, with a promise that
we sha’n’t bother him again to-night. Tarbell is the man we shall need
from this on. Where has he gone?”
Tarbell was at that moment opening the corridor door, having but now
got rid of the newspaper reporter. Sprague began on him briskly.
“Archer, the muddle is cleared up, and I’m minded to take that bit of
recreation we spoke of a while back--at this Mr. Bart Holladay’s show
place, you know. How far did you say it is?”
The ex-cowboy looked dazed, but he made shift to answer the direct
question.
“About two mile, I reckon.”
“Outside of the city limits?”
“Yep.”
“Then we can’t take a policeman along for protection--I’m a tenderfoot,
and all tenderfoots are nervous, you know. That’s too bad. And Mr.
Harding isn’t here to let us have the backing of the county officers.
Dear, dear! Are they _very_ bad men out there, Archer?”
Tarbell grinned sheepishly, feeling sure that the big man was in some
way making game of him.
“They’d eat you alive if they thought you was an officer headin’ a raid
on ’em. Otherwise, I reckon they wouldn’t bite you none.”
“Well, I suppose we shall have to risk it--without the policeman,” said
the expert with a good-natured laugh. “Perhaps we can persuade them
that we are just ‘lookers,’” he suggested. And then: “I suppose you
have your artillery with you?”
Tarbell nodded. “A couple o’ forty-fives. I’d hardly go huntin’
train-robbers without ’em.”
“Of course not. Suppose you divide up with Mr. Maxwell here, and then
go and find us an auto; just the bare car; we’ll manage to drive it
ourselves. And, Archer, get a good big one, with easy springs. If there
is any one thing I dislike more than another it is to be jammed up in a
little, hard-riding car. I need plenty of room. I guess I grew too much
when I was a boy.”
The young man with the sober face went away, still more or less dazed;
and Maxwell dropped the weapon that Tarbell had given him into the
outside pocket of his top-coat.
“I am completely and totally in the dark as yet, Calvin,” he ventured.
“Did you mean what you said when you told Tarbell just now that the
muddle was cleared up?”
“I did, indeed. And it is as pretty a piece of off-hand plotting as I
have ever come across, Dick. Don’t you see daylight by this time?”
“Not a ray. It may be just natural stupidity; or it may be only a bad
case of rattle. I blew up and went to pieces when that wire came about
Calmaine. Why, good heavens, think of it, Calvin! If the boy’s gone,
those proxies are gone, too!”
“Quite so. And you are wondering why a good, steady, well-balanced
young fellow like your chief clerk should get himself lost in the
shuffle when his mission was so vitally important. What do you suppose
has become of him?”
“I can’t begin to guess. That is what is driving me mad. Of course, the
supposition is that he got mixed up in this body-snatching business in
some way. But why should he? Why the devil should he, Calvin, when he
had every possible reason for dodging and keeping out of it?”
“I don’t know,” rejoined the big man, with a head-wagging of doubt,
real or simulated. “One of the most difficult things to prefigure--you
might say the only one which refuses to come under the test-tube
formulas--is just what a given man will do under certain suddenly
sprung conditions. It is the only problematical element which ever
enters into these puzzle-solvings of mine. I haven’t the pleasure of an
intimate acquaintance with your chief clerk, but from the little I’ve
seen of him I should say unhesitatingly that he is a young man for an
emergency, quick to think, and fully as quick to act. I’m banking on
that impression and hoping that he hasn’t disappointed me.”
“Then you know what has become of him?”
Sprague smiled impassively. “I shouldn’t be able to convince you that
it is knowledge,” he admitted. “You’d call it nothing more than a wild
guess. Isn’t that our auto that I hear?”
Maxwell stepped to a window and looked down upon the plaza.
“It’s somebody’s auto,” he said. “There are two men in it.” And a
moment later--“They are coming up here.”
The demonstrator of scientific principles hooked his elbows on the
counter railing and laughed gently. “Our two nervous friends from
the Molly Baldwin,” he predicted. “They are still worrying about the
loss of their corpse.” And even as he spoke the two young lessees of
the mine came tramping in, their faces sufficiently advertising their
anxiety.
Maxwell nodded to the file-leader of the pair.
“Hello, Calthrop,” he said. “What do you know?”
“Nothing more than we did. We heard that you’d got back from Cromarty
and thought maybe you could tell us something.”
“Not anything definite,” was the superintendent’s brief rejoinder. “You
know the facts; Murtrie’s body was taken out of its coffin and carried
off. There were auto tracks on the mesa at the head of Cromarty Gulch,
and Harding and his posse are following them. That’s all.”
“Wh-where is that coffin, now?” It was the younger of the two who
wanted to know.
Without looking around, Maxwell felt that Sprague’s eyes were
signalling him, but he could hardly determine why he was moved to tell
only part of the truth.
“It was taken off at Corona.”
The one who answered to the name of Calthrop swore morosely. “It’s the
Scott Weber gang, ain’t it, Mr. Maxwell?” he asked.
“I think so; and Harding thinks so. But why they should steal only a
dead body is beyond me--or any of us.”
The two young men exchanged a whispered word or two and went out, with
the anxiety in their faces thickly shot with fresh perplexity. At the
door Higgins turned for another asking.
“If we pay the freight on it, can we have that coffin back, Mr.
Maxwell? We bought it and paid for it.”
This time Maxwell caught Sprague’s eye and read the warning in it.
“We’ll see about that later,” he said.
When the door slammed at the outgoing of the pair, Sprague was laughing
again.
“After those two young fellows have turned a few more sharp corners in
the rather crooked course they’re steering, they’ll learn to take their
medicine without making faces over it,” he remarked. “Any signs of
Archer yet?”
Maxwell turned back to the window.
“Yes; he’s coming. He’s pulling up on the other side of the
plaza--doesn’t want to run afoul of these mining friends of ours, I
suppose.”
“Archer has a head on him, all right, and I like him. You want to swing
onto that young fellow, Dick. He’ll make a good man for you some day.
Let’s go down and join him.”
Tarbell waited when he saw the boss and his guest coming across the
plaza, and when his two fares were stowed in the roomy tonneau of the
big car he let the clutch in for the short run to the western suburb.
The night was clear and starlit, but there was no moon. Since the hour
was well past midnight, the streets were practically deserted. Beyond
the last of the street-crossing arc-lamps the western road led away
through a forest of dwarf pine, a broad white pathway winding among the
trees and roughly paralleling the railroad.
At one of the shorter turns in the pike they came upon the brilliantly
lighted road-house. In appearance it was a modern roadside tavern, one
of the many which owe their sudden recrudescence to the automobile. It
was withdrawn a little from the highway, and was surrounded by ample
stables and shelter sheds opening upon a great square yard with wide
carriage gates. Tarbell backed the auto to a stand among a number of
others in the yard, and a man with a lantern came, ostensibly to offer
help, but probably to make sure that the new-comers were harmless.
“It’s all right, Jerry,” said Tarbell, hopping out. “Mr. Maxwell and a
friend o’ his from the East. Games goin’?”
The man nodded and held his lantern so that Maxwell and his guest could
see to get out of the tonneau. Then he turned away and left them.
Tarbell led the way to the porch entrance and on the step explained the
sight-seeing process to the one who was supposed to be inexperienced.
“It’s an open game, as I let on to you,” he told Sprague. “You go into
the bar and buy. After that you do as you please.”
Sprague paused for a single question.
“What do we find?” he asked.
“A lot of young bloods from town, mostly,” was Tarbell’s reply.
“Holladay’s got sense enough to keep his own gang in the quiet and take
his rake-off as it comes--from the bank and the tables and the roulette
wheels.”
Sprague made the single question a little more comprehensive.
“I didn’t mean the people, so much as the place; if we should want to
get out in a hurry--how about that?”
Tarbell indicated a hall door at the side of the main entrance, adding
the information, however, that it was usually kept locked.
“Good. After we get to going, inside, you make it your job to unlock
that door, Archer, and to put the key in your pocket. Now I’m ready,
and I want to see it all.” And they went in.
The bar-room proved to be typical of its kind: plainly furnished, with
a wide country-house fireplace and a sanded floor. As the night was
close and warm, the card-tables were ranged beneath the open windows;
only two or three of them were occupied, and the bar itself was empty.
Maxwell and his guest sat down at one of the unoccupied tables, and
Tarbell ordered for the three. When the liquor was served, he said:
“You don’t need to sop it up inside of you if you don’t want to; it’s
none too good.”
With this for a caution the two who were warned carefully spilled their
portions on the sanded door, and Sprague ordered cigars, skilfully
juggling them when they came and substituting three of his own--or
rather of Maxwell’s. Then he made a sign to Tarbell and they began to
make a slow tour of the open game-rooms.
The first-floor rooms, where a pair of roulette wheels were spinning
and a faro game was running, were well filled. Brewster had lately
passed an anti-gambling ordinance, and the vice had been temporarily
driven beyond the corporation limits. Maxwell saw a few men whom he
knew, and many who were well known to the Brewster police. Under the
archway dividing the red-and-black wheels from the faro table Sprague
whispered in his ear.
“I’m looking for a man whose New York name is ‘Tapper’ Givens,” he
said. “He has a red face, black hair and eyes, and weighs about one
hundred and eighty pounds. He may, or may not, be wearing a heavy black
mustache, and----”
Maxwell looked up with a puzzled frown. “Say, Calvin; you’re
describing the dead man,” he broke in.
“Am I? Never mind if I am. If you should happen to see any one filling
the requirements, just point him out to me. I might overlook him in
such a crowd as this, you know.” And then to Tarbell, who had just
found them again: “Got that key, Archer?”
The ex-cowboy showed the hall door key cautiously in his palm and
returned it to his pocket. Sprague smiled and whispered again.
“How about the rooms upstairs? Are they open to inspection, too?”
Tarbell shook his head. “No; private poker games, most of ’em.”
“Nevertheless, I think we shall have to have a look-in,” said the big
man quietly. “Can’t you arrange it?”
“Not without riskin’ a scrap.”
“We don’t want to start anything, but we’ve just naturally got to have
that look-in, Archer,” persisted the guest.
The grave-faced young Tennessean thrust out his jaw. “What you say
goes as she lays,” he returned, and thereupon he showed them the way
upstairs.
At the stair-head there was a guard, a bullet-headed ring-fighter
posing as a waiter, with a square patch of an apron and a napkin thrown
over one arm.
“Mr. Maxwell’s lookin’ for one of his men,” said Tarbell, realizing
that some sort of an excuse must be offered; and the ring-fighter, who
knew the railroad superintendent by sight, nodded and said:
“That’s aw right; who is ut?”
“Harvey Calmaine,” said Tarbell, giving the first name that came into
his head.
To the astoundment of at least two of the three, the bullet-headed
guard stood aside and pointed to a door at the farther end of the upper
hall.
“He’s in there,” he grunted. “Somebody’s been givin’ him th’ knock-out
drops, an’ they’re workin’ over him.” Then he spun around and put a
ham-like hand flat against Maxwell’s chest. “Ye’ll gimme yer wor-rd,
Misther Maxwell, that ye haven’t got the sheriff’s posse at yer back?”
“No,” said Maxwell, and he managed to say it with a degree of coolness
which he was very far from feeling. “We’re all here; all there are of
us.”
“Aw right; gwan in. But there’ll be no scrappin’, mind ye. If there
does be anny, I’ll be takin’ a hand, meself.”
Sprague took the lead in the silent march to the indicated door, his
big bulk looming colossal in the narrow, low-studded hallway. Reaching
the door, he turned the knob noiselessly. “Locked,” he muttered, and
then he drew back and put his shoulder to it.
The lock gave way with a report like a muffled pistol shot and the door
flew open. The room was lighted by a single incandescent bulb swinging
on its cord from the ceiling. On a cot which had been dragged out from
its place beside the wall lay the chief clerk, bare-footed, gagged, and
securely bound with many wrappings of cotton clothes-line. Standing
over him, one of them with the lighted match he had been holding to
the bare foot-soles still blazing, were two others; a red-headed,
yellow-faced man with one eye missing, and a thick-shouldered
athlete aptly answering to Sprague’s description whispered to the
superintendent in the room below.
Maxwell sprang forward with an oath when he recognized the man with the
burning match. “_Murtrie!_” he exploded; and the torturer with the
black eyes and puffy face dropped the match-end and grabbed for his
weapon. He was a fraction of a second too slow. Tarbell had covered
him with a movement which was too quick for the eye to follow and was
reaching backward for the other gun--which Maxwell gave him--while
Sprague closed the door and set his back against it.
“The jig is up--definitely up, Givens,” said the Government man
pleasantly. And then to Tarbell: “Herd those two into a corner, Archer,
while we take some of these impediments off of Mr. Calmaine.”
When the chief clerk was freed he tried to sit up; tried and would have
fallen if Maxwell had not caught him. “They’ve burked me,” he mumbled;
“but--they didn’t make me tell, and they didn’t get--the papers.”
“Take it easy,” said Maxwell soothingly; “You’ll be all right in a
minute or so.” Then, in a fresh access of rage: “They’ll pay for this,
Harvey, if it takes every dollar I’ve got in the world!”
Calmaine tried sitting up again, found that he could compass it, and
reached feebly for his shoes and socks.
“The--the proxies are safe--if it doesn’t rain,” he quavered, his mind
still running on the precious papers of which he had been the bearer.
“Get--get me out of this and into an auto and I’ll find them for you.
We might--might catch Number Six, if we hurry.”
Tarbell, with Sprague’s help, had deftly handcuffed the two men whom
he had backed into a corner. It was the one-eyed man who first found
speech in an outpouring of profanity venomous and horrible. “You ain’t
got us out o’ here yet,” he spat, trailing the defiance out in more of
the cursings.
“But we’re going to get you out if we have to throw you through the
window,” said Sprague quietly. Then to Maxwell: “Help the boy with his
shoes, Dick. We’re due to have a jail delivery here, any minute.”
It took some little time to get the maltreated chief clerk shod and
afoot, and even then he was well-nigh crippled. But he was game to the
last. “They took my gun away from me,” he complained. “If I only had
something to fight with--Archer, give me that black devil’s pistol.”
Sprague’s warning had not been baseless. The stair-head guard had
doubtless seen Sprague shoulder the locked door open, and had sprung
a still alarm. There was a hurrying of many feet in the hall, marking
the gathering of the gambling-house fighting force. While Calmaine was
asking for a weapon, the crowd in the hall began to batter at the door,
against which Sprague had once more put his huge bulk, and were calling
to Murtrie to open to them.