“What are these common carriers but soulless corporations, oppressors of the poor,—the poor that are growing poorer, as the rich grow richer. Something is radically wrong. The world owes me a living and I mean to have it.”
These and many other thoughts were running through the young man’s almost empty head. Beside him lay a copy of the “Police Gazette” and a small yellow-back branded “Dead on the Desert;” and when young Watchem, who held a check for upper seven, saw the literature, he guessed that this must be Two-card Charley, the amateur and somewhat theatrical young highwayman. Noting the almost expressionless face and the nothingness of the man’s physique, the strong young detective felt sympathy for this would-be criminal.
Retiring to the smoking-room the detective read his letter of instructions, which was little more and no less than the story of how the messenger boy and the pump boy had overheard the three conspirators conspiring to rob the Midnight Express. In Pete, the chicken-hearted, the shrewd detective recognized “Epsom Pete,” who had held up a stenographer and burglarized a box car in Kansas City. Of Two-card Charley he knew nothing, save the little he had gathered from a few moments’ observation. To begin with, Charley smoked cigarettes excessively, and that made him wakeful and nervous. He ate opium, and that wrecked his morals. But Jim—“Cheyenne Jim,” as he called himself—was a hard nut. His knife-handle, as Watchem was well aware, was notched for two Chinamen, a sheriff, and a Sioux. He was a coward. All his men had been killed going, and a conscienceless coward had no business with a gun. This man must be handled gingerly or somebody would get hurt.
Presently Charley came and sat in the narrow smoking-room opposite the detective, but with his gaze bent upon the black window.
“Charley,” said Watchem, puffing at a cigar which he was attempting to re-light, and instantly Charley’s right hand went back toward his pistol pocket, “we’re going to have a hard winter, I think,” he added, between puffs.
“Sir,” exclaimed the robber, bringing his hands in front of him again, “you have me at some disadvantage.”
“Oh, no! but I’d like to have you so; s’pose you give me your gun.”
Again Charley’s hand went back and his face went chalk white.
“Not so fast, not so fast, my boy,” said the detective, shoving the point of his own pistol up to Charley’s chin; “slowly now. That’s it, butt first. Now we can talk.”
But Charley only glared at the detective and refused to say a word. He had read in the various “works,” with which he was more or less familiar, that the real game robber never gave up to a detective.