“‘And I’ll say a little something myself!’ I could hardly keep my foot clear of him.  ’When you got sober this morning and remembered who I was, you took a turn up round the postoffice to make sure of it, and while you were in there you saw the notice of the reward for the stolen bond plates.  That gave you the notion with which you pieced out your fairy story about how you got the dollar tip.  Having discovered my identity through a piece of damned carelessness on my part and having seen the postal notice of the reward, you undertook to enlarge your little game.  That’s the reason you wouldn’t take fifty cents.  It was your notion in the beginning to make a touch for a tip.  And it would have worked.  But now you can’t get a damned cent out of me.’  Then I threw a little brush into him:  ’I’d have stood a touch for your finding the fake tanner, because there isn’t any such person.’

“I intended to put the hobo out of business,” Walker went on, “but the effect of my words on him were even more startling than I anticipated.  His jaw dropped and he looked at me in astonishment.

“‘No such person!’ he repeated.  ’Why, Governor, before God, I found a man like that, an’ he was a banker—­one of the big ones, sure as there’s a hell!’”

Walker put out his hands in a puzzled gesture.

“There it was again, the description of Mulehaus!  And it puzzled me up.  Every motion of this hobo’s mind in every direction about this affair was perfectly clear to me.  I saw his intention in every turn of it and just where he got the material for the details of his story.  But this absolutely distinguishing description of Mulehaus was beyond me.  Everybody, of course, knew that we were looking for the lost plates, for there was the reward offered by the Treasury; but no human soul outside of the trusted agents of the department knew that we were looking for Mulehaus.”

Walker did not move, but he stopped in his recital for a moment.

“The tramp shuffled up a step closer to the bench where I sat The anxiety in his big slack face was sincere beyond question.

“’I can’t find the banker man, Governor; he’s skipped the coop.  But I believe I can find what he’s hid.’

“‘Well’ I said, ‘go on and find it.’

“The hobo jerked out his limp hands in a sort of hopeless gesture.

“‘Now, Governor,’ he whimpered, ’what good would it do me to find them plates?’

“‘You’d get five thousand dollars,’ I said.

“‘I’d git kicked into the discard by the first cop that got to me,’ he answered, ‘that’s what I’d git.’

“The creature’s dirty, unshaved jowls began to shake, and his voice became wholly a whimper.

“’I’ve got a line on this thing, Governor, sure as there’s a hell.  That banker man was viewin’ the layout.  I’ve thought it all over, an’ this is the way it would be.  They’re afraid of the border an’ they’re afraid of the custom houses, so they runs the loot down here in an automobile, hides it up about the Inlet, and plans to go out with it to one of them fruit steamers passing on the way to Tampico.  They’d have them plates bundled up in a sailor’s chest most like.