There was considerable further conversation, Dick Ralston urging, and Mullins feebly opposing something which the gambler proposed. Then a customer came in, who had to receive attention. Inside of an hour Chester re-entered the office, accompanied by a sandy-complexioned stranger, his head covered with a broad, flapping, Western sombrero, and wearing a long, brown beard descending at least eighteen inches.
“I hear you want to see me,” he said to Mullins.
“Who are you?” asked the astonished bookkeeper.
“I am Paul Perkins, of Minneapolis,” was the surprising reply.
CHAPTER XX.
PAUL PERKINS, OF MINNEAPOLIS.
If a bomb had exploded in the office David Mullins and his friend Ralston could not have been more astonished than by the appearance of Paul Perkins, whose name was invented without the slightest idea that any such person existed.
Before relating what followed, a word of explanation is necessary.
Chester went to the Fifth Avenue Hotel without the slightest suspicion that he had been sent on a fool’s errand. He imagined, indeed, that Mr. Mullins wanted to get rid of him, but did not doubt that there was such a man as Paul Perkins, and that he was expected to arrive at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.