"That you, Kowen?" he asked. "This is Roger Verbeck. It has been given out, as you know, that I am no longer working with the police, and I am not certain whether the Black Star believes it, or not, though I scarcely think that he does. So I don't want to call on the police for help just now. I wish you'd hurry right up here to my place, Kowen. I've got an important clew. And have one of your men go to the corner by the New Nortonia Hotel and wait there for us, will you? We may need him."
"I'll send a good man there, and I'll be with you in fifteen minutes!" Kowen declared.
The sheriff was as good as his word. A quarter of an hour later he was sitting before the table in Verbeck's living room, puffing at a cigar Verbeck had given him.
"Well, Verbeck, what's the idea?" he wanted to know. "If you've got a clew to that crook's whereabouts, for Heaven's sake let's get busy on it. If we don't land him pretty quick, the dear public will be running us out of town."
"I visited my fiancée this afternoon," Verbeck said, "and left Muggs sitting in the roadster. A few minutes later, the clerk in the apartment house telephoned up to me that Muggs had said to tell me he had seen a man, and would call me later.
"I knew what that meant, of course. We had been watching continually for some of the Black Star's old people. So I waited eagerly for his message, and finally it came. The man he had been trailing was Landers, one of the Black Star's trusted lieutenants. Muggs said he had gone to the New Nortonia Hotel, and was visiting a couple of women named Whaley, who had room 256 there."
"Some clew!" said the sheriff.
"Wait! I told Muggs I'd be right over, but that if Landers left the hotel to follow him and call me at home later. When I got over there, Muggs was gone. I came home, and waited a couple of hours, but got no message from him. Finally the Black Star called me up. He said he had Muggs at his headquarters and would keep him a prisoner for a time. Muggs stumbled into some sort of a trap, it seems. We don't know where the crook's headquarters are, of course. But I'm inclined to investigate room 256, at the New Nortonia Hotel, sheriff. What do you think about it?"
"I should say we will investigate it!" Kowen declared. "If the Black Star's lieutenant visits the people in that room, I want to know who those people are."
"Muggs said they were two sisters named Whaley. That means nothing, of course. They probably belong to the Black Star's gang. They may be important, or they may be merely mediums through whom members of the band receive messages and orders from one another. Now, we want to go about this thing carefully, sheriff. We ought to investigate, but we don't care to have them know of it until we learn all there is to be learned."