Hallen turned to our friend Oakes and said: "I never in my life saw anything like this—like you."
Oakes, always ready to side-step praise in any form, answered, with one of his chilling glances: "Oh, bother! You're young yet, Hallen; you need age."
Hallen half resentfully yanked his cap on his head and strode to the door.
"Well," he remarked, "here's where I take a look at Maloney's arms—I am dead tired of theorizing."
"Stop!" commanded Oakes; "you'll spoil it all."
"I won't spoil the cross on the arm—the cross of indigo—if it's there; and if it ain't there, it ain't. Hang it all, anyway." And forthwith Hallen strode out the door, down the steps toward the hotel bar-room, with Oakes and the rest of us following in a vain endeavor to head him off.
When we reached the bar-room, Hallen was already in the side room. We rushed toward the little room door, expecting to see Maloney in the grasp of Hallen; but instead, we beheld the Chief gazing in stupefaction at his two men dead drunk, heads between their hands on the little round table.
"——————,——!" cried the Chief in a voice that shook the glasses on the shelves in the bar-room and brought the white-coated attendant with one bound to the door. "Hell—en—Maloney's escaped."
"Escaped!" cried the bar-keeper. "Escaped!—nit. Why, he paid for the drinks and walked out half an hour ago—said he had a job at the Mansion. These fellows—gosh!" cried the man as he shook them—"drunk! What's up—what does it mean, Chief?"
Then Quintus Oakes spoke in tones of dulcet and ineffable sweetness, cooingly, charmingly. "It means that Chief Hallen pays for a round of the best you've got. In order to see a cross on a man's arm it becomes necessary first to catch the man—something like the bird's tail and the salt proposition."