The $500 Check — page 280: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BERT OBTAINS AN IMPORTANT OCLEW. 261 that he is there now. I wish I could find some one that could tell me about the place.’’ ‘Mr. Pearson,’’ he said, when he met the associate manager at rehearsal, ‘‘can you tell me anything about Peoria ?”’ ““'Yes,’’ answered the actor. ‘*‘ What do you want to know about it ?”’ ‘* How large a place is it ?”’ ‘About the size of Harrisburg. I don’t believe there is a thousand difference in the population.”’ ‘*Ts it far from here ?”’ ‘¢A matter of six or seven hundred miles, I should think, perhaps a little more. It is southeast of Chicago. Why do you want to know ?”’ ‘‘T want to find a man who, I have reason to think, is now living there. I may have to leave the company, as it is very important for me to find this man.’’ | ‘‘There will be no occasion for you to leave the company. When we leave Harrisburg, we jump to Chicago, and probably three weeks from now we shall be playing in Peoria. It is our list of places, and is a very good city for (E(@) Al (E JOO <S