"Meyer ran a hidden dead-fall and gambling house next door, at No. 192 Layte Street," said Hogan, biting off his cigar. "That was before I came on the beat. He got to plunging on the races, betting against his own games, and the poker crowd here cleaned him up at last. So there's the Hibernia Social Club, the Democratic Ward Committee, and a lot of roomers in there. It's a new deal now, all around.
"The whole house has been ripped up and there's a China wash-house in the basement of that old mansion."
"Meyer?" interrogated McNerney, as he ordered the second round.
"Cleared out for Europe, so they say," carelessly said Hogan. "I saw him driving in a carriage a few days before he sold out, with a staving looking woman. He may have married a good thing, and skipped the town. He was a shifty sort of a devil; but he ran a square gambling den. And he had loads of money till he went crazy over cards."
It was afternoon when Miss Worthington was pondering over Witherspoon's telegram from Philadelphia, that Officer McNerney was swiftly rowed out to the yacht "Rambler," lying on the oily summer waters of the lower bay. Beside him, the notary calmly awaited the materialization of the second hundred-dollar bill.
But, busied as all her secret agents were, none of the men now chasing down the fugitive murderer were as anxious at heart as Miss Alice Worthington.
It was easy to arrange for the money Witherspoon had telegraphed for; she knew the secret object of his visit to Washington, but only that certain parties had been taken into custody, and that there was light ahead.
"My father!" she cried, as she fell on her knees and prayed that the mantle of shame should not fall upon his yet raw grave.
It was half an hour after Doctor Atwater and McNerney began to question Emil Einstein that the young scapegoat at last dropped his policy of lying braggadocio.
Confined in the cabin of the stout schooner yacht of a hundred tons, he had craftily fenced himself in with a network of lies during the night, in preparation for the ordeal which he well knew was at hand.