“Then you’ll have to get a Spanish edition. For a guess, B. C. is Baja California, the Mexican peninsula of California.”
Jones sent a supplementary wire to this effect to Cyrus C. Allen, of the Cosmic Club, and within a few hours received a reply from that eminent cartographer, who had been located in a remote part of Connecticut:
“Probably Laguna Salada, not on map. Seventy miles long; four to eight wide. Between Cocopah and Sierra Gigantica ranges. Country very wild and arid. Can be reached by water from Yuma, or pack train from Calexico. White, who has hunted there, says Captain Funcke, Calexico, best guide.
“ALLEN.”
Average Jones tossed this over to the father.
“As I figure it,” he said, “your son’s two friends had this all mapped out beforehand for him. One went west direct. He was the imbecile who stopped in Cincinnati and mailed you the bloody shirt to throw you off the scent. Meantime the colonel took Roderick around by a sea route, probably New York and New Orleans.”
“That’d explain the steamer rug and the seasickness,” admitted Doctor Hoff; “but I don’t know what he’d want to go that long way for.”
“Simple enough, when you reckon with this colonel person as having brains in his head. He would foresee a hue and cry as soon as the young man disappeared. So he cooks up this trip to keep his prey out of touch with the newspapers for the few days when the news of the disappearance would be fresh enough to be spread abroad in the Associated Press dispatches. From New Orleans they’d go on west by train.”
“What I don’t see is how they caught Roddy on such an old game. He’s easy, but I didn’t s’pose he was that easy.”
“To do him justice, he isn’t—quite. They put it up on him rather cleverly. In the period of waiting to hear from the geographical expert I’ve put in some fairly hard work, going over your son’s effects. And, in the room over Silent Charley’s bar, I found a newspaper with this in it.”