“The Chief has gone up-state,” remarked Garrick, piecing together the conversation where we had broken into it.

“We had to hustle to make that boat,” remarked a voice which I recognised as that of one of the men.

“But she got off all right, didn’t she?”

“Sure—­he had the tickets and everything, and her baggage had already gone aboard.”

“That’s Lucille, I suppose,” supplied Garrick.  “No doubt part of her bribe for getting Miss Winslow into their power was free passage back to France.  We can’t stop to take up her case, yet.”

“My—­but the Chief was mad,” continued the voice of the man who must have been not only a machinist but a chauffeur when occasion demanded.  “He had a package of letters.  I don’t know what they were—­looked as if they might be from some woman.”

“What did he do with them?” asked the Boss in a tone that showed that he knew something, at least, about them already.

“Why, he was so mad after that fellow Garrick and the other fellow beat him out, that when we went down along West Street to the boat with that other woman, he tore them up and threw them in the river.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Why, I tell you he was mad.  He tore ’em up and threw them in the river.  I think he said there wasn’t a damn thing in ’em except a lot of mush, anyhow.”

An amused smile crossed Garrick’s face as he added, parenthetically, “Good-bye to Warrington’s love letters that they took from his safe.”

“At least there has been nothing they managed to get that night of the fire that they have been able to use against Warrington,” I remarked, with satisfaction.

“Listen,” cautioned Garrick.  “What’s that they are saying?  Someone has told the Boss—­he’s talking—­that they can go over Dillon’s head and get back all the gambling paraphernalia?  Well, I’ve been there, at the raided place, to-day, and it doesn’t look so.  The stuff has all been taken down to headquarters.  Ah, so that is the game that is in the wind, is it?  Get it all back by a court order and open somewhere else.  Here’s our boy.”

The improvised newsboy had apparently stuck his head in the door as he had been instructed, for we could hear them greet him with a growl, until he yelled lustily, “Extry, special extry!  All about the big gambling exposure!  Warrants out!  Extry!”

“Hey, you kid,” came a voice from the detectaphone, “let’s see that paper.  What is it—­the Star?  Well, I’ll be—!  Read that.  Someone’s snitched to the district attorney, I’ll bet.  That’ll make the Chief sore, all right—­and he’s ’way up in the country, too.  I don’t dare wire it to him.  No, someone’ll have to take a copy of this paper up there to him and tip him off.  He’ll be redheaded if he doesn’t know about it.  He was the last time anything happened.  Hurry up.  Finish with this car.  I’ll take it myself.”

Garrick laughed, almost gleefully.