"Got 'em pretty bad, ain't you, pardner?" he commented, when Broffin, loose-tongued in his elation, confessed that he was chasing a woman whom he had never seen. "I know how it goes: seen a picture of one once on a bill-board, and I'd 'a' gone plum to Californy after her if I hadn't been too danged busy to take a lay-off."
Landing in Wahaska the next evening, Broffin's first request at the hotel counter was for the directory. Running an eager finger down the "F's" he came to the name. It was the only Farnham in the list, and after it he read: "Dr. Herbert C., office 8 to 10, 2 to 4, 201 Main St., res. 16 Lake Boulevard."
Broffin had a traveller's appetite, and the café doors were invitingly open. Yet he denied himself until the clerk, busy at the moment with other guests, should be at liberty.
"I see there's a Doctor Farnham here," he said, when his time came. "I was wondering if he was the man I met up with down in New Orleans last winter."
The clerk shook his head.
"I guess not. Doctor Bertie hasn't taken a vacation since the oldest inhabitant can remember."
"H'm; that's funny," mused the detective, as one nonplussed. "The name's just as familiar as an old song. Is your Doctor Farnham a sort of oldish man?"
"He's elderly, yes; old enough to have a grown daughter." Then the clerk laughed. "Perhaps you've got things tangled. Perhaps you 'met up' with Miss Charlotte. She was down on the Gulf Coast last winter."
"Not me," said Broffin, matching the ice-breaking laugh. And then he registered for a room and passed on into the café, deferring to the appetite which, for the first time in nearly four tedious weeks, he felt justified in indulging to the untroubled limit.
Having, by the slow but sure process of elimination, finally reduced his equation to its lowest terms, Broffin put the past four weeks and their failures behind him, and prepared to draw the net which he hoped would entangle the lost identity of the bank robber. After a good night's sleep in a real bed, he awoke refreshed and alert, breakfasted with an open mind, and presently went about the net-drawing methodically and with every contingency carefully provided for.