puzzled the soldier. He resumed his march up and down the corridor. The next room to the Keatcham suite was evidently held by an agent of the Fireless Cooking Stove, since one of his samples had strayed into the hall and was mutely proclaiming its own exceeding worth in very black letters on a very white placard.

[107]“If the young man and the valet are straight goods, the key will come up reasonably soon from the office,” thought the watcher.

[107]

Sure enough, the keys, in the hands of Winter’s own spy, appeared before he had waited three minutes. He reported that the old gentleman got into a cab with his secretary and the valet, and the other gentlemen took another cab. The secretary paid the bill. Had he gone sooner than expected? No; he had engaged the rooms until Thursday night; this was Thursday night.

The colonel asked about the next room, which was directly on the cross corridor leading to the elevator. The detective had been instructed to watch it. How long had the Fireless Cooking Stove man had it? There was no meat for suspicion in the answer. The stove man had come the day before the Keatcham party. He was a perfectly commonplace, good-looking young man, representing the Peerless Fireless Cooking Stove with much picturesque eloquence; he had sold a lot of stoves to people in the hotel, and he tried without much success to tackle “old Keatcham”; he had attacked even the sleuth himself. “He gave me a mighty good cigar, too,” chuckled the red-headed one.

[108]“Hmn, you got it now?”

[108]

“Only the memory,” the boy grinned.

“You ought to have kept it, Birdsall would tell you; you are watching every one in these rooms. Did it have a necktie? And did you throw that away?”

“No, sir, I kept that; after I got to smoking, I just thought I’d keep it.”

When he took the tiny scrap of paper from his pocket-book the colonel eyed it grimly. “‘A de Villar y Villar,’” he read, with a slight ironic inflection. “Decidedly our young Fireless Stove promoter smokes good cigars!”

“Maybe Mr. Keatcham gave it to him. He was in there.”

“Was he? Oh, yes, trying to sell his stove—but not succeeding?”

“He said he was trying to get past the valet and the secretary; he thought if he could only 

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