“I called the police again and they said descriptions was being sent out, and that probably I’d better not worry, because they often had cases like this.  And I offered to bet them they hadn’t a case since Yonkers was first thought of that had meant so much spot cash to ’em as this one would mean the minute I got a good grip on them kids.  So this cop said mebbe they had better worry a little, after all, and they’d send out two cars of their own and scour the country, and try to find the conductor of this street car that the neighbour woman had seen the kids get on to.

“I r’ared round that house till the auto come that I’d ordered.  It was late coming, naturally, and nearly dark when it got there; but we covered a lot of miles while the daylight lasted, with the man looking sharp out along the road, too, because he had three kids of his own that would do any living thing sometimes, though safe at home and asleep at that minute, thank God!

“It was moisting when we started, and pretty soon it clouded up and the dark came on, and I felt beat.  We got fair locoed.  We’d go down one road and then back the same way.  We stopped to ask everybody.  Then we found the two autos sent out by the police.  I told the cops again what would happen to ’em from me the minute the kids was found—­the kids or their bodies.  I was so despairing—­what with that damned plumber and everything!  I’ll bet he’s the merry chatterbox in his own home.  The police said cheer up—­nothing like that, with the country as safe as a church.  But we went over to this Blackhanders’ construction camp, just the same, to make sure, and none of the men was missing, the boss said, and no children had been seen; and anyway his men was ordinary decent wops and not Blackhanders—­and blamed if about fifty of ’em didn’t turn out to help look!  Yes, sir, there they was—­foreigners to the last man except the boss, who was Irish—­and acting just like human beings.

“It was near ten o’clock now; so we went to a country saloon to telephone police headquarters, and they had found the car conductor, he remembering because he had threatened to put the boy scout off the car if he didn’t quit pointing his gun straight at an old man with gold spectacles setting across the aisle.  And finally they had got off themselves about three miles down the road; he’d watched ’em climb over a stone wall and start up a hill into some woods that was there.  And he was Conductor Number Twenty-seven, if we wanted to know that.

“We beat it to that spot after I’d powdered my nose and we’d had a quick round of drinks.  The policemen knew where it was.  It wasn’t moisting any more—­it was raining for fair; and we done some ground-and-lofty skidding before we got there.  We found the stone wall all right and the slope leading up to the woods; but, my Lord, there was a good half mile of it!  We strung out—­four cops and my driver and me—­hundreds of yards apart and all yelling, so maybe the poor lost things would hear us.