s had backed up, flooding the entire lower part
of the town.

When the train reached Derlingport Philo Gubb, with his telescope
valise, which contained his twelve Correspondence School lessons, "The
Pale Avengers," a pair of handcuffs, his revolver, and three extra
disguises, walked toward the Harburger House. He was already
thoroughly disguised, wearing a coal-black beard and a red mustache
and an iron-gray wig with long hair. Luckily he passed no one. With
that disguise he would have drawn an immense crowd. Nothing like it
had ever been seen on the streets of Derlingport--or elsewhere, for
that matter.

A full block away Philo Gubb saw the sign of the hotel, and he
immediately became cautious, as a detective should. He crossed the
street and observed the exits. There was a main entrance on the
corner, a "Ladies' Entrance" at the side, and an entrance to what had
once been the bar-room. From the fire-escape one could drop to the
street without great injury.

Philo Gubb noted all these, and then walked to the alley. There were
two doors opening on the alley--one a cook's door, and the other
evidently leading to the cellar. At the latter a dray stood, and as
Philo Gubb paused there, two men came from this door and laid a bale
of hay on the dray, pushing it forward carefully. They did not toss it
carelessly onto the dray but slid it onto the dray. And the hay was
wet. Moreover, the two men were two of Joe Henry's men, and that was
odd. It was odd that Joe Henry should send a dray the full thirty
miles to Derlingport to get a load of wet hay, when he could get all
the dry hay he wanted in Riverbank. But it did not impress Philo Gubb.
He hurried to the main entrance of the hotel, and entered.

The lobby of the Harburger House was large, and gloomy in its
old-fashioned black-walnut woodwork. Except for one man sitting at a
desk by the window and writing industriously, and the clerk behind the
counter, the lobby was untenanted. To the left a huge stairway led to
the gloom above, for the hotel boasted no elevator except the huge
"baggage lift," which had been put in in the palmy days of the house,
when the great river packets were still a business factor.

Philo Gubb walked across the lobby to the clerk's desk. The
industrious penman by the window glanced over his shoulder. He looked
more like a hotel clerk than like a traveling salesman, but Philo Gubb
gave this no thought. The clerk behind the desk put his fingers on h