We could hear the Boss poking around in corners, back of the piles of accessories, back of the gasoline tank, lifting things up and looking under them, apparently flashing his light everywhere so that nothing could escape him.

A hasty exclamation was recorded faithfully over our detectaphone, close to the transmitter, evidently.

“What the deuce is this?” growled a voice.

Then over the telephone we could hear the Boss talking.

“There’s a round black thing back of a pile of tires, with a wire connected to it.  One side of it is full of little round holes.  Is that one of those things?”

“Yes,” came back the voice, “that’s it.”  Then excitedly, “Smash it!  Cut the wires—­no, wait—­look and see where they run.  I thought you’d find something.  Curse me for a fool for not thinking of that before.”

Garrick had quickly himself detached the wire from the receiving instrument in our room and, sticking his head cautiously out of the window, he swung the cut ends as far as he could in the direction of a big iron-shuttered warehouse down the street in the opposite direction from us.

Then he closed the window softly and pulled down the switch on the other detectaphone connected with the fake telephone receiver.

He smiled quietly at me.  The thing worked still.  We had one connection left with the garage, anyway.

There was a noise of something being shattered to bits.  It was the black disc back of the pile of tires.  We could hear the Boss muttering to himself.

“Say,” he reported back over the telephone, “I’ve smashed the thing, all right, and cut the wires, too.  They ran out of the back window to that mercantile warehouse, down the street, I think.  I’ll look after that in the morning.  It’s so dark over there now I can’t see a thing.”

“Good!” exclaimed the other voice with satisfaction.  “Now we can talk.  That fellow Garrick isn’t such a wise guy, after all.  I tell you, Boss, I’m going to throw a good scare into them this time—­ one that will stick.”

“What is it?”

“Well, I got Warrington, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“You know I can’t always be following that fellow, Garrick.  He’s too clever at dodging shadows.  Besides, unless we give him something else to think about he may get a line on one of us,—­on me.  Don’t you understand?  Warrington’s out of it for the present.  I saw to that.  Now, the thing is to fix up something to call them off, altogether, something that we can use to hold them up.”

“Yes—­go on—­what?”

“Why—­how about Violet Winslow?”

My heart actually skipped beating for a second or two as I realised the boldness and desperation of the plan.

“What do you mean—­a robbery up there in Tuxedo?”

“No, no, no.  What good would a robbery do?  I mean to get her—­ kidnap her.  I guess Warrington would call the whole thing off to release her—­eh?”