suspicion that the piece was not wholly serious, he had only to
remember the intense seriousness of his own part and the always
serious manner of Baird in directing his actors. And indeed there
were but few moments when he was even faintly pricked by this
suspicion. It seemed a bit incongruous that Hoffmeyer, the
delicatessen merchant, should arrive on a bicycle, dressed in cowboy
attire save for a badly dented derby hat, and carrying a bag of golf
clubs; and it was a little puzzling how Hoffmeyer should have been
ruined by his son's mad act, when it would have been shown that the
money was returned to him. But Baird explained carefully that the
old man had been ruined some other way, and was demented, like the
poor old mother who had gone over the hills after her children had
left the home nest. And assuredly in Merton's own action he found
nothing that was not deeply earnest as well as strikingly dramatic.
There was the tense moment when a faithful cowboy broke upon the
festivities with word that a New York detective was coming to search
for the man who had robbed the Hoffmeyer establishment. His friends
gathered loyally about Merton and swore he would never be taken from
them alive. He was induced to don a false mustache until the
detective had gone. It was a long, heavy black mustache with curling
tips, and in this disguise he stood aloof from his companions when
the detective entered.

The detective was the cross-eyed man, himself now disguised as
Sherlock Holmes, with a fore-and-aft cloth cap and drooping blond
mustache. He smoked a pipe as he examined those present. Merton was
unable to overlook this scene, as he had been directed to stand with
his back to the detective. Later it was shown that he observed in a
mirror the Mexican whom he had punished creeping forward to inform
the detective of his man's whereabouts. The coward's treachery cost