“I don’t want to arrest him in that case,” said Old King Brady, “for if the girl gets away, we’ll have to keep the man watched in order to let him lead us to his daughter when she returns.  As she’s pretty sure to have all those diamonds with her, we can nab them with evidence on their persons, of their smuggling enterprise.”

Harry nodded and they hurried out together.

A hack was engaged and they rode over to the French Trans-Atlantic
Company’s pier on the North river.

By the time the cab reached the dock, however, the steamship’s mooring lines had been cast off, the gangplank was down and the vessel was being pulled out into the stream.

The detectives were disappointed.

Eagerly scanning the throng of passengers on the upper deck, they suddenly caught view of Clara La Croix.

The girl was standing in the stern waving her handkerchief and shouting to a stylishly-dressed middle-aged woman on the stringpiece: 

“Good-by, mamma!”

“Farewell, Clara—­be very careful of yourself, my child!” replied the woman, as she waved her handkerchief back at the girl.

Harry nudged Old King Brady.

“There’s her mother,” he muttered, “but La Croix has not shown up.  He fears arrest now, as he knows we are after him.”

“So much the better,” replied the old detective, drily.  “This woman won’t know us.  It will therefore be all the easier to follow her undetected.”

The steamship soon went down the river and the friends and relatives of the departing passengers began to leave the pier.

Mrs. La Croix was one of the last to go.  She did not know that the Bradys were close behind her.

CHAPTER V.

At A villain’s mercy.

The smuggler’s wife leisurely left the pier, crossed the street and went in the direction of Sixth avenue, on foot.

It did not seem to occur to her that she might be followed, for she never once glanced back in the direction she came from.

Old King Brady and his partner did not know much about the woman.

Whether she was actually concerned in La Croix’s smuggling games or not, they had not the faintest idea.

She was a fine-looking woman, tall and stately, with brown hair, blue eyes and handsome features.  But she seldom laughed.

Hers was one of those set, inscrutable faces, hard to read, for she seldom showed the emotions preying upon her mind.

“She don’t seem to fear detection,” commented Harry, as they walked along.  “She hasn’t made the slightest effort to conceal her actions.”

“Well,” replied the old detective, as he thoughtfully took a fresh quid of tobacco, “you must not forget that the woman isn’t aware of the fact that we are on her trail.”

“She certainly must be interested in her husband’s crooked work or she would not see her daughter off to Europe in this manner.  In fact, if she were not so greatly interested, I doubt if she would allow her child to make such a long, dangerous trip alone.”