CHAPTER XXIII
ALMOST CAUGHT
“My!” exclaimed Tavia, later. “There is a whole lot to making up a plot; isn’t there? And how wise you are, Doro!”
“But you see, my child, you can’t go ahead with this scheme as you first mapped it out,” observed Dorothy, drily.
“Oh, I see,” agreed her friend. “Mr. Somes can’t arrest the man who calls himself ‘John Smith.’”
“Of course not. Nor can anybody else arrest him. He has committed no crime in trying to get money for his information about Tom Moran.”
“But how will you fix him?”
“You see, if Mr. Somes will allow the clerk at the general delivery window of the post-office to make some signal when a person comes to call for this letter I have written, we will have somebody on the watch to follow John Smith. Then we’ll find out who he is——”
“If it is a ‘he,’” interposed Tavia.
“Of course it is,” returned her friend. “It’s a man’s handwriting. And a very bad, ignorant man, I am afraid.”
“He doesn’t belong to Dalton, then,” declared Tavia, earnestly. “Since the liquor crusade, when the saloons were all shut, we haven’t had many men of bad character in Dalton.”