Kennedy nodded approval of the suggestion.  “I’ll fix that,” he replied, anxious to return to his photographic labours.  “Meet me, both of you, on the road from the station at Woodbine, just as it is getting dusk.”  Without another word he disappeared into the dark room.

We met him that night as he had requested.  He had come up to Woodbine in the baggage-car of the train with a powerful dog, for all the world like a huge, grey wolf.

“Down, Schaef,” he ordered, as the dog began to show an uncanny interest in me.  “Let me introduce my new dog-detective,” he chuckled.  “She has a wonderful record as a police-dog.”

We were making our way now through the thickening shadows of the town to the outskirts.  “She’s a German sheep-dog, a Schaferhund,” he explained.  “For my part, it is the English bloodhound in the open country and the sheep-dog in the city and the suburbs.”

Schaef seemed to have many of the characteristics of the wild, prehistoric animal, among them the full, upright ears of the wild dog which are such a great help to it.  She was a fine, alert, upstanding dog, hardy, fierce, and literally untiring, of a tawny light brown like a lioness, about the same size and somewhat of the type of the smooth-coated collie, broad of chest and with a full brush of tail.

Untamed though she seemed, she was perfectly under Kennedy’s control, and rendered him absolute and unreasoning obedience.

At the cemetery we established a strict watch about the Phelps mausoleum and the swamp which lay across the road, not a difficult thing to do as far as concealment went, owing to the foliage.  Still, for the same reason, it was hard to cover the whole ground.  In the shadow of a thicket we waited.  Now and then we could hear Schaef scouting about in the underbrush, crouching and hiding, watching and guarding.

As the hours of waiting in the heavily laden night air wore on, I wondered whether our vigil in this weird place would be rewarded.  The soughing of the night wind in the evergreens, mournful at best, was doubly so now.  Hour after hour we waited patiently.

At last there was a slight noise from the direction opposite the mausoleum and toward the swamp next to the cemetery.

Kennedy reached out and drew us back into the shadow deeper.  “Some one is prowling about, approaching the mausoleum on that side, I think,” he whispered.

Instantly there recurred to me the thought I had had earlier in the day that perhaps, after all, the five thousand dollars of hush money, for whatever purpose it might be extorted, had been buried in the swamp by Mrs. Phelps in her anxiety.  Had that been what she was concealing?  Perhaps the blackmailer had come to reconnoitre, and, if the money was there, to take it away.

Schaef, who had been near us, was sniffing eagerly.  From our hiding-place we could just see her.  She had heard the sounds, too, even before we had, and for an instant stood with every muscle tense.