and soon the two were
in the privacy of Dyke Darrel's room.

"Now, then, let us look at that coat." Harry Bernard laid the garment
down on the bed, and Darrel began a close examination of the same. It
was an ordinary sack coat, with two inside pockets. The detective was
not long in going through the pockets.

"Ah!"

The ejaculation was significant.

It fell from the lips of Dyke Darrel, the detective.

"Now what?" questioned Bernard.

"Look at that."

Dyke Darrel held aloft a handkerchief that had once been white, but
which was now dingy with dirt. But this was not the only
discoloration. There was a stain on the square bit of linen that was
significant.

"What is it?"

"Blood!" answered Dyke Darrel.

Then the detective made a close examination, and made still another
discovery--a name in one corner of the rumpled handkerchief.

The keen eyes of the detective gleamed with a satisfied light.

"What have you discovered, Dyke?"

"A clew."

"To what?"

"To the most infamous crime of the century. This handkerchief has the
name of its owner stamped plainly in the corner."

"Well?"

"Arnold Nicholson."

"What?"

"That is the name on this bit of linen, which shows that it was once
the property of the murdered express messenger. Of course you have
heard of the crime on the Central?"

"Yes. It gave me a shock, too. Arnold was a good fellow."

Harry Bernard's face wore a serious look as he took the blood-stained
handkerchief from the hand of the detective, and examined it with
mournful interest.

"It must be that you were assaulted by one of the train robbers,
Dyke," said the youth, as he returned the relic of that midnight
crime.

"I imagine so. The scoundrels have discovered that I am on the trail,
and they mean to put me out on the first base, if possible. Did you
see the man's face who assaulted me, Harry?"

"Imperfectly. I know, however, that he had red hair."

"Ah!"

"You suspected as much?"

"Yes. In the dead man's fingers was a bit of red hair. It seems
conclusive that the villain who assaulted me to-night was the one who
engaged in the death struggle with poor Nicholson. The trail is
becoming plain, and before the National holiday rolls round I hope to
have the perpetrator of this crime behind prison bars."

"I hope you are not over-sanguine, Dyke."

"I have ever been successful."

"How about the Osborne case?"

"Ah, yes; but that isn't off yet. I expect that the murderers of