“`Well,’ I said, `go and find it.’

“The hobo jerked out his limp hands in a sort of hopeless gesture.

“`Now, Governor,’ he whimpered, `what good would it do me to find them plates?’

“`You’d get five thousand dollars,’ I said.

“`I’d git kicked into the discard by the first cop that got to me,’ he answered, `that’s what I’d git.’

“The creature’s dirty, unshaved jowls began to shake, and his voice became wholly a whimper.

“`I’ve got a line on this thing, Governor, sure as there’s a hell.  That banker man was viewin’ the layout.  I’ve thought it all over, an’ this is the way it would be.  They’re afraid of the border an’ they’re afraid of the customhouses, so they runs the loot down here in an automobile, hides it up about the Inlet, and plans to go out with it to one of them fruit steamers passing on the way to Tampico.  They’d have them plates bundled up in a sailor’s chest most like.

“`Now, Governor, you’d say why ain’t they already done it?  An’ I’d answer, the main guy — this banker man — didn’t know the automobile had got here until he sent me to look, and there ain’t been no ship along since then . . . .  I’ve been special careful to find that out.’  And then the creature began to whine. `Have a heart, Governor, come along with me.  Gimme a show!’

“It was not the creature’s plea that moved me, nor his pretended deductions; I’m a bit old to be soft.  It was the `banker man’ sticking like a bur in the hobo’s talk.  I wanted to keep him in sight until I understood where he got it.  No doubt that seems a slight reason for going out to the Inlet with the creature; but you must remember that slight things are often big signboards in our business.”

He continued, his voice precise and even

“We went directly from the end of the Boardwalk to the old shed; it was open, an unfastened door on a pair of leather hinges.  The shed is small, about twenty feet by eleven, with a hard dirt floor packed down by the workmen who had used it; a combination of clay and sand like the Jersey roads put in to make a floor.  All round it, from the sea to the board fence, was soft sand.  There were some pieces of old junk lying about in the shed; but nothing of value or it would have been nailed up.

“The hobo led right off with his deductions.  There, was the track of a man, clearly outlined in the soft sand, leading from the board fence to the shed and returning, and no other track anywhere about.

“`Now, Governor,’ he began, when he had taken a look at the tracks, `the man that made them tracks carried something into this shed, and he left it here, and it was something heavy.’

“I was fairly certain that the hobo had salted the place for me, made the tracks himself; but I played out a line to him.

“`How do you know that?’ I said.

“`Well, Governor,’ he answered, `take a look at them two lines of tracks.  In the one comin’ to the shed the man was walkin’ with his feet apart and in the one goin’ back he was walkin’ with his feet in front of one another; that’s because he was carryin’ somethin’ heavy when he come an’ nothin’ when he left.’