Brant laughed. “I disown nothing in the way of weaknesses, and we’ll admit the curiosity, with this qualification: it isn’t a womanish weakness—on the contrary, it is altogether masculine. What is the mystery?”
Forsyth took a paper from a pile of exchanges and ran a blue pencil around an advertisement in the “Personal” column. “That is the text,” he said. “Read that, and then I’ll go on and preach my sermon.”
Brant read: “If Mr. George Brant, formerly of Taggett’s Gulch, Pitkin County, will communicate with J. B., care of the Herald, Leadville, he will hear of something to his advantage.”
“I suppose that is pointed at my namesake,” he commented, handing the paper back with an effort at nonchalance. “I hope he will come in for a good thing.”
“So do I,” rejoined the editor, smiling inscrutably. “But wait till you hear the story. Last night, one of our reporters—Jarvis, you know him—was hobnobbing with a lot of variety people in one of the private rooms in Heddrigg’s restaurant. He swears he was sober, but you can draw your own conclusions as to that when I tell you that the company withdrew and left him alone without his knowing it.”
“Sleepy, perhaps,” suggested Brant.
“That is what he says. When he woke up he was alone, but the box beyond him was occupied by two men who were talking in whispers. Now Jarvis is a good fellow, but he is a reporter first, and everything else afterward, so of course he listened. The men were arguing about an ‘ad’ in the Leadville Herald, and Jarvis gathered that it boded ill for one of them, though he couldn’t tell which one. In the course of the talk your name was mentioned—oh, yes, it was you, because they spoke of your boarding place out in Welton Street,” Forsyth insisted, in rebuttal of Brant’s incredulous negative, “and Jarvis heard enough to make him think they meant to do you a mischief.”
“One moment,” Brant interrupted. “What time of night was this?”
“I don’t know exactly, but it was between twelve and two.”
“All right. Go on.”