her transported for life if she breathed a word.
Mebbe she didn't suspect anything after all. Tilly ain't so very bright.
So at length I continues my researches into every nook and cranny of the
den, and jest as I was about to abandon the trail, baffled and beaten at
every turn, what should I git but an idee to look at some papers lyin'
in plain sight on the table at the head of the bed."

"Well, out with it!" I thought Solon was growing a little impatient. But
Billy controlled the situation with a firm hand.

"It's an old trick," he continued, "one that's fooled many a better man
than Billy Durgin--leavin' the dockaments carelessly exposed like they
didn't amount to anything; but havin' the well-known tenacity of a
bloodhound, I was not to be thwarted. Well--to make a long story
short--"

Solon brightened wonderfully.

"I have to admit that my first suspicion was incorrect. He ain't the one
that done that Lima, Ohio, job and carried off them eight hundred
dollars' worth of stamps--"

"But what _did_ he do?"

"Well, I got a clew to another past of his--"

"What is it? Let's have it!"

Billy was still not to be driven faster than a detective story should
move.

We heard, and dimly saw, him engaged with a metallic object which he
drew from under his coat. We were silent. Then we heard him say:--

"My lamp's went out--_darn_ these matches!"

At last he seemed to light something. He unfolded a bit of paper before
us and triumphantly across its surface he directed the rays of a
bull's-eye lantern. This was his climax. We studied the paper.

"Billy," said Solon, after a pause, "this looks like a good night's
work. True, it may come to naught. We may still be baffled, foiled,
thwarted at every turn--and yet something tells me that the man is in
our power--that by this precious paper we may yet bring the scoundrel to
his knees in prayers for our mercy, craven with fear at our knowledge."

"Say," said Billy, stung to admiration by this flow of the right sort of
talk, "Mr. Denney, did you ever read 'Little Rosebud, or is Beauty a
Curse to a Poor Girl?' That sounded just like the detective in that--you
remember--where he's talkin' to Clarence Armytage just after he's
overheard the old lawyer tell Mark Vinton, the villain, 'If this child
lives, you are a beggar!' Remember that?"

"Why, no, Billy. I must get that, first thing in the morning. My tribute
to your professional skill was wholly spontaneous, though perha