“Very well,” retorted Owen grimly; “I’ve given you fellows notice; now, if you go ahead and get caught, you’ve got only yourselves to blame. I know that there is such a crooked scheme afoot, and I’m going to find out the name of the victim and put him on his guard.” CHAPTER V. A STRONG LEAD. Owen began by watching Carrier Greene as he stood at his case sorting out the mail preparatory to starting out on the first delivery. He thought he might be able to see him withdraw and pocket the desired letters, and thereby get an important clew; but Greene made no such compromising move. Owen maintained the same close watch when Gordon and Smithers were at the sorting cases, but these vigils were not productive of results. Either the letters which Coggswell wanted had not yet shown up, or the three carriers were too cautious to abstract them in the post office, preferring to wait until they had them in the bags and were out on the street, where they could get at them without being observed. It was a headline on the front page of a morning newspaper which at length set Owen on the right track. This headline read: “Judge Lawrence to Fight Coggswell.--Former Supreme-court Judge Preparing to Wrest District Leadership from Boss at Coming Primaries. Coggswell Said to be Seriously Alarmed by Plan to Dethrone Him.” Now, part of postal route forty-eight was a row of brownstone private residences, and in one of these lived the Honorable Sugden Lawrence, former supreme-court judge, and now a lawyer of considerable prominence. Owen decided that this was the man whose mail Boss Coggswell wished to intercept. In the first place, if, as the newspaper stated, Judge Lawrence was threatening to wrest the district leadership from its present incumbent, was it not exceedingly likely that the latter would be anxious to “get something on” his prospective opponent--some scandal which could be used to crush the enemy? With such an object in view, secret access to a man’s private correspondence would be a valuable factor. Many a family skeleton has been revealed by this means, many a public career has been ruined by means of a purloined letter. In the second place--and this was, in his opinion, the strongest argument in favor of his theory--Owen happened to know that Henderson, the superintendent of Branch X Y, had a brother who was a clerk in Judge Lawrence’s office. Owen had wondered until now why Boss Coggswell, in his desire to tamper with somebody’s mail, had not gone direct to Henderson, and had the thing done right in the post office, before the mail was handed to the carriers.