--when he telegraphed in
this way to the General Freight Agent. He had his facts well in hand. As
soon as Davidson's intimation had come to him to the effect that the
railroad officials were "standing in" with the proprietors of the
Quentin mine, he had telegraphed for Joe Arnold to come to him by a
train that would arrive at midnight. Joe Arnold was a detective of rare
gifts and, incidentally, a reporter on a Chicago newspaper. Captain
Will Hallam often had occasion to employ Joe, and thus Duncan had come
into acquaintance with the young man's peculiar abilities for finding
out things. Joe Arnold had an innocent, incurious, almost stupid
countenance that suggested a chronic desire for sleep rather than any
more alert characteristic. He had a dull, uninterested way of asking
questions which suggested the impulse of a vacuous mind to "keep the
talk going," rather than any desire to secure the information asked for.
Indeed, when he asked a question and it was not promptly answered, he
always hastened to say:

"Oh, it's of no consequence, and it's none of my business."

But before he quitted the presence of the man to whom the question had
been put, Joe Arnold usually had his answer.

To this man, when he came by the midnight train, Duncan said:

"I must know who are the stockholders in the Quentin mine--both those of
record and those whose names do not appear on the stock books. If
possible I must know also what each stockholder actually paid for his
shares. You must hurry. I must have this information by noon to-morrow.
You'll need to use money perhaps. Here's stake for expenses. Come back
on the noon train to-morrow."

And Joe Arnold came back, bringing with him quite all the information
that Guilford Duncan wanted, and considerably more. For he brought with
him transcripts of all the correspondence that had passed between the
railroad people and the mine proprietors, including a dispatch which the
General Freight Agent had sent a little after midnight that morning to
Napoleon Tandy, saying:

Hallam has got that sharp young fellow Duncan at work and, as you
are aware, he knows his business and his rights. I'm afraid he'll
make a formal proffer of freight and a demand for cars. I wish you
could come here, but of course you can't so long as you wish your
stockholdings in that mine down there and your relations with us to
be kept secret. Please telegraph any instructions you may wish.