"Matt hasn't been at the hotel since midnight?" he repeated blankly.
"Dot's vat's der madder. Dere has peen some keveer pitzness going on in dis blace, you bed my life, und vere Matt iss ve don'd know."
Trueman drew a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it across his face; then he dropped into a chair.
"If anything has happened to King, now," said he, "it will be pretty nearly the last straw. Tell me all about this thing—give me the whole of it, and be as quick as you can."
Between them Carl and Chub contrived to give Trueman a fairly lucid idea of what they had done and what they had discovered.
Trueman, an ominous frown on his face, took the bottle which Carl had brought away from Slocum's room. The label contained but the two words, "Cannibis indica."
"It's a drug of some sort," he muttered, holding the bottle up between his eyes and the light and shaking it. "Matt has told me all about Slocum's double dealing, and how the fellow is working with Sercomb and his gang. Do you suppose Slocum merely sent the bellboy down after the mail for a bluff?"
"Bluff!" echoed Chub. "What kind of a bluff?"
"Why, so he'd be alone with the pitcher of water long enough to empty some of the contents of this bottle into it."
Carl and Chub were astounded.