“You were!  How did you know about it?”

“Stumbled on to the story, the way most detectives solve their mysteries.  That is, I stumbled on some of it, and the rest I dug out for myself.  It won’t take long to explain and perhaps you better understand.  They told me at the office when I got back about the Seminole being tied up at the Municipal Pier, and that you had gone down there.  Well, I made it as quick as I could, but the yacht was three hundred yards out in the lake by the time I arrived.  There wasn’t a damn thing to take after it in, and, besides, just then, I didn’t really know any good police reason for chasing her.  First thing I did was to try and find you, so we could get our heads together.  But you wasn’t there, and so I naturally jumped to the conclusion you must have got aboard someway.  Say I combed that pier, believe me, West, and finally I ran across a kid who put me wise.  He saw you go across the deck, and into the cabin with two other guys.  They came out again, but you didn’t.  I pumped him until I got a pretty good description of both those fellows, and I decided one of them must be ‘Red’ Hogan, about the toughest gun-man in Chicago.”

“It was Hogan.”

“I made sure of that afterwards.  Then I got busy.  If you was in the hands of that guy, and his gang, the chances was dead against you.  But there wasn’t a darn thing I could do, except to hunt up Hobart, wire every town along the north shore to keep an eye out for the yacht, and pick up a thread or two around town.  I got a bit at that to wise me up.  We found Hobart hid away in a cheap hotel out on Broadway, and put a trailer on him.  The girl had disappeared; she’d been to a bank, and then to the Coolidge lawyer and signed some papers; after that we lost all trace of her for awhile.  Your man Sexton, out at ‘Fairlawn,’ reported that she hadn’t returned there.  Then I got desperate and decided I’d blow the whole thing to the Coolidge lawyer, and get him to take a hand.  I was afraid they were already for the get-a-way—­see?  I couldn’t round ’em up alone; besides I’m a Chicago police officer, and have to keep more or less on my own beat.”

“And you told the lawyer?”

“Everything I knew, and some I guessed at.  I thought the old guy would throw a fit, but he didn’t.  He came through game after the first shock.  But say, that dame had sold him out all right.  He never had an inkling anything was wrong; no more did the banks.  We went over, and talked to the president of one of them—­a smooth guy with white mutton chops—­and the girl had signed up the preliminary papers already, and tomorrow the whole boodle was going to drop softly into her lap.  Say, I felt better when I learned they hadn’t copped the swag yet.  But just the same I needed help.”

“And you got it?”

“Sure; those two duffers coughed up money in a stream.  Called in a detective agency, and gave me three operatives to work under me.  Got the chief on the wire, and made him give me a free hand.  Then I had a cinch.”