So he said nothing more on the subject, though all the time he was burning to do so. The talk drifted into other channels, and in the course of a half hour Big Slim, looking at the clock, said:
"I'm sorry, bo, but I'll have to pull my freight. I'm going to see if I can't put some things right to-night."
Bat arose with him, a feeling of quick expectancy beating in his mind.
"To-night," he repeated to himself. "Put some things right? Well, that means only one thing to me."
They left Joey Loo's together and walked along the street. At almost any corner Bat expected the burglar to leave him, but to his surprise this did not happen; the man went with him back to the hotel. In the little office with the sanded floor, Big Slim said:
"Well, see you to-morrow, maybe, bo."
Bat waved a hand and the cracksman disappeared through a door upon which was painted the word "Private." Through his inspection of the hotel, inside and out, during the day, Scanlon had gotten a fair idea of its plan.
"That door," he told himself, "will take him to the rooms where I saw him with Bohlmier and Nora last night. It might be just as well——"
At once he was at the desk and demanded his key of a thick-necked young man who wore a narrow stand-up collar; in the course of a few minutes he was in his room and had taken a station at one of the windows.
The flare of light came from below—from a single window this time—and there sat Bohlmier in a round-backed chair, with Big Slim resting against the table edge and swinging one leg. The burglar was explaining something very carefully, and the old Swiss was listening, his face upturned and the gas light gleaming on his heavily rimmed spectacles.