This conclusion naturally reminded me that at the very moment it was reached I had virtually lost sight of my quarry, and that already I might have missed my chance. Accordingly, I hurried back to the Santa Anna Hotel, and though it was then too late to wire Bennett, I determined to do so early the next morning. I would request him to come on to San Francisco at once on a matter of extreme importance, and–his mind being already disturbed concerning his employer–he would lose no time in obeying. In Bennett, if I could fairly corner the bogus Farnham, I should have the most valuable witness in the world.
My first question was as to whether Mr. Farnham were in the hotel. He had not yet returned from a call which he had gone to make after dinner, and I sat down, therefore, in the corridor inside the front doors, through which he would have to pass on entering.
I pretended to be absorbed in a local paper, but in reality my thoughts were a maelstrom. Suppose he had already escaped me!
At half-past eleven, however, he came in. I did not seem to lift my eyes from the pages before them. He would have to go directly by me on his way upstairs; time enough to appear to observe him then.
"Cablegram for you, Mr. Farnham," said the clerk of the hotel.
"Ah!" The exclamation was one of surprise. He had not, then, been expecting the message.
I could not resist looking up after all to watch him in the act of reading it, and as I did so my eyes caught a gleam from his, under the green shade, as they turned to my face with an expression that was like a hunted animal's. In the instant I was as positive as though he had told me in so many words that the cablegram he had received was from Carson Wildred, and intimately concerned me. Probably it said, "If a man named Noel Stanton turns up, he is an enemy–beware of him."
I regretted immediately that I had given him my real name when we met at dinner, for, warned now by Wildred, he would be ever on his guard. He was seized with a creditable fit of coughing as he passed me, and having growled out something about being "deuced tired, and sleeping like a log," he went upstairs.
I followed him in time to see him enter his own room, which was only half a dozen doors from mine, and to hear him noisily lock the door. It occurred to me that he was desirous to have me know that he had locked it, and I wondered if already he had begun to suspect my motive.