“Can I be of any assistance to you, sir?” he asked.
“You helped in this thing. Yes, yes you can help me,” said the inspector. “Take this note to the local postmaster, will you?”
The inspector wrote a few words on his own card. It summoned the postmaster. The inspector directed that official to deliver all future mail of the Wacker outfit to himself or his representative.
When the postmaster was gone the inspector impressed Frank into service. This consisted in sorting out the letters and taking down the names of the persons who had been swindled.
“Now you can go for the marshal, if you will,” said the inspector, about an hour later.
Frank found that official just returned from an unsuccessful search for Dale Wacker and the old man with the big beard, his presumable partner, whom Stet had vaguely described to Frank.
“I must catch the afternoon train for the city and make my report to headquarters,” said the inspector, when Frank returned to him with the marshal. “I want you to put a trustworthy custodian in charge here until we can send a regular man to close up the matter, and start after those swindlers.”
“I’ll put one of my deputies in charge,” said the marshal. “As to Wacker and his partner, they’re probably safe and far by this time.”
The inspector regarded the speaker with a half-pitying, half-contemptuous look.
“That’s as may be,” he observed, “for the present. We don’t let matters drop that easily, ourselves. There’s something you mustn’t forget officer: When the United States Government gets after a guilty man, if he fled to the furthest corners of the earth, we never let up till we find him.”