"He's brought the locksmith with him," announced the marshal a few minutes later, peering over the banisters. "Those government fellows act pretty swiftly when they make up their minds. We haven't the power that they have."
The inspector, arrived with the locksmith, ordered the latter to open the door.
Frank looked about him curiously as, the door once opened, all hands passed into the room beyond. Its tables were littered with envelopes, circulars and letters.
The big lodge chamber was partitioned off at one end by a cambric curtain. Here there was a couch, a small oil stove and some eatables and dishes, evidences of light housekeeping on the premises.
The inspector darted about from corner to corner, and into all the little apartments that had formerly been in service as lodge and rooms.
"H'm," he observed, coming back from his inspection to the others, "birds have flown."
He moved to an open window. Pendant from an iron shutter hinge was a strong portable knotted fire escape. Its ground end trailed into an inside court of the building.
"If you think you know the people who were here and who have certainly escaped," suggested the inspector to the marshal, "you had better get your men on their track before they leave town."
"All right," said the marshal glumly making for the door.
"Here, I'm in on that arrangement," observed Halsey.
The inspector with an eagle glance at the letters on the tables and a business-like air, sat down to look over a mass of correspondence lying before him. Frank went up to him.
"Can I be of any assistance to you, sir?" he asked.
"You helped in this thing. Yes, yes you can help me," said the inspector. "Take this note to the local postmaster, will you?"
The inspector wrote a few words on his own card. It summoned the postmaster. The inspector directed that official to deliver all future mail of the Wacker outfit to himself or his representative.
When the postmaster was gone the inspector impressed Frank into service. This consisted in sorting out the letters and taking down the names of the persons who had been swindled.
"Now you can go for the marshal, if you will," said the inspector, about an hour later.
Frank found that official just returned from an unsuccessful search for Dale Wacker and the old man with the big beard, his presumable partner, whom Stet had vaguely described to Frank.