That being the case, Broffin set it down as a fact as good as accomplished that the man would sooner or later come to Wahaska. The detective's knowledge of masculine human nature was as profoundly acute as the requirements of his calling demanded. With a woman like Miss Farnham for the lure, he could be morally certain that his man would some time fling caution, or even a written prohibition, to the winds, and walk into the trap.
This misfire of Broffin's happened upon a Wednesday, which, in its calendar placing, chanced to be three weeks to a day after Griswold had left Mereside to settle himself studiously in two quiet upper rooms in the Widow Holcomb's house in upper Shawnee Street.
That it was also a day of other coincidences will appear in the casting up of the items on the page of events.
For one thing, it marked the formal opening of the De Soto Inn for the summer season; the De Soto being the resort hotel spoken of by the clerk of the Hotel Chouteau in the little ante-dinner talk which had given Griswold his first outline sketch of Wahaska. For another, the special train from the far South arriving at noon and bearing the first detachment of the Inn's guests, had for one of its Pullman passengers an elderly gentleman with a strongly marked Scottish face; a gentleman with the bushy white eyebrows of age, the long upper lip of caution, the drooping eyelid of irascibility, and the bearing of a man of routine; in other words, Mr. Andrew Galbraith, faring northward on his customary summer vacation, which—the fates intervening—he had this time determined to spend at the Wahaskan resort.
For a third item, it was at three o'clock of this same Wednesday that Raymer came out of Jasper Grierson's bank with his head down and a cloud on his brow; the cloud dating back to an interview just closed, a short and rather brittle conference with the bank's president held in Jasper Grierson's private room, with the president sitting at ease in his huge arm-chair and his visitor standing, quite destitute of ease, at the desk-end.
A little farther along, this third item dovetailed with a fourth and fifth. Raymer, dropping into a friend's office to use the telephone, chanced upon a crossed wire. He had called up Mrs. Holcomb, and while he was waiting for the widow to summon Griswold from his up-stairs den, there was a confused skirling of bells and Raymer, innocently eavesdropping, overheard part of a conversation between two well-known voices; namely, the voices of Miss Charlotte Farnham and her father. The talk was neither confidential, nor of any special significance. Miss Farnham was explaining that she had heard the bell, but could not answer promptly because she had had a caller; and the doctor was telling her that it was no matter—that he merely wanted to let her know that he was going to bring a dinner guest, the guest prospective being his late patient, Mr. Kenneth Griswold.
The mention of Griswold's name reminded Raymer of his own affair, and he became suddenly anxious to have the connection with the Widow Holcomb's house renewed. When the crossed wire was plugged out, Griswold was ready and waiting.
"I was afraid you might be out somewhere, and I want to have a pow-wow with you," said Raymer, when the reassuring voice came over the wire. "Can you give me a little time if I drive around?" And when the prompt assent came: "All right; thank you. I'll be with you in a pair of minutes."
Raymer's horse was only a short half-square away, hitched in front of the Winnebago House, and he went to get it. But at the instant of unhitching, Miss Grierson's trap was driven up and the untying of knots paused while he stepped from the curb to stand at the wheel of the modish equipage.
"You are getting to be as bad as all the others," was the greeting he got from the high driving-seat. "You haven't been at Mereside for an age—only once since the night you took Mr. Griswold away from us. By the way, what has become of Mr. Griswold? He doesn't show himself in public much oftener than you do."