“Thank you, I’ll call,” said Leo.
Snipper had witnessed the scene between the swindlers and Leo. When the three men went off he followed them.
All four met at a low resort half a dozen blocks from the circus grounds.
Snipper knew the men. As a matter of fact, he would have left the circus and joined them in their work, but he had his reasons for remaining as an employee of the “Greatest Show on Earth,” as will be seen later.
The four men had a conference, which lasted over an hour.
Then Snipper and one of them called on a local locksmith.
The swindler told a long story of having lost the keys to his trunk, and he ordered the locksmith to make him three keys from impressions furnished by Snipper.
With these keys in his possession, Snipper went back to the circus grounds.
On the following day, toward evening, there was a commotion at the entrance to the main tent of the circus. One of the managers of the great aggregation had discovered that hundreds of circus tickets had been sold throughout the district at a discount from the regular price, fifty cents.
A hurried examination was made, and then it was learned that two thousand tickets had been stolen from one of the box-office wagons.