came from a gambler named Mattie Sherwin, who reported that he had met
Binhart, two weeks before, in the café of the Brown Palace in Denver.
He was traveling under the name of Bannerman, wore his hair in a
pomadour, and had grown a beard.

Blake took the first train out of Chicago for Denver. In this latter
city an Elks' Convention was supplying blue-bird weather for
underground "haymakers," busy with bunco-steering, "rushing"
street-cars and "lifting leathers." Before the stampede at the news of
his approach, he picked up Biff Edwards and Lefty Stivers, put on the
screws, and learned nothing. He went next to Glory McShane, a Market
Street acquaintance indebted for certain old favors, and from her, too,
learned nothing of moment. He continued the quest in other quarters,
and the results were equally discouraging.

Then began the real detective work about which, Blake knew, newspaper
stories were seldom written. This work involved a laborious and
monotonous examination of hotel registers, a canvassing of ticket
agencies and cab stands and transfer companies. It was anything but
story-book sleuthing. It was a dispiriting tread-mill round, but he
was still sifting doggedly through the tailings of possibilities when a
code-wire came from St. Louis, saying Binhart had been seen the day
before at the Planters' Hotel.

Blake was eastbound on his way to St. Louis one hour after the receipt
of this wire. And an hour after his arrival in St. Louis he was
engaged in an apparently care free and leisurely game of pool with one
Loony Ryan, an old-time "box man" who was allowed to roam with a
clipped wing in the form of a suspended indictment. Loony, for the
liberty thus doled out to him, rewarded his benefactors by an