# Scientific Sprague/Chapter 2
### II High Finance in Cromarty Gulch

IT was a warm night for altitude five thousand feet, and the last few lingerers in the dining-car on the eastbound "Flying Plainsman" had their windows open. Midway of the car a quartette of light-hearted young people were exchanging guesses as to the proper classification of a big man with laughing eyes and a fighting jaw who was dining alone at one of the end tables.
"He looks like money—nice, large, ready money—to me," commented the prettiest of the three young women; but her seat-mate, a handsome young fellow with the badge of his college athletic association worn conspicuously in his button-hole, thought differently. "You've fumbled the ball this time, Kitty," he dissented. "If he isn't the champion of all the amateur heavy-weights, you can put him down as a 'varsity coach out scouting for talent. Jehu! what a 'back' he'd make under the new rules!"
"Vaudeville is my guess," chimed in the next-to-the-prettiest girl mockingly; "the strong man who puts up the dumb-bells, and all that, you know. If you could break into his luggage, I'd wager a box of chocolates that you'd find a perfectly beautiful suit of pink tights with spangled trunks and resined slippers."
A little later the big man in the far corner took his change from the waiter and left the car. As he passed the joyous party at the double table there was a good-natured twinkle in his gray eyes and he dropped a neatly engraved card at the collegian's plate.
"Heavens and earth!—he heard us!" gasped the prettiest girl. And then, feminine curiosity overcoming shame, "What does it say, Tommy?"
The young man held the card so that all could see, and admitted himself a loser in the classification game.
Calvin W. Sprague,
Washington, D. C.
Chemist, Dept. of Agriculture
was what they read; and the fourth member of the group, a young woman with fine eyes and an adorable chin, who was neither pretty nor prettier, but something far more transcendent, took the card and studied it thoughtfully.
"You've all missed the most astonishing thing—how he contrived to overhear us at this distance," she commented musingly. And then, addressing the vanished card-owner through his bit of paste-board: "So you're a chemist, are you, Mr. Sprague? You don't look it, not the least little bit, and I'm sure you'll forgive me if I say that I doubt it; doubt it very much indeed."
While the young people were debating among themselves as to whether or no there might not be an apology due, the big man who had dined alone passed quite through the string of vestibuled Pullmans and went to light his cigar on the rear platform of the combination buffet and observation car.
Shortly after he had seated himself in one of the platform camp-chairs, the train, which «had been rocketing down a wide valley with an isolated ridge on one hand and a huge mountain range on the other, came to a stand at one of the few-and-far-between stations. The pause, one would say, should have been only momentary; but after it had lasted for a full minute or more the solitary smoker on the rear platform left his chair and went to lean over the platform railing for a forward glance.
Looking down the length of the long train, he saw the lights of the small station, with other lights beyond it which seemed to mark a railroad crossing or junction. On the station platform there were a number of lanterns held high to light a group of men who were struggling to lift a long, ominous-looking box into the express-car.
A little later the wheels of the train began to trundle again, and as his car-end passed the station the smoker on the observation platform had a fleeting glimpse of the funeral party, and of the heavy four-mule mountain-wagon which had apparently served as its single equipage. Also, he remarked what a less observant person might have missed: that the lantern-bearers were roughly clothed, and that they were armed.
A hundred yards beyond the station the train stopped again; and when it presently began to back slowly the platform watcher understood that it was preparing to take on a lighted coach standing on a siding belonging to the junction railroad. When the coupling was made and the "Flying Plainsman," with the picked-up car in tow, was once more gathering headway in its eastward flight up the valley of a torrenting mountain river, the big man read the number "04" over the door of the newly added coach. After he had made out the number he coolly put a leg over the barrier railing, brushed the guarding porter aside, and pushed his way through the narrow side corridor of the trailer.
In the rear half of the car the corridor opened into a comfortable working-room fitted with easy-chairs, lounges, and a desk; otherwise, the office in transit of the Nevada Short Line's general superintendent, Mr. Richard Maxwell. Maxwell was at his desk when the big-bodied intruder shouldered himself into the open compartment, but he sprang up joyfully when he recognized his unannounced visitor.
"Why, Calvin, old man! Where in thunder did you drop from?" he demanded, wringing the hand of greeting in a vain endeavor to match the big man's crushing grip. "Sit down and tell it out. I thought you'd gone back east over the Transcontinental a full month ago."
The man whose card named him as a Government chemist picked out the easiest of the lounging-chairs and planted himself comfortably in it.
"Jarred you, did I? That's nothing; I've jarred worse men than you are in my time. Your thinking machinery is all right; I was due to go back a month ago, but I got interested in a little laboratory experiment on the coast and couldn't tear myself away. How are Mrs. Maxwell and the kiddies?"
"Fine! And I'm hurrying to get home to them. I've been out for a week and had begun to think I was never going to get back to the Brewster office again. I've been having the busiest little ghost dance you ever heard of during the past few days."
The big man settled himself still more comfortably in his chair and relighted the cigar, which, being of the dining-car brand, had sulked for a time and then gone dejectedly out.
"Will the busy story bear telling?" he asked.
"Yes—to you," was the half-guarded reply. "You'll be interested when I tell you that I'm inclined to believe that it's 'a little more of the same'—a continuation of our round-up with the 'wire-devil' that you straightened out for us a few weeks ago."
The listener nodded. "Begin back a bit," he suggested; and Maxwell did it.
"After you went west, we put our wire-devil through the courts, and President Ford served notice on the New York high-finance pirates; told them he had their numbers, and that they'd better let up on us. That was the end of it for the time. But a week ago Thursday I got a hot wire from Ford, telling me to secure voting proxies on every possible share of Short Line stock held locally, firing the proxies to him in New York by special messenger, who should reach him, he said, not later than the night of the fifteenth."
"Um," commented the smoker thoughtfully. "Is there much of the stock held out here in your Timanyoni wilderness?"
"A good bit of it, first and last. When the Pacific Southwestern, with Ford at its head, took over the Red Butte Western, the R. B. W. was strictly a local line, and the reorganization plan was based upon an exchange of stock—the new for the old. Then, when we built the extension and issued more stock, quite a block of it was taken up by local capitalists, bankers, mineowners, and ranchmen; not a majority, of course, but a good, healthy balance of power."
Again the giant in the lounging-chair nodded. "I see," he cut in. "There is doubtless a stock-holders' meeting looming up in the near future—say on the day after the all-important fifteenth—and the Wall Street people are going after Ford's scalp again, this time in a strictly legal way. He will probably need your Western proxies, and need them bad."
"I've got them right here," said Maxwell, tapping a thick bunch of papers on his desk. "And believe me, I've had a sweet time rounding them up. Every moneyed man in this country is a friend of Ford's, and yet I've had to wrestle with every individual one of them for these proxies as if I'd been asking them to shed their good red blood."
"Of course," was the quiet comment. "The fellows on the other side would stack the cards on you—or try to. What's in the wind this time? Just a stock-breaking raid for speculation, or is it something bigger than that?"
The young superintendent shook his head doubtfully.
"I don't know, certainly; I haven't had a chance to talk with Ford since early in the summer. But I have my own guess. If the Transcontinental could control this five-hundred-mile stretch of ours from Copah to Lorchi, it would have the short line to southern California."
"Therefore and wherefore, if Mr. Ford doesn't happen to have the votes in the coming stock-holders' meeting, you'll be out of a job. Is that about the size of it?"
"Probably," admitted Maxwell. "Not that it makes any special difference to me, personally. As you know, I have a mine up on the Gloria that beats railroading out of sight. But I'd fight like a dog for Ford, and for my own rank and file here on the Short Line. Of course, Transcontinental control would mean a clean sweep of everybody: there wouldn't be baskets enough this side of the main range to hold the heads that would be cut on.
"I suppose not. But, as you say, you have the 'come-back' right there under your hand in those proxies. How will you get them to New York?"
"My chief clerk, Calmaine, will deliver them in person. He'll meet us at Brewster and go right along on this train, which, by the way, is the next to the last one he could take and make New York on time. It's all arranged."
The guest smoked on in silence for a little time and when he spoke again it was to ask the name of the junction station at which the late stop had been made.
"It's Little Butte—where our Red Butte branch comes in from the north. "
"You'd been stopping over there?" Sprague asked.
"No; I had my car brought down from Red Butte on the local, which doubles back on the branch."
"Um; Little Butte; good name. You people out here run pretty persistently to 'Buttes,' don't you? Did I, or didn't I, see a funeral at this particular Butte as we came along?"
"You did. It's Murtrie; a mining engineer who has been doing a sort of weigh-master's stunt at the Molly Baldwin mine. Died pretty suddenly last night, they say."
"Large man?" queried the Government chemist, half-absently; and Maxwell looked up quickly.
"Beefy rather than big, yes. How could you tell?"
Sprague waved his cigar as if the question were childish and the answer obvious. "It took a dozen of them, more or less, to put him into the express-car."
Maxwell turned back to his desk. "Metallic casket, probably," he suggested. "They had our agent wire Brewster for the best that could be had. Said they were going to ship the body to some little town in Kentucky. They're a rather queer lot."
"Who?—the Kentuckians?"
"No; the Molly Baldwin outfit. The mine was opened by a syndicate of New York people four years ago, and after the New Yorkers had put two or three hundred thousand into it without taking anything out, they gave up in disgust. Then a couple of young fellows from Cripple Creek came along and leased the property. There was a crooked deal somewhere, for the young fellows began to take out pay—big pay—right from the start. Then the New York people wanted to 'renig' on the lease, and dragged the thing into the courts."
"And the courts said no?"
"The courts straddled. I didn't follow the fight in detail, but the final decision was that the lessees were to keep all they could take out each month up to a certain amount. If they exceeded that amount, the excess was to be shared equally with the New Yorkers."
"Lots of room for shenanigan in that," was the big man's passing comment. "Unless these young Cripple Creekers are more honest than the average, they'll stand a good bit of watching, you'd say."
Maxwell laughed. "That was what the New Yorkers seemed to think. They secured a court order allowing them to put an expert of their own on the job. And nobody seems to enjoy the watch-dog stunt. They've had to send in a new man every few weeks."
"Do the Cripple Creekers kill them off?"
"No; they buy 'em off, I guess. Anyway, they- don't stay. Murtrie was the last."
"And apparently he hasn't stayed," said Sprague reflectively; and just then a long-drawn wail of the locomotive whistle announced the approach of the train to Brewster. At the signal the guest rose and tossed the remains of the bad cigar out of the window. "Here's where I have to quit you, Dick," he was beginning; but Maxwell would not have it that way.
"Not much, you don't, Calvin, old man," he protested. "You're going to stop over one day with me, at least. No; I won't listen to any excuses. Give me your berth check and I'll send my boy up ahead to get your traps out of the sleeper. Sit down right where you are and take it easy. You'll find a box of cigars—real cigars—in this lower drawer. I'll be back as soon as I've seen Calmaine."
Apparently, the man from Washington did not require much urging. He sat down in Maxwell's chair as the train was slowing into the division station, and was rummaging in the desk drawer for the box of cigars when an alert, carefully groomed young man came in through the forward corridor and met the superintendent as he was going out. There was a hurried conference, a passing of papers, and the two, Maxwell and his chief clerk, went out together, leaving the big man to go on with his rummaging alone.
Shortly afterward came the bump of a coupling touch, and the office-car, in the grip of a switching-engine, raced backward through the yards; backward and forward again, and when it came to rest it was standing on the short station spur at the end of the railroad head-quarters building. From the open windows Sprague could see the long through train, with its two big mountain-pulling locomotives coupled on, drawn up for its farther flight. It was after it had steamed away into the night that Maxwell returned to his side-tracked car to find his guest, half-asleep, as it seemed, in the depths of the big wicker easy-chair.
"I hope you didn't think I'd deserted you," he said, drawing up another of the wicker chairs. "I took time to telephone home. Mrs. Maxwell's dining out at her sister's, and, if you don't mind, we'll sit here a while and go out to the house later."
There was enough to talk about. The two, who had been college classmates, had seen little of each other for a number of years. Maxwell told how he had gone into railroading under Ford, and how in his first summer in the Timanyoni he had acquired a gold mine and a wife. Sprague's recounting was less romantic. After leaving college he had coached the 'varsity foot-ball team for two years and had afterward gone in for original research in chemistry, which had been his "major" in college. Later he had drifted into the Washington bureau as an expert, taking the job, as he explained, because it gave him time and frequent leisurely intervals for the pursuit of his principal hobby, which was the lifting of detective work to the plane of pure theory, treating each case as a mathematical problem to be demonstrated by logical reasoning.
"You ought to drop everything else and take up the man-hunting business as a profession," laughed Maxwell, when the hour-long talk had come around to the big man's pet among the hobbies.
"No," was the instant objection. "That is where you're wrong. A man does his best work as an amateur—in any line. As long as the man-hunting comes in the way of a recreation, I enjoy it keenly. But if I had to make a business of it, it would be different." Then he changed the subject by asking about Tarbell, Maxwell's ex-cowboy division detective, who had served as his understudy in the "wire-devil" case a few weeks earlier.
"Archer is all right," was the reply; "only he'd like to break away from me and go with you. He thinks you are about the one only top-notcher; says he'd like to take lessons of you for a year or so."
Sprague was gazing absently out of the near-by window. "Speaking of angels," he broke in, "there is Tarbell, right now; coming down your office stair three steps at a jump," and a moment later the young man in question had dashed across to the service-car and was thrusting his face in at the open window.
"Trouble, Mr. Maxwell!" he blurted out. "The 'Plainsman's' just been held up and robbed at Cromarty Gulch! Connolly's getting the wire from Corona, and he started me out to see if I could find you. "
The superintendent leaped up as if his easy-chair had been suddenly electrified.
"What's that you say?" he demanded; "a hold-up?" Then he went into action promptly, as a trained emergency captain should. "Call Sheriff Harding on the 'phone, and tell him to rustle up a posse and report here, quick! Then get the yard office and turn me out an engine and a coach for Harding's men. Hustle it!"
While he was closing his desk he made hurried explanation to Sprague. "It's probably the Scott Weber gang. They held up a train on the main line over in Utah ten days ago. Come on upstairs with me and we'll get the facts."
When the superintendent, accompanied by his broad-shouldered guest, climbed the stair and entered the despatcher's office, fat, round-faced Daniel Connolly was rattling the key at the train-sheet table. He glanced up at the door opening.
"I'm mighty glad Tarbell found you," he broke out, with a gasp of relief. "I was afraid you'd gone home." And then he recognized the square-shouldered one: "How are you, Mr. Sprague? Glad to see you again."
Maxwell went quickly around to the wire-table.
"Whom have you got?" he asked.
"Allen, night operator at Corona. The train is there, and I've been holding it to give you a chance to talk with McCarty, the conductor."
"Tell me the story as you've got it; then I'll tell you what to say to Mac," was the brisk command.
"It was in Cromarty Gulch, just at the elbow where the track makes the 'U' curve. Cruger's on the pilot-engine, and Jenkins is running the train puller. Cruger saw somebody throwing a red light at him. They stopped, and four of the hold-ups climbed on the engines and made them cut off the postal- and express-cars and pull on around the curve. Then a bunch of 'em broke in the end door of the express-car and scragged little Johnny Galt, the messenger. While they were doing that, another bunch went through the train and held up the passengers. After they'd gone through Galt's car and taken what they wanted, they made Cruger and Jenkins couple up again and go on."
"What did they take?" Maxwell asked.
"Some little money and jewelry from the passengers, McCarty says; not very much."
"But from the express-car?"
The fat despatcher made a queer face and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"That's the part of it that's hard to believe. Galt was carrying considerable money, but they didn't try to blow his safe. They—they smashed up a coffin and took the dead man out of it."
"What!" ejaculated the superintendent; "Murtrie's body?"
"I don't know who it was—Mac didn't say. But that's what they did. When the boys got together and pulled Galt out from under the express stuff where they'd buried him, they found the coffin open and the body gone."
Sprague had been listening intently.
"This seems to be something worth while, Maxwell," he cut in. "How much time do we have to waste here?"
"Just a minute. Go on, Connolly."
"That's all," said the fat despatcher. "The train's at Corona now, and they've put Johnny Galt off; and—and the coffin. Mac's asking for orders."
"Give them their orders and let them go, and then clear for my special. I've sent for Harding and a posse, and we'll chase out after this thing while the trail is warm. You'll go along, won't you, Calvin?" turning to the stop-over guest.
The man from Washington laughed genially.
"You couldn't scare me off with a fire-hose—not until I have seen this little mystery of yours cleared up. Let's be doing."
Five minutes farther along the two-car special train had been made up and was clanking out over the switches in the eastern yard. As the last of the switch-lights were flicking past the windows, a big bearded man came in from the car ahead and Maxwell introduced him.
"Sprague, this is Sheriff Harding. Harding, shake hands with my friend, Mr. Sprague, of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, and then sit down and we'll thrash this thing out. You've heard the story?"
The sheriff nodded. "I've heard what Tarbell could tell me. He says the biggest part of the haul was a dead man. Is that right?"
"It seems to be. The dead man is Murtrie, who was supposed to be representing the New York owners of the Molly Baldwin mine. The report goes that he died last night, and his body was put on the train at Little Butte to be taken east to some little town in Kentucky. What's your guess?"
"I'd guess that the whole blamed outfit was locoed—plumb locoed," said Harding. "You couldn't carve it out any other way, could you?"
It was Sprague who broke in with a quiet suggestion. "Try once more, Mr. Harding," he said.
The big sheriff put his head in his hands and made the effort. When he looked up again there was the light of a new discovery in his eye.
"Say!" he exploded. "Murtrie's the last of a string of five or six 'watchers' they've had up at that cussed hole-in-the-ground gold mine—and he's dead. By gravy! I believe they killed him!"
Maxwell's smile was grim.
"It seems to me we're just about as far off as ever," he commented; "unless you can carry it along to the body-snatching in some way. Why should they——"
"Hold on," Harding cut in; "I wasn't through. It's one thing to kill a man, and another to get rid of the body so it won't show up and get somebody hanged. Murtrie was sick; that much I know, because Doc Strader went out to the mine to see him day before yesterday. I was talking with Strader about it, and he said it looked like a case of ptomaine poisoning."
"Well?" said Maxwell.
"Supposin' it wasn't natural; supposin' it was the other kind o' poison: they'd have to get rid o' the body, some way or other, wouldn't they,—or run the risk of havin' it dug up and looked into, after Murtrie's friends took hold?"
"Go on."
"That bein' the case, they'd have to call in some sort of outside help; they couldn't handle it alone. Two or three of Scott Weber's gang 've been seen hanging around in Brewster within the last few days. Supposin' these fellows at the Molly Balwin put up a job with Scott to make this play with Murtrie's body?"
"By Jove, Harding—I half believe you've got it!" Maxwell exclaimed; but the chemistry expert said nothing.
"We can tell better after we get on the ground, maybe," the sheriff went on. "I had Follansbee bring his dogs along. There's a trail up through the head of Cromarty Gulch leadin' out to the old Reservation road on the mesa. If they had anything as heavy as Murtrie's body to tote, that's about the way they went with it."
Maxwell had been absently marking little squares on his desk blotter as Harding talked. The sheriff's theory was ingenious, but it failed to account for all the facts.
"There's more to it than that," he said, at length. And then he appealed to the silent guest. "Don't you think so, Sprague?"
"I'm waiting to hear how Mr. Harding accounts for the raid on the passengers," said the big man modestly. "One would think that a gang of body-snatchers would have been willing to do one thing at a time."
"By George! that's so," the sheriff acknowledged. "I hadn't thought of that. But then," he added, after a second thought, "a gang that was tryin' to cover up a killin' wouldn't be any too good to throw in a little hold-up business on the side."
"No," said Sprague; but he made no further comment. So far from it, he sat back in his chair and smoked patiently while Maxwell and the sheriff went on with the theory-building, a process which continued in some desultory fashion until Maxwell, glancing out of a window, said:
"We're coming to it; this is the gulch."
A few minutes later the two-car train slowed down and came to a stand on a sharp curve at the head of a densely wooded ravine in the foot-hills. Harding ran forward to get his posse out, and by the time Maxwell and Sprague had debarked the ground at the track-side was black with men. Sprague laughed softly.
"It's lucky we're not depending upon the old Indian method of 'reading the sign," he said. "Whatever the ground might have told us is a story spoiled by this time." Then he laughed again when a man broke out of the crowd, with a couple of dogs towing him furiously at the end of their leashes. "We gabble a good bit about our civilization and the advances we've made," he went on. "Yet, in the relatively simple matter of running down a criminal, we haven't got very far beyond the methods of the Stone Age. The idea of an intelligent being, with a human brain to rely upon, falling back upon the instincts of a couple of brute beasts!"
"Oh, hold on," Maxwell protested. "Those dogs have run down a good many crooks, first and last. Follansbee will take any bet you want to make, right now."
"And he would lose," was the confident answer. "But come on; let's see what's going to happen."
The chase, with the dogs running upon a comparatively fresh scent, led up through the pine wood at the head of the gulch. Beyond the wood was a bare, high-lying mesa table-land, with its summer-baked soil dried out to almost rocky hardness. A hundred yards from the gulch head an indistinct road skirted the mesa edge, and here the dogs began to run in circles.
Sprague was chuckling again, but Maxwell counselled patience.
"Wait a minute," he suggested. "The body-snatchers probably had a team here. The dogs will get the scent of the horses presently."
"Think so?" queried the expert. Then he drew his companion aside. "Do you know anything about this road, Dick?"
"Yes, it's the old wagon road from the Reservation into the park."
"Which way would you go toward Brewster?"
"That way," said the superintendent, pointing.
"All right; let's go a little way toward Brewster, and perhaps I can show you why Mr. Follansbee would lose his bet on his dogs. "
When they were well out of the dog-circling area, the chemistry expert stooped and struck a match. "See here," he said; and Maxwell, squatting beside him, saw the broad track of an automobile tire. Sprague gurgled softly. "Do you think the dogs will get the scent of that?" he inquired.
Maxwell stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets.
"Calvin, the way you hop across and light upon the one only sure thing, comes mighty near being uncanny, at times. How the devil did you find out that those fellows came in an auto?"
"If I should tell you that it was pure reasoning, you'd doubt it. But never mind the whys and wherefores just now; they can come later. Tell me how long we're going to stay here losing time on Follansbee and his dogs. "
"Not a minute longer than you care to stay. What do you want to do?"
"I want to see that crippled express messenger who was put off the train at Corona. Also, I'd like to have a look at the dead man's coffin."
"You shall do both. If you're taking the case, you are very pointedly the only doctor there is in it," Maxwell asserted. Then he called to the sheriff: "O Harding!" and when the county officer came up: "I'm going to take the train and run on to Corona after Galt. We'll stop here for your orders when we come back."
During the short run around the hills to the small mining-town station, Sprague sat quietly in his chair, puffing steadily at his cigar, and saying nothing. When Maxwell announced their arrival he got up and followed the superintendent into the Corona office.
Galt, the express messenger, was lying on the night operator's cot in the telegraph office. Some physician passenger on the held-up train had dressed his wounds, and he had fully recovered consciousness. His story was a mere amplification of the wire report which had gone to Brewster. He had marked, and wondered at, the unscheduled stop on the gulch curve, but before he could open his door to look out, the postal- and express-cars had been pulled on ahead, his end door had been battered in, and he had found himself trying to fight back a couple of masked men who were forcing an entrance. Then somebody hit him on the head and that was the end of it, so far as he was concerned.
Following this, the Corona night operator was put upon the question rack. He knew only what the trainmen had told him. No; there was nothing missing out of the express-car save the dead man's body. While the train was waiting, he, the operator, and the conductor had made a careful check of the contents of the car from Galt's way-bills, and, with the single exception noted, everything was undisturbed. No, there was no panic; the scare was pretty well quieted down by the time the train reached Corona. Of course, a good many of the passengers had got out at the station stop, and everybody was curious to see the coffin.
"You took the coffin off?" Maxwell questioned.
"Yes, it's in the freight-room."
Sprague had taken no part in the examination of the man, and had listened only cursorily to Galt's story. But now he became as curious as any of the morbid passengers had been. Allen, the operator, lighted a lantern and led the way to the freight-room. The coffin was lying upon a baggage-truck. It was encased in an ordinary shipping-box, half of the cover of which had been torn off. The lid of the coffin had been broken, split into three pieces; and one of the pieces was missing. It was a rather expensive affair, wooden and not metallic, of the kind known as a "casket," silk-lined, and with a sliding glass face-plate. The glass had been broken, and the fragments were lying inside on the small silken pillow.
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 try in' 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 mine-owners 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 east-bound 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 fire-place 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 floor, 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.
Sprague gave his directions snappily, as if he were signalling his foot-ball squad. "Draw that cot a little this way—that's right. Now then, Archer, stand here against the wall with your two jail-birds, and when I give the word, rush 'em for the yawl by the stairway entrance, If they don't obey, plug 'em, and plug 'em quick. Maxwell, you and the boy get over on this side. When you're ready, turn off that light. Quick! They're going to charge us!"
The simple programme was carried out precisely and to the letter. When the rush came the room was in darkness, and Sprague stepped lightly aside. Thereupon a dozen charging men, finding no resistance in the suddenly released door, piled themselves in cursing confusion over the barricading cot.
"Now!" shouted Sprague, and the dash for liberty was made, with the big man in the lead clearing the hall of its stragglers, brushing them aside with his mighty weight or driving them before him like chaff in the fury of his onset. At the stair-head there were more coming up from below: Sprague caught the bullet-headed ring-fighter around the waist, and using him as a missile, cleared the stairway at a single throw. "Come on!" he yelled to those who were behind; and a moment later the unlocked door at the stair-foot gave them egress to the open air and to the yard where the automobiles were parked.
Quite naturally, the din of the battle had precipitated a panic in the unlicensed road-house, and the building was disgorging, through doors and windows, and even over the roofs of the shelter sheds. Tarbell drove his two prisoners into the tonneau of the hired car, while Maxwell promptly cranked the motor and Sprague lifted Calmaine bodily to the front seat. Ten seconds beyond this, while the panic was still at its height, the hired car, leading all others in the townward rush, was leaving a dense dust trail to befog its followers, and the capture and rescue were facts accomplished.
With Tarbell at the steering-wheel, the car sped silently through the western suburb and came into the deserted, echoing streets of the city. Without asking any questions, the ex-cowboy drove straight to the county jail and pulled up at the curb in front of the grim building, with its heavily grilled windows showing their steel barrings in the street light. Sprague passed the two prisoners out to him, jerking even the bigger of the two clear of the auto step as if he had been a feather-weight. But when Tarbell would have marched the pair across the sidewalk, Sprague called out.
"Just one question, Givens," he said brusquely. "You know what you're in for; you know that you are still wanted in Cleveland on that charge of counterfeiting. But if you'll answer one question straight, we'll forget the Ohio indictment for the present. What did you do with the swag that you lifted a few hours ago?"
For five full seconds the black-haired man kept silence. Then he spoke as the spirit moved him.
"It's where you won't get it—you n'r them make-believe crooks up at the Molly Baldwin!" he rasped.
"Oho!" Sprague laughed. "So you planned it to give your side partners in this little game the double-cross, did you? It's like you. Take them away, Archer."
"And—and hurry back!" whispered Calmaine hoarsely. "We've simply got to catch Number Six, I tell you!"
Thus urged, Tarbell expedited matters with the night jailer and came running back to take his place behind the steering-wheel.
"Where now?" he asked, dropping the clutch in; and it was Calmaine who gave the direction.
"The Reservation Road east; it's the one we came in over."
Tarbell easily broke all the speed records, to say nothing of speed limits, in the race to the eastward over the dry mesa country. Twenty-odd miles from town they met the sheriff's party, and there was a momentary halt for explanations. "Camp down right where you are, and we'll go back pretty soon and send a bunch of autos out after you," was Maxwell's word of encouragement; and then the big car sped on its way toward Cromarty Gulch.
Calmaine seemed to have preserved his sense of locality marvellously. A few hundred yards short of the spot at the gulch head where Follansbee's dogs had begun their aimless circlings, he told Tarbell to pull up.
"They are right along here, somewhere," he said, getting out to hobble painfully ahead of the others when Tarbell took off a side-lamp to serve for a lantern. "They had me blindfolded, at first, and I didn't know what they were trying to do with me. When they chucked me into the auto, I tried to make a get-away. While they were knocking me silly again, I managed to get the papers out of my pocket and fire them into the sage-brush. It was right along here, somewhere."
It was Sprague who discovered the thick packet upon which so much depended. It was lying cleverly chance-hidden under a clump of the greasewood bushes. "Found!" he announced. And then he gave the young chief clerk his due meed of commendation. "You're a young man to bet on, Mr. Calmaine. What we've been able to do, thus far, wouldn't amount to much if you hadn't kept your head." Then he turned quickly to the superintendent. "How do we stand for time, now, Maxwell?"
Maxwell held his watch to the light and shook his head dejectedly.
"Number Six, the Fast Mail, is due at Corona in five minutes. We can never make it in this world!"
"You bet we can!" shouted Tarbell. "Help Mr. Calmaine, and pile into the car—quick!"
The short race to the near-by mining-camp was a sheer break-neck dash, but Tarbell made good. When the four of them leaped from the car and stormed into Allen's office, the Fast Mail had already whistled for the "clear" signal, and the operator was reaching for the cord of his semaphore to give the "go-by" wigwag. They yelled at him as one man; and a few seconds later the fast train slid to a shrieking stop at the station.
Maxwell would have sent Tarbell on to New York with the precious proxies, but Calmaine pleaded pathetically for his chance to finish that which he had begun.
"I'll be all right as soon as I can get into the sleeper and get these infernal shoes off," he protested. "It's my job, Mr. Maxwell; for pity's sake don't make me a quitter!"
"Let him go," said Sprague; "he's earned his chance to stay in the game—and this time he'll make a touch-down." And so it was decided.
When the Fast Mail, with its lately added passenger, had slid away among the hills to the eastward, the three who remained at Corona climbed into the hired auto and Tarbell drove another record race to town, pausing only once, when they reached the sheriff's roadside camp, to take on Harding and as many of his deputies as the car would hold.
By Maxwell's direction, Tarbell drove first to the railroad head-quarters, where the superintendent and his guest got out. At the office entrance another dusty car was drawn up; and in the upper corridor they found the two young men from the Molly Baldwin mine, still seeking for information. Sprague disposed of them, and he did it with business-like brevity.
"Your dead man has been found," he told them crisply. "He is at present in the county jail, with one of his accomplices; and when he is given the third degree, he will probably tell all he knows. It's a weakness he has—not to be able to hold out against a bit of rough handling. If you two fellows will make a clean breast of your part in the swindle to the prosecuting attorney, and promise to play fair with your lessors in future, it is likely that you'll be let off with a fine, and you'll probably be able to bag the remainder of the gang and to recover your lost gold."
The two young men heard, gasped, and backed away. When they were gone, Maxwell unlocked the door of his business office, snapped on the lights, opened his desk, and pressed the electric button which summoned Connolly, the night despatcher.
"I thought you'd like to know that we've caught up with the dead man, Dan," he said, when the fat despatcher came in; and then he briefed the story of the chase, winding up with a peremptory order to be sent to the division despatcher at the Copah end of the line not to let the eastbound connection get away from the Fast Mail at the main-line junction.
When Connolly had gone back to his key, Maxwell wheeled upon his guest.
"It's late, Calvin, and by all the laws of hospitality I ought to take you home and put you to bed. But I'll be hanged if you shall close an eye until you've told me how you did all this!"
The expert chemist ex-foot-ball coach planted himself in the easiest of the office chairs and chuckled joyously.
"Gets you, does it?" he said; and then: "I'm not sure that I can explain it so that you will understand, but I'll try. In the first place, it is necessary to go at these little problems with a perfectly open mind—the laboratory mind, which is neither prejudiced nor prepossessed nor in any way concerned with anything but the bare facts. Reason, and the proper emphasis to be placed upon each fact as it comes to bat, are the two needful qualities in any problem-solving—and about the only two."
"You are soaring around about a mile over my head; but go on," said Maxwell.
"All right; I'll set out the facts in the order in which they came to me. First, I see a dozen men loading a coffin into an express-car. I note the extreme weight, and wonder how a dead man, any dead man who doesn't have to have his coffin built to order, can be so infernally heavy. Next, you tell me about your proxy fact—which doesn't have any bearing at the moment—and then you tell me about the dead man, and how his friends were shipping him to Kentucky. Then comes the news of the bizarre hold-up in Cromarty Gulch. Instantly the reasoning mind, the laboratory mind, if you prefer, goes to work, with the two foreknown facts—the heavy-dead-man fact, and the fact that your chief clerk is on that train with his valuable papers—clamoring each for its hearing. Don't let me bore you."
"Heavens—you're not boring me! What next?"
"Reason, the laboratory brand of it, tells me immediately that your proxy fact has the emphasis. You had told me that your Wall Street opponents had been throwing stumbling-blocks in your way in the obtaining of the proxies. Here, said I, is the last desperate resort. Nevertheless, there were complications. I was pretty sure that the hold-ups had taken Calmaine and his papers; that this was what the hold-up was for. But in order to get track of them—and of Calmaine—other facts must be added. We added them on the trip with the special train; all we needed, and a few more thrown in for good measure."
"I don't see it," Maxwell objected.
"Don't you? When we reached the scene of the hold-up, I was already doubting the heavy-dead-man theory; doubting it extremely. Also, my reason told me that the robbers, carrying some weight which was heavier than any dead person, would not trust to a team which could be overtaken, if need be, by pursuers on foot. Hence the automobile track that we found. Then we came to the coffin, and half of the mystery vanished at once. If you hadn't been excited and—well, let us say, prepossessed, you would have noticed that there was no smell of disinfectants, that the coffin pillow wasn't dented with the print of a head, that the broken glass was lying on the pillow, as it wouldn't have been if the man's head had been there when the plate was smashed, that——"
"Great Scott," Maxwell broke in, in honest self-depreciation, "what blind bats we are—most of us!"
"Oh, no; I was bringing the specially trained mind to bear, you must remember; the scientifically trained mind. You couldn't afford to cultivate it; it wouldn't leave room for your business of railroad managing. But I'll cut it short. I saw that there had been no corpse in the coffin, and that there had been something else in it—something heavy enough to leave its marks on the silk lining, which was torn and soiled. Also, I saw, away down in the foot end of the thing, an ingot-shaped chunk of something that looked like a bar of gold bullion; one piece of the heavy coffin load that had been overlooked in the hurried emptying. That's why I advised you to bring the coffin back on your train. There's a ten-thousand-dollar gold brick in it, right now!"
"Heavens and earth!" gasped the listener; but Sprague went on rapidly.
"Just here is where your machine-made detective would have missed the emphasis. But the scientist, having once for good and sufficient reasons placed his emphasis, never has occasion to change it. The main thing yet was the stopping of your messenger to Ford. I was convinced that the gold robbery, in which, of course, not only the two young lessees, but the man Murtrie as well, must be implicated, was only a side-issue, intended either to divert attention from the main thing, or as a double-cross theft on the part of Murtrie. When you and Tarbell described Murtrie for me on the way back to town, I had it all, simply because I happened to know the man. He is a counterfeiter, whom I have twice run down for the Department of Justice; but who, both times, contrived to break jail and get away."
"But how were you able to strike so sure and hard at Holladay's?"
"Just a bit more reasoning; as you'll see presently. After we had established the fact that Calmaine wasn't on the train—but argue it out for yourself. They'd take him somewhere where he could be kept safe and out of the way until the criminals concerned were all securely out of the country. And where would they take him if not to the unlawful den out yonder on the pike where Murtrie was best known, and from which, no doubt, he secured his helpers for the hold-up job?"
"But hold on," Maxwell interrupted. "I haven't got it entirely clear yet. If Murtrie put up this job with Calthrop and Higgins——"
Sprague shook his head.
"You have no imagination, Dick. Murtrie came here to do you up in the proxy business—as the Wall Street crowd's last resort. He got in with Calthrop and Higgins and showed them how to beat their game, meaning to put the double-cross on them—as he did—when the time came. He was merely killing two birds with one stone; but your bird was the big one. I don't know what sort of a dodge he put up with Calthrop and Higgins, but I can suppose that there is a trusty confederate at the Kentucky end of the string who is doubtless waiting now for a corpse that will never come."
"Of course!" said the unimaginative one disgustedly. "Just the same, it's all mighty miraculous to me, Calvin—how you can reason out these things hot off the bat, as you do. Why, Great Jonah! I had all the opportunities you had, and then some; and I didn't see an inch ahead of my nose at any stage of the game!"
The big man rose and yawned good-naturedly.
"It's my hobby—not yours," he laughed; and then, as the telephone buzzer went off with a purring noise under Maxwell's desk: "That will be Mrs. Maxwell, calling up to ask why in the world you don't come home. Tell her all right, and let's go. It will be the biggest miracle of all if you succeed in getting me up in time for breakfast to-morrow—or rather, I should say, to-day, since it's three o'clock, and worse, right now."
Maxwell put the receiver to his ear and exchanged a few words with some one at the other end of the wire. When he closed his desk and made ready to go, a little frown of reflective puzzlement was gathering between his eyes.
"You know too much—too thundering much, Calvin. As I said a while back, it's uncanny. It was Alice; and she said the very words you said she would: 'Why in the world don't you come home, Dick?' If you weren't so blooming big and beefy and good-natured—but, pshaw! who ever heard of a fat wizard? Come on; let's go and hunt a taxi. It's too far to walk."