“You can plan the rest for yourselves.  Widow MacNamara’s is a lonely house.  She’s as true as steel and as deaf as a post.  There’s only Scanlan and me in the house.  If I get his promise—­and I’ll let you know if I do—­I’d have the whole seven of you come to me by nine o’clock.  We’ll get him in.  If ever he gets out alive—­well, he can talk of Birdy Edwards’s luck for the rest of his days!”

“There’s going to be a vacancy at Pinkerton’s or I’m mistaken.  Leave it at that, McMurdo.  At nine to-morrow we’ll be with you.  You once get the door shut behind him, and you can leave the rest with us.”

Chapter 7 — The Trapping of Birdy Edwards

As McMurdo had said, the house in which he lived was a lonely one and very well suited for such a crime as they had planned.  It was on the extreme fringe of the town and stood well back from the road.  In any other case the conspirators would have simply called out their man, as they had many a time before, and emptied their pistols into his body; but in this instance it was very necessary to find out how much he knew, how he knew it, and what had been passed on to his employers.

It was possible that they were already too late and that the work had been done.  If that was indeed so, they could at least have their revenge upon the man who had done it.  But they were hopeful that nothing of great importance had yet come to the detective’s knowledge, as otherwise, they argued, he would not have troubled to write down and forward such trivial information as McMurdo claimed to have given him.  However, all this they would learn from his own lips.  Once in their power, they would find a way to make him speak.  It was not the first time that they had handled an unwilling witness.

McMurdo went to Hobson’s Patch as agreed.  The police seemed to take particular interest in him that morning, and Captain Marvin—­he who had claimed the old acquaintance with him at Chicago—­actually addressed him as he waited at the station.  McMurdo turned away and refused to speak with him.  He was back from his mission in the afternoon, and saw McGinty at the Union House.

“He is coming,” he said.

“Good!” said McGinty.  The giant was in his shirt sleeves, with chains and seals gleaming athwart his ample waistcoat and a diamond twinkling through the fringe of his bristling beard.  Drink and politics had made the Boss a very rich as well as powerful man.  The more terrible, therefore, seemed that glimpse of the prison or the gallows which had risen before him the night before.

“Do you reckon he knows much?” he asked anxiously.

McMurdo shook his head gloomily.  “He’s been here some time—­six weeks at the least.  I guess he didn’t come into these parts to look at the prospect.  If he has been working among us all that time with the railroad money at his back, I should expect that he has got results, and that he has passed them on.”