"You're a detective, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Chip, somewhat surprised, and regretting immediately that he had not made his entrance in a more detective-like manner.
"I've been expecting some of you. You want to know about those two men that stopped with me a short time before the 'Frisco express robbery?"
Seeing at once that he was conversing with a more than ordinary shrewd individual, Chip replied, "That's just what I'm here for. But why do you ask that question?"
"Well, I suspicioned something was wrong with them two men. They came here on the fifteenth of October, and paid me a week's board in advance. They kept their room almost all the time, and when I went in to clean it, I saw a lot of railroad time-tables and maps scattered around. One of them was always in the room. It was never left alone. A week before the robbery, the smaller man left, he said for Kansas City, and the larger man told me if a letter came to the house, directed to Williams, that is for him. Well, on the Friday before the robbery, such a letter did come, and the big man, after reading it, said he had to go to Kansas City at once, but he didn't leave the house until Monday, and the next day the robbery occurred."
"Can you give me a description of the men?"
The landlady thereupon gave a full description of the larger man, which Chip carefully inserted in his note book, and recognized as the same given by Fotheringham of his assailant on that memorable night. But her description of the smaller of the two was somewhat vague, as she said he was only in the house a short time, and she saw very little of him.
"May I go up to the room?"
"Yes; come this way."
Entering the room, the first thing which met the detective's eye was a bottle containing some sort of liniment, having on it a label of a neighboring druggist, In a closet a pair of drawers were found, and with the dark brown stain below the knee was almost identical to that which Chip had found on the railroad track, and which the robber had thrown from the express car. Not satisfied with this, Chip ripped up the carpet, and as a reward for his labor found an express tag, or rather a portion of one, for the tag was torn in two pieces. On the tag Chip read the portion of an address, "——ority," and below, "——worth, Kansas." Further questioning of the garrulous landlady gained a description of the valise which the larger man carried away with him. It tallied with the description given by Fotheringham of the valise into which Jim Cummings had put the stolen money.