I nodded, and Miss Cullen said, questioningly, “Me too?” making me very happy by the question, for it showed that she would speak to me. I gave an assent quite as eagerly and in a moment we were all walking towards the platform. Despite Lord Ralles, I felt happy, and especially as I had not dreamed that she would ever forgive me.
I took a telegraph blank, and, putting it so that Miss Cullen could see what I said, wrote,—
“Postmaster-General, Washington, D. C. I hold, awaiting your instructions, the three registered letters stolen from No. 3 Overland Missouri Western Express on Monday, October fourteenth, loss of which has already been notified you.”
Then I paused and said, “So far, that’s routine, Miss Cullen. Now comes the help for you,” and I continued:—
“The letters may have been tampered with, and I recommend a special agent. Reply Flagstaff, Arizona. Richard Gordon, Superintendent K. & A. R. R.”
“What will that do?” she asked.
“I’m not much at prophecy, and we’ll wait for the reply,” I said.
All that day we lay at Flagstaff, and after a good sleep, as there was no use keeping the party cooped up in their car, I drummed up some ponies and took the Cullens and Ackland over to the Indian cliff-dwellings. I don’t think Lord Ralles gained anything by staying behind in a sulk, for it was a very jolly ride, or at least that was what it was to me. I had of course to tell them all how I had settled on them as the criminals, and a general history of my doings. To hear Miss Cullen talk, one would have inferred I was the greatest of living detectives.
“The mistake we made,” she asserted, “was not securing Mr. Gordon’s help to begin with, for then we should never have needed to hold the train up, or if we had we should never have been discovered.”
What was more to me than this ill-deserved admiration were two things she said on the way back, when we two had paired off and were a bit behind the rest.