"All right. I'll see Tupper, and have him fix up to do the job. It ought to be easy. You'll have the money, I suppose?"
"As soon as he is out of the way—safely—you get the thousand dollars."
There was some more talk, and the two plotters separated.
It was three days after this, during which time Roy had enjoyed himself going about New York alone, (for he had not seen De Royster) that, as he was sitting in the hotel lobby one afternoon, a well-dressed man approached him.
"Aren't you from out Painted Stone way, in Colorado?" asked the man pleasantly.
"That's where I'm from, the Triple O ranch," replied Roy, who was frank by nature, and unsuspicious. He wondered who the man could be, and how he knew where he was from in the west.
"I thought so," went on the stranger. "I was out on a ranch near there about a week ago and I happened to be at the railroad station when you got aboard."
"What ranch were you on?" asked Roy, for he knew them all within a radius of a hundred miles of his father's.
"Why, it was—er—let's see—seems to me it was the Double X."
"There's no such ranch near Painted Stone."