fixing to go back to the
pen, where you came from."

"You knew my record when you hired me. Chief Callahan gave it to you,
and I knew that he did. But that is neither here nor there; I want my
letter, and I want you to say in it that I am leaving to look for a
more favorable climate."

"And if I don't give it to you?--if I tell you to go straight plumb to
hell?"

"In that case I shall take all the chances--_all_ of them, mind
you---and write a letter to the Interstate Commerce Commission."

If the man had had a gun in his hands I believe he would have killed
me. There was manslaughter in his little gray, pig-like eyes. But he
recovered himself quickly.

"If you're that kind of a gink, I'm damned glad to get rid of you at
any price," he rasped; and then went to the district manager's desk and
wrote me the letter, "To Whom it may Concern," practically as I
dictated it.

That ended it, and when the letter was signed and flung across the desk
at me I lost no time in getting out of the noxious atmosphere of the
place. But before I was well out of the yard it occurred to me that I
had still left a loaded weapon in Mullins's hands. Though the threat
of exposure might tie him and his grafting coal company up, he could
still appeal to Callahan, who would doubtless find an excuse for
arresting me before I could leave town. And once in the hands of the
chief crook I should be lost.

Under the spur of this new menace I returned quickly to the coal
office, with some inchoate idea of trying to bully the scoundrelly
chief of police through the hold I had acquired upon the coal company.
The office was empty when I reached it, and at first I thought Mullins
had gone out. But at a second glance I saw that he was in the
telephone closet, the door of which he had left ajar. Overhearing my
own name barked into the transmitter, I listened without scruple.

"----Yes, Weyburn; that's what I'm telling you. He's flew the
coop. . . . Yes, he knows something--too damned much. . . . No, I
wouldn't snag him here; he might talk too loud and get somebody to
believe him--some fool in a Federal grand jury, for instance. Let him
go--with a plain-clothes man to find out where he heads for--and then
wire that outfit that piped him off when he came here. That'll settle
him."

There may have been more of it, but I did not wait to hear. Speed was
my best chance now, and I slipped out noiselessly and ran for the
railroad station. I