“I suppose I could walk through the streets, looking for Witherby, disguised as he was last,” thought the young reporter. “I might come across him, but it would take a good while, unless luck was with me. Then, of course, I could go to the police, but I haven’t much information to give them. And, if they got to looking for Witherby, the story would come out in the papers here, and the Leader wouldn’t get any benefit of it.
“No; I’ve got to play a lone hand in this game, and see what I can do. Of course, when it comes to the end, and I see Witherby, I’ll have to call on an officer to arrest him. Then I can wire the story to New York.”
The more Larry thought over the matter, though, the more he became convinced that to go idly about the streets looking for the bank thief was not the best method.
“I’ve got to have some starting point,” he reasoned, “and I guess the railroad depot would be the best place. He will arrive in Chicago over this line, and I can make inquiries in the station if any of the men employed there have seen a chap fixed up like Witherby. Though it’s going to be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”
Larry, indeed, found this so when he reached Chicago, and began his inquiries. No one in the big depot, to whom he applied, had seen any one resembling the fugitive.
“Say, young feller,” said one of the door-tenders, “there’s thousands of people in here every day, and to remember any one he’d have to be the President of the United States, or a man with a blue nose, or something like that.”
Larry agreed that this was so, for a person would have to have a distinct personality to be picked out from amid the ever-shifting throngs.
“Well, that clew isn’t going to amount to anything,” he decided as he went to a quiet hotel, where he intended spending his time while in Chicago. “Now for the next one.”
“Let’s see. What would be the most natural thing for a fellow, who had run off with a million dollars, to do? Would he go to a big, swell hotel, and begin to spend money like water? Not unless he wanted to be talked about, and raise suspicions. What would he do, then?”
Larry paused a moment in his self cross-examination.