roportion to its length. "B. S. S. man is in your town. Important
letter to-day's mail," was all it said, but that was sufficient. Broffin
had promptly told the clerk of the Winnebago that he had changed his
mind, and forty-eight hours afterward he had the letter.

Like the telegram, the mail communication was significant but
inconclusive. One Patrick Sheehan, a St. Louis cab driver, dying, had
made confession to his priest. For a bribe of two hundred dollars he had
aided and abetted the escape of a criminal on a day and date
corresponding to the mid-April arrival of the steamer _Belle Julie_ at
St. Louis. Afterward he had driven the man to an up-town hotel (name not
given) and had obtained from the clerk the man's name and destination.
In his letter enclosing the confession the priest went on to say that
the penitent had evidently had a severe struggle with his conscience. A
mistaken sense of gratitude to the man who had bribed him had led him to
tear off and destroy the upper half of the card given him by the up-town
hotel clerk, and with the reminder gone he could not recall the man's
name. But the destination address, "Wahaska, Minnesota," had been
preserved, and the torn portion of the card bearing it was submitted
with the confession.

With this new clue for an incentive, Broffin had immediately put his
nose to the cold trail again. All other things apart, the torn card
conclusively proved the correctness of the obstinately maintained
hypothesis. If the robber had really chosen Wahaska for his
hiding-place, he had done so merely because it was Miss Farnham's home.
The boldness of the thing appealed instantly to a like quality in the
detective, and he was not entirely unprepared for the eye-opening shock
which came when he began to suspect that Griswold, the writing-man, was
the man he was looking for.

The premonitory symptoms of the shock had manifested themselves when he
began to note the regularity of Griswold's visits to the house in Lake
Boulevard. Then came the pistol-buying episode, closely following an
investment of money possible only to a capitalist--or a robber. Broffin
worked quickly after this, tracing Griswold's record back to its
Wahaskan beginnings and shadowing his man so faithfully that at any hour
of the day or night he could have clapped the arresting hand upon his
shoulder. Still he hesitated. Once, in his Secret Service days, he had
arrested the wrong man, and the smart of the prosecution f