CHAPTER VI.
THE BARON’S ADVENTURES.
Old Nomad was right in saying that when the baron tackled a job that interested him he would hang to it like a dog to a root.
The baron loved excitement, though he was not an excitable man. All hunters love excitement—that is why they hunt. Now, of all manner of hunting, there is nothing so tremendously exciting as a man hunt. It holds that tingling spice of personal danger which makes all other forms of hunting tame in comparison.
The German was in some ways a very shrewd man, though in others he was the personification of folly. But, taken all around, he had a good deal more hard horse sense that he was ever likely to get credit for. And some of his intuitions—call them guesses, if you will!—were really remarkable.
When he heard from Buffalo Bill that the fellow calling himself Jackson Dane had gone down to the Casino, and had been heard in conversation with Vera Bright, the baron’s intuitions told him that here was something worth investigating. He did not know what it was, but that did not matter. He determined to investigate, and he did, with the wonderful patience of a German. It is a patience which makes the Germans seem slow at times, but which enables them to “get there.”
In his miner’s clothing, the baron went down first to Gopher Gabe’s booze mill; but finding nothing there that interested him at the time, or offered anything, he went on to the Casino, which was not far distant. In fact, the Casino and Gopher Gabe’s disreputable establishment had secret inner connections, and Gopher Gabe was financially interested in the Casino. It was a sort of attachment to his bar, for there were “wine rooms” in the rear of the Casino, to which, at certain times, waiters passed continually with beverages.
The baron knew all this, without having to ask about it.
As no great time had elapsed since Buffalo Bill had been watching, the baron reasoned that Jackson Dane was still somewhere behind the doors of the Casino.