"So?" said Mr. Wayward. And after a minutes consideration: "Very likely. They could hardly have managed without the floor clerk in fact."
Presently he added:
"We've got to go back all right. But I don't what we can do except to surrender."
"We still have my pictures of Crockett at Jennie's."
"Well, I hope so. Unless they've bribed Simpson, too. Those pictures are one of the things that may make them give us a chance to surrender."
The two men smoked in silence for several minutes--until Rockwell returned.
"Well, that's fixed," he announced. "There's a north-bound express due in half an hour and reported on time that will take us into Chicago by nine o'clock to-night. You're sick, of course, Senator," he added to Merriam. "Bronchitis again!"
They continued to talk until the north-bound train arrived and picked up their car, and they were started on their return trip.
At Carbondale Rockwell sent off telegrams to the several cities which Merriam was to have visited, cancelling Senator Norman's speaking tour on account of a renewed attack of bronchitis. He also sent a message in code to Aunt Mary, giving the hour when they were due to arrive.
The three men talked, of course, but they had so few facts to go on that they could only formulate gloomy speculations, with nothing really in the way of definite conclusion beyond what Mr. Wayward and Merriam had reached in their first few minutes of chat immediately after the arrival of Aunt Mary's message. How the kidnapping had been managed or where Norman might be, they simply could not tell.