“Quite likely,” was Professor Strong’s comment. “Come with me. We will get to the bottom of this later on—after you have had something to eat.”
Hockley was hungry, but eating breakfast came very hard to him that morning. As soon as he had finished Professor Strong plied him with questions, and at last he broke down and confessed all—how he had received the money order from home and how he had started out to have a little quiet fun, as he called it. And then, when the professor insisted that he take him to the spot where the runaway had occurred, he had to admit that there had been no runaway but that he had fallen into the hands of a sharper, and that the sharper now had all the money excepting ten dollars and the amount spent for the dinner.
“I am sure he drugged me,” said Hockley, weakly. “He wouldn’t have gotten the money from me if he hadn’t.”
“I will see the man,” returned Professor Strong, shortly, and insisted that the youth show the way to where J. Rutherford Brown might be found.
The man from Montana stood upon the hotel steps, just preparatory to going on a hunt for another victim. He was smoking a black-looking cigar. He felt particularly elated, for between Hockley and a victim picked up two days before he had come into the possession of over three hundred dollars. To be sure, this was no fortune, especially to one supposed to own valuable gold mines in the West, but to J. Rutherford Brown, who had often had less than a dollar in his pockets, it was a considerable sum.
“Don’t think I’ll stay here much longer,” he mused, as he puffed away. “That boy or that man from Philadelphia may turn up and make trouble. Guess I’ll go back to San Juan.”
“There is the fellow!” cried Hockley, to Professor Strong. “The man with the checked suit, who is smoking.”
The professor took a good look and then he smiled grimly to himself. “I fancy we are in luck,” he said, briefly. “I know this fellow.”
“You do?” ejaculated Hockley. “Who is he?”
Professor Strong did not answer, but going up to the man from Montana clapped him on the arm.