“No; and what is more to the point, there is none from Stillings—nor from Tarbell. I’m beginning to think that this is a bigger game than any we’ve played yet, Dick. I dug up Editor Kendall, of The Tribune, this afternoon, and had a little heart-to-heart talk with him. There is big trouble of some sort in the air; he has smelled it, but he can’t tell what it is. He has his young men out everywhere, ‘on suspicion,’ and he has promised to keep in touch with us up to the time his paper goes to press.”
“That ought to help us to get at the facts,” said the superintendent. “Kendall is our friend, and he has some mighty keen young fellows on his staff. By the way, there’s one of them now—just coming in at the door. He’s looking for somebody, too.”
The young incomer was not long in finding his man. With a nod to the head-waiter, he came across to Sprague’s table. “A note for you, Mr. Sprague—from Mr. Kendall,” he said. “There’s no answer, I believe,” and he went on to another table and began to chat with two other young men, strangers to Maxwell, who had come in on the evening train.
Sprague glanced at his note and passed it across the table. Maxwell read it and found that it merely added to the mysteries without offering anything in the way of enlightenment.
“Dear Sprague:
“Have followed your suggestion, and our young men have spotted at least a score of the strangers at the different hotels. Nobody seems to know any of them, and they won’t talk. You will find a list of names, copied from the hotel registers, on enclosed slip. It has occurred to me that Maxwell might know some of them, if your suspicions are well founded.
“Kendall.”
Maxwell frowned over the list for a moment before handing it back.
“A few of them are familiar,” he said. “Tom Carmody is a division superintendent on the west end of the T-C., and this man Hunniwell used to be in their legal department. Vance Jackson is, or used to be, Carmody’s chief despatcher; and—why, say! this is a T-C. crowd; here’s Andy Cochran, their Canyon Division trainmaster.”
“Any more?” asked Sprague quietly.