Cronin glared angrily at his fellow crook. "Shut up, Wally," he said. "You're not the boss. I'm headman of this outfit. Vincent is going to work with us. He looks like he has sense enough to spot a guy that gets off a train without letting him get away. That's more than you have, Wally."
He followed this rebuke by again addressing Harry. "The big boy out in Cleveland," he said, "is named Elbridge Meyers. Every now and then he hops out of town. Goes East for two or three days. Finding things out is my business. I found out why Meyers left town so often. There's a woman mixed up in it. So I figured that if I could get the goods on the old bloke, he'd cough up with the dough."
"Blackmail," said Harry.
"That's the story," resumed Cronin. "Well, I watched this fellow carefully enough, but he got away from me. First thing I knew he'd left town. I got in his office after it was supposed to be closed and found a slip of paper crumpled in the wastebasket. It was a memo this Meyers had made telling the time he was leaving and where he was going — here to Harrisburg. I called up Wally, who was in Philadelphia. He had time to get up here and meet the train. But he muffed things. It's up to us to pick up the trail."
There was silence after Steve Cronin had finished speaking. Harry looked at the man and nodded.
"Sounds good to me," he said. "Count me in on it. How are we going to work it?"
Cronin shrugged his shoulders as he rose from the bed.
"We'll have to locate Meyers, first thing of all," he said. "Now is the time to find him."
He turned to Wally, who was standing at the foot of the bed, looking disgruntled.
"Go over in the corner, dim-wit," said Cronin. "I want to talk business with a man that has brains. If you ear the dope, you'll probably spoil it. You're just the deuce spot in this deck of cards, from now on."