“Oh, Alec!” said Lake over his shoulder, “you sit down, too, and wire all your conductors about their passengers last night. Yes, and the freight crews, too. We’ll rush those through first. And can’t you scare up another operator?” His pen scratched steadily over the paper. “More apt to be some of our local outlaws, though. In that case it will be easier to find their trail. They’ll probably be on horseback.”
“You were an—old-timer yourself, were you not?” asked Billy amiably. “If the robbers are frontiersmen they may be easier to get track of, as you suggest; but won’t they be harder to get?” Billy spoke languidly. The others were searching assiduously for “clues” in the most approved manner, but Billy sprawled easily in a chair.
“We’ll get ’em if we can find out who they were,” snapped Lake, setting his strong jaw. He did not particularly like Billy—especially since their late trip to Rainbow. “There never was a man yet so good but there was one just a little better.”
“By a good man, in this connection, you mean a bad man, I presume?” said Billy in a meditative drawl. “Were you a good man before you became a banker?”
“Look here! What’s this?” The interruption came from Clarke. He pounced down between two fragments of the safe door and brought up an object which he held to the light.
At the startled tones, Lake spun round in his swivel-chair. He held out his hand.
“Really, I don’t think I ever saw anything like this thing before,” he said. “Any of you know what it is?”
“It’s a noseguard,” said Billy. Billy was a college man and had worn a nosepiece himself. He frowned unconsciously, remembering his successful rival of the masquerade.
“A noseguard? What for?”
“You wear it to protect your nose and teeth when playing football,” explained Billy. “Keeps you from swearing, too. You hold this piece between your teeth; the other part goes over your nose, up between your eyes and fastens with this band around your forehead.”