The clerk went below and returned almost immediately with the list. Together they went over it carefully, and by dint of much memory-wringing Maurice was able to give the detective leave to cancel ten of the seventeen names in the women's list, the remaining seven including all the might-have-beens who could possibly be fitted into the clerk's recollection of the woman he had seen clinging to the saloon-deck stanchion after her interview with the deck-hand.
To these seven names were appended the addresses given in the steamer's registry record, though as to these Maurice admitted that the patrons of the boats were not always careful to comply with the regulation which required the giving of the home address.
"About as often as not they write down the name of the last place they stopped at," he asserted; and Broffin swore again.
"Which means that I may have to pound my ear eight or ten thousand miles on the varnished cars for nothing," he growled. "Well, there ain't any rest for the wicked, I reckon. Now tell me where I can find this man Buck M'Grath, and I'll fade away."
M'Grath was on duty, superintending the loading and unloading of the Vicksburg freight quotas; but when Broffin tapped him on the shoulder and showed his badge, the second mate was called in and M'Grath stood aside with his unwelcome interrupter.
There were difficulties from the outset. A man-driver himself, the chief mate shared with the sheerest outcast in his crew a hearty hatred for the man-catchers all and singular; and in the present instance his sympathies were with the fugitive from justice, on general principles first, and for good and sufficient personal reasons afterward. Then, too, Broffin was hardly at his best. At the thought of what this man M'Grath could tell him, and was gruffly refusing to tell him, he lost his temper.
"You're edgin' up pretty close to the law, yourself, by what you're keeping back," he told the mate finally. "Sooner or later, I'm going to run this gentleman-roustie of yours down, anyhow, and it'll be healthier for you to help than to hinder. Do you know what he's wanted for?"
M'Grath did not know, and his enlargement upon the simple negative was explosively profane.
"Then I'll tell you. He was the 'strong-arm' man that held up the president of the Bayou State Security and made his get-away with a hundred thousand. Now will you come across?"
"No!" rasped the Irishman—and again there were embellishments.