“Lest you may entertain any erroneous suspicions, Mr. Alden, let me call up the proprietor of the hotel,” Deland added, rising to go to the telephone. “He knows me very well. He will vouch for me. He will assure you that I am entirely veracious and----” “Pardon!” Chick checked him with a gesture, rising to go. “Do nothing of the kind. Your word alone, Mr. Brooks, is quite sufficient. I had not the slightest idea that you know anything about the robbery. I thought merely that you might know Vaughn, or have heard of him.” “I do not, Mr. Alden, I assure you.” “I now am convinced of it, and am sorry I troubled you.” “No trouble whatever,” said Deland, extending his hand. “I am, on the contrary, very pleased we met you. Such episodes really amuse me. I hope to meet you again, Mr. Alden.” “We shall meet again, all right,” Chick said grimly to himself after departing. “We shall meet again, Mr. Deland, and I’ll then fit bracelets on your slender, white wrists. Bluff me, eh? Give me the laugh, will you? I’ll cram all that down your throat a little later. At the same time, by Jove, I give you credit for more nerve and audacity than any rascal I have recently met. But I’ll get you, all right, at the proper time.” Chick had only one reason for not arresting Deland then and there. The attitude of the rascal, together with the assurance he had displayed, convinced Chick that the stolen property had been disposed of in some locality felt to be perfectly safe, and that its recovery might be perverted by the immediate arrest of this couple. “I’ll wait a while and watch them,” he said to himself, while returning to the elevator. “I know that I have given them a fright, despite the coolness of both, and they surely will make some move that will put me in right.” Apprehending that it might be made immediately, Chick found concealment under the rise of stairs, from which he could see the door of suite 10. He waited and watched for more than an hour, but no one left or visited the suite, and he then returned to the hotel office and talked with the proprietor. The latter confirmed the statements already made by the clerk, that the couple had been occasional guests of the house during several months, and were supposed to be reputable Washington people. Beyond that, however, he knew nothing about them. “Deland is crafty,” thought Chick, after the interview. “He wanted to establish some place to which he could flee, if necessary, divested of the disguise he has been wearing in the character of Gerald Vaughn, and where his pretensions would be backed up in a measure by the hotel proprietor. That has been his object in coming here occasionally with Fannie Coyle. “But what has become of the dark woman I saw last night? It was she who left the Barker residence with Deland this morning. By Jove, I have it. Fannie Coyle was the housekeeper. She has been stopping here since her pretended death. I’ll have the entire gang, too, before I quit this trail.”