“Most likely.”
“The police could find no clew to their identity, eh?”
“No, sir. The rascals got away clean enough, sir, and I am out the casket and the wagon, I’m thinking,” Hanlon grumbled bitterly.
Chick then had nothing to offer him in the way of encouragement, having found no evidence worthy of note, and he returned to the nearest elevated station, alighting from the train half an hour later at Forty-second Street.
It then was after one o’clock, too late for lunch at home. Chick decided to take it in one of the excellent hotels in that locality. As he was about to enter the café, however, one of Nick’s earlier suggestions occurred to him.
“There might be something in it,” he muttered. “I’ll go up to the office, instead, and have a look at the register.”
He did so—and verified the sagacity of the famous detective.
Almost the first entry that met Chick’s gaze, inscribed[Pg 25] in the same fine, clean-cut hand of which he had seen specimens that day, was that of:
“Charles F. Brooks and wife, Washington, D. C.”
“Great guns!” thought Chick, surprised in spite of himself. “Have I really cornered the rats so quickly? If that isn’t Deland’s hand, or that of Gerald Vaughn, at least, I’ll eat my hat.”