Part 5

Sprague bent to examine the silent witness of the mysterious robbery and the operator offered his lantern. But the Government man took a small electric flash-light from his pocket and made it serve a better purpose. Only once, while he was flashing the tiny beam of the electric into the coffin’s interior, did he speak, and then it was to say to Maxwell: “I thought you said this was a metallic coffin.”

“That was the inference, when you spoke of the weight and the number of men required to handle it. Of course, I didn’t know anything definite about it.”

Once more Sprague peered into the silk-lined interior, stooping to send the light ray to the foot of the casket, which was still hidden under the undestroyed half of the outer case. Then, snapping the switch of the flash-light and carefully replacing the broken box cover, he nodded briskly to Maxwell.

“That’s all, for the present. If I were you, I’d have this coffin nailed up in its box, just as it is, without disturbing anything. You can manage that, can’t you, young man?” turning short upon the operator.

Allen said he could and proceeded to do it; after which, under Sprague’s direction, the case was trundled out to the platform, and the three of them, with Maxwell’s private-car porter to help, loaded the coffin upon the front platform of Maxwell’s car.

“We’ll take it back with us,” said the Government man, with a sober twinkle in his eyes. “It’s a passably good coffin, you know, and with a little repairing it will do to use again--say, when we have found the man it belongs to.”

While the night operator, the porter, and the two enginemen were carrying the wounded express messenger to the private car and making him comfortable in Maxwell’s own state-room, the superintendent’s curiosity got the better of him.

“You’re not saying much, Calvin,” he offered. “Have you found any clew to the mystery?”

“Clews?--yes; I’ve found plenty of them. They’re slightly tangled as yet, but we’ll get hold of the proper thread in a little while. When do we start back?”

“Any time, if you’ve seen all you want to. I’ll have Allen get orders for us right now, if you say so.”

The big-bodied Government man stood aside while the Corona operator called the despatcher and obtained the order for the return of the two-car special to Brewster. But after the bit of routine was finished he made another suggestion.

“I’d like to know, in so many words, exactly what was taken from the passengers on the train, Dick,” he said. “Can’t you have this young man catch the train somewhere and instruct the conductor to find out for us?”

Maxwell nodded and gave Allen the necessary directions. “Tell McCarty to wire his answer direct to me at Brewster,” he added; and then, as the train was ready, the start was made for the return.

At the curve in Cromarty Gulch they found only Tarbell awaiting them. 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.”