“Why, yes; that is what everybody said.”
“It’s what he said himself,” Tarbell put in.
“But you didn’t believe it?” queried Sprague, turning upon the ex-cowboy.
“I didn’t know just what to believe,” was the frank admission. “He was mighty thick with Calthrop and Higgins, the two fellows that are operatin’ the Molly Baldwin under the lease; but, as I say, he didn’t stay there none to speak of. And as for his bein’ a minin’ sharp—I don’t know about that, but I do know that he was a brass-pounder.”
“A telegraph operator, you mean?” said Sprague quickly. “How do you happen to know that, Archer?”
“’Cause I caught him more than once ‘listenin’ in’ at the commercial office downstairs in the depot.”
“How could you tell?” demanded the chemist shrewdly.
“If you was an operator yourself, you’d know, Mr. Sprague. You can take my word for it, all right.”
The man whose recreative hobby was the application of scientific principles to the detection of crime, smoked in reflective silence for a minute or two. Finally he said: “You are a much better spotter than you think you are, Archer. It is a pity that this man Murtrie is dead. If he wasn’t, I’d like to have you shadow him a bit more for us. Where did you say he kept himself chiefly—in Brewster, I mean?”
“At Bart Holladay’s road-house, on the Little Butte pike. It’s a tough joint, with faro and roulette runnin’ continuous in the back rooms, and half a dozen poker games workin’ overtime upstairs.”