There the governor gave him an hour of earnest conference the following forenoon, as an outcome of which it was decided his next investigations had best be made in San Antonio. He took an afternoon train and that evening found him registered at the Hotel Bonham, in whose wide lobby and its overlooking mezzanine, if he but waits long enough, one may see practically every refugee, revolutionary and plotter against the peace of Mexico that visits the Texas metropolis. And there in the Bonham lobby, after dinner, he again saw Andrew Miller.
The man was in different clothing—new clothing of a smoother weave and more fashionable cut than he had worn on the train—and he sat in an armchair that gave him a view of the desk and the passing crowds. The Ranger thought he might be waiting for some acquaintance. But when an hour had passed and Carmichael had finished his evening paper, always with his eyes over the top of it for a sight of the Mexicans he had come there to watch, if they should drop in, Miller still sat idle, unspeaking and unspoken to.
And then at a moment when the Ranger’s gaze chanced to be upon him he saw something or some one near the main entrance that so affected his emotions that he could not wholly conceal them.
He did not start. He did not move so much as a finger. But his features stiffened ever so slightly and into his eyes came an expression such as comes into the eyes of the hunter when, after stealthily stalking, he comes into view of his quarry.
Carmichael looked quickly in the direction in which Miller was staring. He saw a score of men and half as many women entering and leaving the hotel. Discarding those who were going out as unlikely to have attracted Miller’s attention, since he had had opportunity to see them before, the Ranger swiftly appraised the new arrivals.
One or two were traveling men, just alighted from a depot street car, hustling with their bags toward the desk. The remainder were women in filmy dresses and their well-groomed escorts, who passed laughing and chattering toward the corridor that led to the big ballroom from which a crash of drums and saxophones some time since had signaled the opening of a dance. It was quite evidently to be a big dance, for a hundred or more festively dressed couples had already passed in to it and more were constantly arriving.
Miller’s eyes followed a group of these newly arrived dance patrons. He might be observing any one of the twenty or more. Captain Carmichael studied the group.
They were for the most part young people and Carmichael recognized several as sons and daughters of well-to-do business men of the city. Two of them were already successful in their own right—Morton Perry the real-estate operator and Wallace Locke the oil man. Each of these had inherited money and skillfully increased it, although there the comparison ended, because Perry’s initial stake had been not more than fifty thousand, while Locke’s father, an old cattleman, had left him close to half a million. Each of them although barely past thirty had at least doubled his original capital.
A pretty girl moved beside each as he passed on into the ballroom. Perry’s companion was his wife, a slight, bobbed-haired bunch of vivacity. With Locke was Edith Alsbury, a merry girl of twenty-three with a creamy complexion and flaming hair, whom Captain Carmichael had known slightly all her life, being an acquaintance of her aunt who had reared her since she was orphaned in infancy. He recalled that he had heard she was engaged to Locke; that they were to be married in a month or two.
The captain’s eyes, as the group disappeared and others coming from the entrance took their places, returned to the chair where the Argentinian had sat, to find it vacant. Miller now stood at the desk, talking to a clerk. Presently, nodding as though in thanks for some information, he left the desk and went to a chair, not the one he had vacated with its full view of the entrance, but another in a far corner. Seated in it he paid no more attention to the throng but fell into deep thought.