The first-floor rooms, where a pair of roulette wheels were spinning and a faro game was running, were well filled. Brewster had lately passed an anti-gambling ordinance, and the vice had been temporarily driven beyond the corporation limits. Maxwell saw a few men whom he knew, and many who were well known to the Brewster police. Under the archway dividing the red-and-black wheels from the faro table Sprague whispered in his ear.
“I’m looking for a man whose New York name is ‘Tapper’ Givens,” he said. “He has a red face, black hair and eyes, and weighs about one hundred and eighty pounds. He may, or may not, be wearing a heavy black mustache, and——”
Maxwell looked up with a puzzled frown. “Say, Calvin; you’re describing the dead man,” he broke in.
“Am I? Never mind if I am. If you should happen to see any one filling the requirements, just point him out to me. I might overlook him in such a crowd as this, you know.” And then to Tarbell, who had just found them again: “Got that key, Archer?”
The ex-cowboy showed the hall door key cautiously in his palm and returned it to his pocket. Sprague smiled and whispered again.
“How about the rooms upstairs? Are they open to inspection, too?”
Tarbell shook his head. “No; private poker games, most of ’em.”
“Nevertheless, I think we shall have to have a look-in,” said the big man quietly. “Can’t you arrange it?”
“Not without riskin’ a scrap.”
“We don’t want to start anything, but we’ve just naturally got to have that look-in, Archer,” persisted the guest.