"And it was from Ben Ali?" asked Motor Matt.
Wily nodded.
"We got into Kalamazoo about three in the morning," proceeded Wily Bill, "and when I dropped off the train, Dhondaram stepped out from between a couple o' box cars——"
"It was the night we left Jackson that we had Dhondaram lashed and lying in the aisle of the sleeper on section two of the show train," interrupted Burton. "He got loose and skipped. I fired a shot at him, but he jumped off the train. How could he have done that and then shown up in Kalamazoo the morning we got there?"
The showman was trying to pick flaws in Wily's narrative, but the "barker" was equal to the emergency.
"For the reason, Burton, that he didn't jump off the train. Dhondaram rode the platform, and now and then he dodged down on the bumpers when the train men came too close. As I say, he met me as I dropped off, and we had a bit of a chin together."
"Why didn't you grab him," demanded Burton, "and turn him over to me?"
"That's where I was lame, I expect, but you forget I was a friend of Ben Ali's, and Dhondaram was also a friend. That made a sort of hitch between us. Then, too, Dhondaram told me he was expecting word from Ben Ali in my care. I hadn't received any word, and I told him so. Dhondaram said that I would get a letter, sooner or later, and that he'd like to meet me somewhere near Grand Rapids. That's when I told him about this house and gave him one of my keys to it."
"What have you got to do with this house?" queried Burton.
"I happen to own it," was the surprising answer. "It ain't worth much, an' it's been condemned by a railroad that intends runnin' a line of rails and ties right over the place where it stands. For that reason it's closed up. I'm to get twelve hundred dollars for the property any day now. Why," and Wily Bill looked around, "when I was a kid I used to live here. When the folks died I rented the house an' took to roamin' around. It was a good place to meet Dhondaram and give him a letter if there was any come from Ben Ali. I wasn't expectin', though, to call here before night. The letter from Ben Ali reached me in Kalamazoo in the afternoon, at a time when Dhondaram must have been travelin' north."