When the detectives reached the platform, the train was steaming away and they saw their enemies in the last car.

“That’s the end of them!” said Old King Brady.

“Can’t we have them headed off by telephoning down to the Battery station?” eagerly asked the boy.

“Might try.”

Down the street they went and as there was a public telephone near by, they sent the message down.

Then they took the next train down.

The train on which the fugitives stopped was yet at the Battery station and they found the gateman of the last car and Harry asked him: 

“Did you notice where the four men in black, and a hatless girl of sixteen who got on at the Bleecker street station alighted?”

“Oh, yes.  I remember them.  They only rode one station and got off at Grand street.”

This reply gave the Bradys a shock.

“We are baffled!” exclaimed Old King Brady in disgust.

“They’re a shrewd set,” Harry added.

They spoke to the stationmaster too, but he said they had not come down to the Battery and repeated what the gateman said.

The Bradys rode back to Grand street.

Here they made careful and endless inquiries.

All the information they could get came from the boy who had the news-stand on the corner.

He had seen the fugitives.

They had boarded a Grand street car going eastward.

He did not notice the number of the car, but thought the officers would find it down at the ferry.

Hiring a cab they were driven fast.

Reaching the ferry, several blue cars were found.

Inquiry among the conductors followed, and they presently discovered the one on whose car Clara and the spies had ridden.

He informed them that the fugitives alighted at the Bowery with transfer tickets on the uptown side.

Back went the Bradys to the Bowery.

“If we stick to their trail long enough,” commented Harry, “we may finally locate them.  But it’s going to be a hard job.”

“We’ll beat the car they’re in by taking the elevated,” said the old detective as he dismissed the cab.  “Up at the stables we may learn which car passed Grand street quarter of an hour ago.”

“It’s worth while trying.”

So up they went.

When they reached the stable, they were disgusted to find that the cars which passed the corner of Grand and the Bowery about the time the smugglers boarded one, were all gone ten minutes before.

But one more course was open to the detectives.

That was to proceed to Harlem bridge on the elevated and make another effort to head off the fugitives at the terminal of the road.

Once more they started.

Each defeat whetted their appetite more to capture the fugitives.

The elevated cars passed many of the surface cars, and when the 129th street station was reached, they went down to the street.