Frederic Hoff had arrived back at the apartment, also on foot, some hours later than usual, and the motor had not been returned to its usual garage.  Frederic Hoff had appeared to be unusually elated about something.

Thomas Dean was in a doctor’s home somewhere up the Hudson with a broken arm and a bad scalp wound and was unable to tell what had become of either Miss Strong or the motorcycle.

Jane Strong had arrived home in a taxicab half an hour before Frederick Hoff, apparently unhurt but in a most peculiar condition of mind.  When Chief Fleck had called her on the ’phone she had refused to answer any questions.  The best he could get out of her was a promise that she would come to his office in the morning.

From this situation Fleck’s shrewd and experienced mind had been wholly unable to make any satisfactory deductions.  That something unforeseen and unusual had happened to the Hoffs he was certain.  It was the first time on a Wednesday that they had not returned together.  Whatever it was that had happened it had depressed old Otto and had been a cause of elation to Frederic.  What could it have been?  That was the poser.

Coupled with this was the annoying fact of Jane Strong’s sudden reticence.  Hitherto he had found her at all times ready and eager whenever he called on her—­ready to do anything he asked her, or to tell him everything.  Why had she suddenly balked?  He recalled that Dean had hinted, and Carter, too, that the girl was becoming interested in the younger of the Germans, yet he scouted the possibility of Jane having gone over to the enemy’s side.  A girl of her stock, living with her parents, with a brother fighting in France, never could be guilty of disloyalty, even if she were in love.  Yet how was her disinclination to talk to be accounted for?  After he had received a report that she was at home he had waited, expecting her to call him up.  When she had not done so, he had called her.  She had been positively curt and decisive.  She had nothing to say to him, she had replied, at present.  Dean was safe.  She would come to his office in the morning.  There was nothing for him to do but to await her arrival.

He was expecting Carter, too.  He had sent him to Nyack the evening before as soon as he had learned of Dean’s whereabouts.  Carter was to find out everything that Dean had learned and report as soon as he could.  It was Carter who arrived first.

“Dean doesn’t know what happened to him, nor where the girl went,” said Carter.  “They had lost the Hoffs’ trail at the Garrison ferry, as he told you over the ’phone.  They had to wait there half an hour for another boat.  They scouted around West Point, and nearly three hours afterward they picked up the trail heading toward New York.  About ten miles south of West Point they were clipping along a mountain road when something happened.  Dean is not sure whether he hit a stone in the road or whether an automobile struck them.  He was knocked unconscious and didn’t remember anything more until he came to and found the doctor setting his arm.”