Page:The Wire Devils.djvu/27

 Lanson frowned perplexedly.

"I don't get you, MacVightie," he said.

"Suppose they were being struck off around here," suggested MacVightie curtly. "I don't say they are, but suppose it were so. They'd likely be shoved out as far away from this locality as possible, wouldn't they—back East, say. They're so good that a jag of them got by before they began to be detected—and now suppose we assume that they're beginning to sift back around the country."

"Well?"

"Well"—MacVightie caught the superintendent up quickly—"I didn't say I could prove it; but, coupled with the fact that I happen to know that the police have traced the work back to somewhere west of Chicago, I've got a hunch that the gang that is operating around here and the crowd that is turning out the phony money is the same outfit. The Lord knows"—he smiled bitterly—"they're clever enough! And to go back to those messages now. If there was anything in them at all, anything more than some irresponsible idiot tampering with a key somewhere, we were face to face, not with a mere gang of train robbers, but with an organised criminal league as dangerous and powerful as has ever existed in this country—and that's what made me hesitate. We couldn't afford to take any chances, to start out after a mare's nest, and we had to make as nearly sure of our ground as possible before we played a card. We went on the principle that if it was only somebody playing the goat, he'd get tired of it before long if