=Roscoe=, sheriff of Burleigh County, who plays a small but very important part.
The postman dropped a letter on the desk in front of the little old man on the high stool, and the door slammed. Prebbles picked up the letter and blinked at it. For a while he sat staring like a person in a dream, then a gasp escaped his lips, and he slipped from the stool and carried the letter closer to the window.
It was almost sunset, and a neighboring building shut off the light, but there, close to the dusty window pane, the light was good enough. The letter dropped from Prebbles' shaking hand, and he fell back against the wall.
"It's from _him_," the old man mumbled; "it's--it's----"
The words died on his lips, and a choking gurgle arose in his throat. Trembling like a man with the palsy, Prebbles pulled himself together and staggered to the water cooler. He drew himself a glass, and the tumbler rattled against his teeth as he drank.
"This won't do," he said to himself, drawing a hand across his forehead in a dazed and bewildered way. "I've got to brace up, that's what I have. But what's Newt writing to _him_ for? I--I can't understand that."
Prebbles went back and picked up the letter. He was still greatly shaken, although he was getting firmer hold of himself by swift degrees.
It was a very ordinary appearing letter to have aroused such an extraordinary state of mind in the old man. The address, in a peculiar backhand, was to "Mr. Amos Murgatroyd, Loan Broker, Jamestown, North Dakota."
Prebbles was Murgatroyd's clerk, and the only clerk in the loan office. For several weeks Murgatroyd had not been in Jamestown, and the work of the office--what little there was--fell to Prebbles.
During those weeks of absence, the broker had been doing unlawful things. Prebbles, knowing his employer well, expected nothing better of him; but just what Murgatroyd had been doing, the old clerk did not know.
Strange men, who might be detectives in disguise, were watching the office night and day. Prebbles had been keen enough to discover that.
It was the peculiar handwriting of the letter that had had such a powerful effect upon the old clerk. Not one man in a thousand, perhaps in ten thousand, used a pen as the writer of that letter to the broker had used it. Prebbles felt sure that he could not be mistaken--that there was not the least possibility of a mistake. He knew who the writer of the letter was, and for weeks the old man's dream by day and night was that he could discover the whereabouts of the man.