Whispering Smith, being logical, made no effort to decorate his domestic poverty. All his belongings were of a simple sort and his room was as bare as a Jesuit's. Moreover, his affairs, being at times highly particular, did not admit of the presence of a janitor in his quarters, and he was of necessity his own janitor. His iron bed was spread with a pair of Pullman blankets, his toilet arrangements included nothing more elaborate than a shaving outfit, and the mirror above his washstand was only large enough to make a hurried shave, with much neck-stretching, possible. The table was littered with letters, but it filled up one corner of the room, and a rocking-chair and a trunk filled up another. The floor was spread with a Navajo blanket, and near the head of the bed stood an old-fashioned wardrobe. This served not to ward Whispering Smith's robes, which hung for the most part on his back, but to accommodate his rifles, of which it contained an array that only a practised man could understand. The wardrobe was more, however, than an armory. Beside the guns that stood racked in precision along the inner wall, McCloud had once, to his surprise, seen a violin. It appeared out of keeping in such an atmosphere and rather the antithesis of force and violence than a complement for it. And again, though the rifles were disquietingly bright and effective-looking, the violin was old and shabby, hanging obscurely in its corner, as if, whatever it might have in common with its master, it had nothing in common with its surroundings. The door of the room in the course of many years had been mutilated with keyholes and reenforced with locks until it appeared difficult to choose an opening that would really afford entrance; but two men besides Whispering Smith carried keys to the room--Kennedy and George McCloud. They had right of way into it at all hours, and knew how to get in. McCloud had left the bridge camp on the river for Medicine Bend on the Saturday that Marion Sinclair--whose husband had finally told her he would give her one more chance to think it over--returned with Dicksie safely from their trip to the Frenchman ranch. Whispering Smith, who had been with Bucks and Morris Blood, got back to town the same day. The president and general manager were at the Wickiup during the afternoon, and left for the East at nine o'clock in the evening, when their car was attached to an east-bound passenger train. McCloud took supper afterward with Whispering Smith at a Front Street chop-house, and the two men separated at eleven o'clock. It was three hours later when McCloud tapped on the door of Smith's room, and in a moment opened it. "Awake, Gordon?" "Sure: come in. What is it?"