“The plant has begun to work,” he cried.  “We’ll wait here until just before he’s ready to start.  Three of us around our car on the street are too many.  He must be getting ready for a long run.”

“How much gas is there in this tank?” the gruff voice of the Boss demanded.  “You dummy—­not two gallons!  No, you finish what you’re doing.  I’ll fill it myself.  There isn’t any time for fooling now.”

There was the steady trickle of the stream of gasoline as he drew it.

“Any extra tires?  What!  Not a new shoe in the place?  Give me a couple of the best of those old ones.  Never mind.  Here are two over by the telephone.  Say, what the devil is this wire back here--cut in on the telephone wire?  Well,—­rip it out!  That’s some more of that fellow Garrick’s work.  We got rid of one thing the other night.  Well, thank heaven, I didn’t have any telephone calls to-day.  While I’m gone, you go over this place thoroughly.  God knows how many other things he may have put in here.”

“Confound it!” muttered Garrick, as a pair of pliers made our second detectaphone die with an expiring gasp in the middle of a sentence of profanity.

“Come on, Tom,” he shouted.

There was no use now in remaining any longer in the room.  Gathering up the receiving apparatus, Garrick quickly carried it down and tossed it into the waiting car around the corner.  Then he sent Warrington’s man to hang around, up the street, and watch what was going on at the garage.

Garrick was to drive the car himself, and we were going to leave Warrington’s man behind.  We could tell by the actions of the man as he stood down the street that something was taking place at the garage.

We could hear a horn blow, and I knew that the doors had opened and a big car had been backed out, slowly.  Our own engine was running perfectly in spite of the seeming trouble with which we had covered up our delay.  Garrick jumped in at the wheel, and I followed.  The man on the corner was signalling that the car was going in the opposite direction.  We leaped ahead.

As the big car ahead slipped along eastward, we followed at such a distance as not to attract attention.  It was easy enough to do that, but not so easy to avoid getting tied up among the trucks laden with foodstuffs of every description which blocked the streets over in this part of town.

Where the car ahead was bound, we did not know, but I could see that the driver was a stocky fellow, who slouched down into his seat, and handled his car almost as if it had been a mere toy.  It was, I felt positive, the man whom McBirney had reported one night about the neighbourhood of Longacre Square in the car which had once been Warrington’s.  This, at least, was a different car, I knew.  Now I realised the wisdom of allowing this man, whom they called the Boss, to go free.  Under the influence of Garrick’s “plant,” he was to lead us to the right trail to the Chief.