Neither of us could say a word.  What reason might there be why anyone should want Warrington’s love letters?  Was it to learn something that might be used to embarrass him?  Might it be for the purpose of holding him up for money?  Did the robber want them for himself or was he employed by another?  These and a score of other questions flashed, unanswered, through my mind.

“I wonder who this fellow is that they call the Chief?” I ventured at last.

“I can’t say—­yet,” admitted Garrick.  “But he’s the cleverest I have ever met.  His pace is rapid, but I think we are getting up with it, at last.  There’s no use sticking around here any longer, though.  The place for us, I think, is downtown, getting an earful at the other end of that detectaphone.”

The engines and other apparatus were rolling away from the fire when we regained the street and things were settling themselves down to normal again.

We rode downtown on the subway, and I was surprised when Garrick, instead of going all the way down to the crosstown line that would take us to the Old Tavern, got off at Forty-second Street.

“What’s the idea of this?” I asked.

“Do you think I’m going to travel around the city with that letter in my pocket?” he asked.  “Not much, since they seem to set such a value on getting it back.  Of course, they don’t know that I have it.  But they might suspect it.  At any rate I’m not going to run any chances of losing it.”

He had stopped at a well-known hotel where he knew the night clerk.  There he made the letter into a little package, sealed it, and deposited it in the safe.

“Why do you leave it here?” I asked.

“If I go near the office, they might think I left it there, and I certainly won’t leave it in my own apartment.  They may or may not suspect that I have it.  At any rate, I’d hate to risk meeting them down in their own region.  But here we are not followed.  I can leave it safely and to-morrow I’ll get it and deposit it in a really safe place.  Now, just to cover up my tracks, I’m going to call up Dillon, but I’m going up Broadway a bit before I do so, so that even he will not know I’ve been in this hotel.  I think he ought to know what has happened to-day.”

“What did he say?” I asked as Garrick rejoined me from the telephone booth, his face wearing a scowl of perplexity.

“Why, he knew about it already,” replied Garrick.  “I got him at his home.  Herman, it seems, got back from some wild-goose chase over in New Jersey and saw the report in the records filed at police headquarters and telephoned him.”

“Herman is one of the brightest detectives I ever met,” I commented in disgust.  “He always manages to get in just after everybody else.  Has he any more news?”

“About the car?” asked Garrick absently.  “Nothing except that he ran down the Pennsylvania report and found there was nothing in it.  Now he says that he thinks the car may have returned to New York, perhaps by way of Staten Island, for he doubts whether it could have slipped in by New Jersey.”