Then had come Pawlinson.
He entered Washington headquarters one day, and quietly informed the chief there that he wanted to enter the detective service. Asked his credentials and former experience, he as quietly stated that by the end of that week he would bring in the entire gang that was puzzling them all.
And he did. Since which his place had been established, a place not a little enhanced by the very mysteriousness of him; a mysteriousness which I had heard he was at no pains to explain or eliminate.
“Well”—I concluded my soliloquy finally—“here I am mixed right up—and closely, too—with Pawlinson himself.”
But my duty was clear enough. I had told the chief I would wire him when I had located the man; and so, not only my own word, but his, as my chief, was out.
“That much I can do, anyway,” I grunted to myself, dropping the end of my second cigar into the cuspidor. “Beyond that we shall see what we shall see.”
With that I quitted the smoking room and sought my berth. As I lurched at a rolling gait down the aisle toward my number, for we were hitting up a lively clip, I noticed that all the berths had been made up by this time.
Then I seemed to recall that, in my abstraction, I had been vaguely conscious of a stop some half hour before; and I now reasoned that it was Stamford, Connecticut, or thereabout.
In the aisle I stripped off coat, vest, collar, tie, and shirt; then, just before ducking under the heavy curtain for the berth, and for no real reason that I yet know, I happened to sweep my eye up and down the car from one end to the other. And I could vow to this day that I saw the curtains of both number nine and number three drawn vigorously in toward the respective berths.
But really, down deep, I am of a care-free nature, and I was asleep in three shakes.