“Name your terms,” spoke Purnell suddenly.
“Very well,” said Frank gravely: “you helped rob my mother of the estate her husband left her. What you got out of it I don’t know, but it seems to have made it necessary for you to continue the career of a fugitive and a fraud.”
“What I got!” snapped out Purnell, springing to his feet in hot anger. “I got what everybody gets who deals with that old rascal—the bad end of the trade, drat him!”
“I’ll leave you alone to your own devices,” said Frank. “I’ll promise to see that you get some money when my mother recovers hers, if you will write out, sign and swear to the facts of your conspiracy with Dorsett against my mother.”
“All right,” answered Purnell, after a moment of thought. “I’ve got some papers that apply to the matter. They are in my sitting room. I’ll get them.”
The speaker walked to a door, turned a key and disappeared beyond the threshold. Frank sat awaiting his return. He congratulated himself on the ease with which he had intimidated the man to his purposes.
Two minutes passed by, and Frank became impatient, five, and his suspicions were aroused. He walked to the door and knocked, tried it, pushed it open, and found himself, not in a connecting room, but in a side corridor.
“Well, he has slipped me,” instantly decided Frank.
He realized that he had been tricked badly. Frank went to the hotel office to make some inquiries, made a tour of the grounds, and, finally surmising that the object of his search had fled for good, regained his sample tray and returned to the town.
Frank did not stay all night at the local hotel, although he went there to ask for mail. He had given his mother a list of the hotels in the various towns he expected to visit, secured from a guide book.