Chip, regaining the street, engaged a hack standing near the hotel, and stopping it a short distance from the number he wanted on Chestnut street, walked the remaining distance to the house.

A sign “Board by the week or day,” and another one, “Furnished rooms to let,” showed it to be an ordinary boarding-house.  Chip had fully decided within himself, during the ride, that the men who had left the parcel had also left St. Louis.  While it was not so much an improbability that the men would still be in the city, it was far more probable that they would put some distance between themselves and the scene of their exploit.  For this reason, Chip decided that a plain course would result in no unfortunate mishap or premature flushing of the game.

Ascending the steps, he rang the bell.

The landlady of the house herself opened the door.

Before Chip could speak, she said: 

“You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Chip, somewhat surprised, and regretting immediately that he had not made his entrance in a more detective-like manner.

“I’ve been expecting some of you.  You want to know about those two men that stopped with me a short time before the ’Frisco express robbery?”

Seeing at once that he was conversing with a more than ordinary shrewd individual, Chip replied, “That’s just what I’m here for.  But why do you ask that question?”

“Well, I suspicioned something was wrong with them two men.  They came here on the fifteenth of October, and paid me a week’s board in advance.  They kept their room almost all the time, and when I went in to clean it, I saw a lot of railroad time-tables and maps scattered around.  One of them was always in the room.  It was never left alone.  A week before the robbery, the smaller man left, he said for Kansas City, and the larger man told me if a letter came to the house, directed to Williams, that is for him.  Well, on the Friday before the robbery, such a letter did come, and the big man, after reading it, said he had to go to Kansas City at once, but he didn’t leave the house until Monday, and the next day the robbery occurred.”

“Can you give me a description of the men?”

The landlady thereupon gave a full description of the larger man, which Chip carefully inserted in his note book, and recognized as the same given by Fotheringham of his assailant on that memorable night.  But her description of the smaller of the two was somewhat vague, as she said he was only in the house a short time, and she saw very little of him.

“May I go up to the room?”

“Yes; come this way.”