As they waited through the day for the call which did not come they began to feel the dispirited gloom of men keyed to action and kept interminably waiting—but none of them dropped away.
It was close to sundown when Brent himself arrived, and since he failed to encounter Jerry O'Keefe on the streets he did not pause to search for him, but went direct to the telegraph office. It had not been disclosed to O'Keefe how close to the heart of the conspiracy was the operator and the young man with the Irish eyes had not been stirred to any deep suspicion in that quarter.
Brent himself had not considered it a reasonable assumption that to such a powerful fellow as Halloway harm could come in so public a place. Yet Halloway had meant to make that office his headquarters and now Brent made it his first destination.
Through the open door and the smeared window spilled out a yellow and sickly light.
Inside sat two men, but a glance told Brent that neither of them worked the key. The pair were gaunt and sinister of aspect and they were not town folk but creek-dwellers. One was evil-visaged to a point of gargoyle hideousness. The other was little better, and he raised a face to inspect the man in the door which some malignant sculptor might have modeled in pure spite, pinching it viciously here and there into sharp angles of grotesqueness. Yet in the eyes Brent recognized keenness and determination.
The newcomer casually inquired for the station agent and one of the fellows stared at him morosely, making no reply. The other however, supplied the curt information: "He's done gone out ter git him a snack ter eat."
"I'm looking for a man named Halloway," said Brent. "A big upstandin' fellow. Maybe you men know him?"
To the mountaineers who walk softly and speak low by custom it seemed that the city man spoke with a volume and resonance quite needless in such narrow confines.
"I knows him when I sees him," admitted the man who had answered the first question. The other remained dumb.
"Has he been about here to-day?"