Larry asked if he might bring a friend with him, but the request--as he had expected--was promptly refused. The would-be blackmailers were too clever to allow first-hand evidence to be produced against them. They wished to deal only with principals or, as madame informed him over the phone, "the message was of such a nature that only he should hear it." "Very well," replied Simmons, "I'll be there at eleven this evening." It was not his purpose to force the issue at this time. In fact, he planned to submit to the first demand for money and trust to the confidence which this would inspire to render the blackmailers less cautious in the future. But something occurred which upset the entire scheme and, for a time at least, threatened disaster to the Post-office schemes. Thinking that it might be well to look the ground over before dark, Larry strolled out to Madame Ahara's about five o'clock in the afternoon and took up his position on the opposite side of the street, studying the house from every angle. While he was standing there a man came out--a man who was dressed in the height of fashion, but whose face was somehow vaguely familiar. The tightly waxed mustache and the iron-gray goatee seemed out of place, for Simmons felt that the last time he had seen the man he had been clean shaven. "Where was it?" he thought, as he kept the man in sight, though on the opposite side of the street. "New York? No. Washington? Hardly. Saint Louis? No, it was somewhere where he was wearing a cap--a cap that was water-stained and ... I've got it! In Saint Joseph! The man who committed suicide the night I went to arrest him for attempting to defraud the Pension Bureau! It's he, sure as shooting!" But just as Simmons started to cross the street the traffic cop raised his arm, and when the apparently interminable stream of machines had passed, the man with the mustache was nowhere to be seen. He had probably slipped into one of the near-by office buildings. But which? That was a question which worried Larry for a moment or two. Then he came to the conclusion that there was no sense in trying to find his man at this moment. The very fact that he was in Seattle was enough. The police could find him with little difficulty. But what had Holden been doing at the clairvoyant's? Had he fallen into the power of the ring or was it possible that he was one of the blackmailers himself? The more Larry thought about the matter, the more he came to the conclusion that here was an opportunity to kill two birds with a single stone--to drive home at least the entering wedge of the campaign against the clairvoyants and at the same time to land the man who had eluded him seven years before. The plan which he finally evolved was daring, but he realized that the element of time was essential. Holden must not be given another opportunity to slip through the net.