hey led to the
cellar way of Netley's store they may have also been molasses, though it
was argued, to be sure, that the robber might well have poured molasses
over the bloodstains from sheer cunning.

It was remembered, too, that there were no bloodhounds in Mariposa,
although, mind you, there are any amount of dogs there.

So you see that by ten o'clock in the morning the whole affair was
settling into the impenetrable mystery which it ever since remained.

Not that there wasn't evidence enough. There was Pupkin's own story
and Gillis's story, and the stories of all the people who had heard the
shots and seen the robber (some said, the bunch of robbers) go running
past (others said, walking past), in the night. Apparently the robber
ran up and down half the streets of Mariposa before he vanished.

But the stories of Pupkin and Gillis were plain enough. Pupkin related
that he heard sounds in the bank and came downstairs just in time to
see the robber crouching in the passage way, and that the robber was
a large, hulking, villainous looking man, wearing a heavy coat. Gillis
told exactly the same story, having heard the noises at the same
time, except that he first described the robber as a small thin fellow
(peculiarly villainous looking, however, even in the dark), wearing a
short jacket; but on thinking it over, Gillis realized that he had been
wrong about the size of the criminal, and that he was even bigger, if
anything, than what Mr. Pupkin thought. Gillis had fired at the robber;
just at the same moment had Mr. Pupkin.

Beyond that, all was mystery, absolute and impenetrable.

By eleven o'clock the detectives had come up from the city under orders
from the head of the bank.

I wish you could have seen the two detectives as they moved to and fro
in Mariposa--fine looking, stern, impenetrable men that they were. They
seemed to take in the whole town by instinct and so quietly. They found
their way to Mr. Smith's Hotel just as quietly as if it wasn't design at
all and stood there at the bar, picking up scraps of conversation--you
know the way detectives do it. Occasionally they allowed one or two
bystanders--confederates, perhaps,--to buy a drink for them, and you
could see from the way they drank it that they were still listening for
a clue. If there had been the faintest clue in Smith's Hotel or in the
Mariposa House or in the Continental, those fellows would have been at
it like a flash.

To see them mo