"What Nolan testified wouldn't be any help," said Wharton. "They
would say it was just a story he invented to save me."

"Then square yourself this way," urged Rumson. "Send a note now by
hand to Ham Cutler and one to your sister. Tell them you're going
to Ida Earle's--and why--tell them you're afraid it's a frame-up,
and for them to keep your notes as evidence. And enclose the one
from her."

Wharton nodded in approval, and, while he wrote, Rumson and the
detective planned how, without those inside the road- house being
aware of their presence, they might be near it.

Kessler's Cafe lay in the Seventy-ninth Police Precinct. In
taxi-cabs they arranged to start at once and proceed down White
Plains Avenue, which parallels the Boston Road, until they were on
a line with Kessler's, but from it hidden by the woods and the
garages. A walk of a quarter of a mile across lots and under cover
of the trees would bring them to within a hundred yards of the
house.

Wharton was to give them a start of half an hour. That he might
know they were on watch, they agreed, after they dismissed the
taxi-cabs, to send one of them into the Boston Post Road past the
road-house. When it was directly in front of the cafe, the
chauffeur would throw away into the road an empty cigarette-case.

From the cigar-stand they selected a cigarette box of a startling
yellow. At half a mile it was conspicuous.