Irvine nearly spilled his coffee as he set it back on the tray. “Don’t you mean destinations, plural?”

“No. Destination, singular.” Curtis laughed softly. “In every instance, the furniture car from Denver went to San Francisco. I could find no record of it ever having been hauled to Denver or anywhere else. I can only assume it was a façade the bandit used to escape the posses.”

Bell stared at the writing on the blackboard. “I’ll bet a month’s pay that a check of furniture stores in Denver will prove O’Brian Furniture does not exist.”

“I think that goes without saying,” Irvine summed up.

Bell turned to Curtis. “When was the last Southern Pacific Railroad account of the car?”

“It was put on a siding in the San Francisco railyards two weeks ago. At my last inquiry, it was still there.”

“Then we’ve got to find and search it.”

“And stake it out,” said Irvine.

“That, too,” replied Bell. “But we must be very careful not to alert the bandit that we’re closing in on him.”

Curtis lit another cigarette. “I’ll leave on the first train in the morning for San Francisco.”

“Irvine and I will join you.” Bell then turned his attention to Irvine. “You mentioned that three bills turned up in San Francisco.”

Irvine nodded. “That’s right. One at the Cromwell National Bank of San Francisco and two at the Crocker National Bank.”

Bell smiled for the first time. “It would seem, gentlemen, all roads lead to San Francisco.”

“It’s beginning to look that way,” Curtis agreed, his enthusiasm growing.

The two agents stared expectantly at Bell as he studied the map with the flags marking the terrible crimes committed by the Butcher Bandit. The evidence was almost infinitesimal and could easily lead to dead ends. Yet there was satisfaction in what the three Van Dorn agents had gleaned. Meager as it was, they had little else to go on. But it was enough for a plan to form in Bell’s mind.

“It might be like betting on a plow horse at the racetrack, but I think we may have an opportunity to trap the bandit.”

“You have a plan?” asked Irvine.

“Suppose we plant stories in the local San Francisco newspapers revealing that a million-dollar payroll is being shipped by special train to a bank in a town populated by several thousand miners. The large amount would be because the mine owners have declared a special bonus for the workers to avert a threatened strike called by the miners’ union over the demand for substantially increased wages.”

Curtis pondered Bell’s proposition and said, “The bandit could easily check out the story and find it’s false.”

“Not if we have one of us sitting in the telegraph office when the inquiry comes in and give the appropriate reply.”

“We might even get lucky and discover who sent the telegram,” said Irvine.

Bell nodded. “There is that, too.”

Irvine gazed into his coffee cup as if he was a fortune-teller reading tea leaves.