I thought I knew Mr. Cooke, and I was not mistaken.

“Authorities!” he roared.  “Damn the authorities!  There’s my yacht, and there’s the Canadian border.”  And he pointed to the north.

The others were pressing around us by this time, and had caught the significant words which Mr. Cooke had uttered.  I imagine that if my client had stopped to think twice, which of course is a preposterous condition, he would have confided his discovery only to Farrar and to me.  It was now out of the question to keep it from the rest of the party, and Mr. Trevor got the headlines over my shoulder.  I handed him the sheet.

“Read it, Mr. Trevor,” said Mrs. Cooke.

Mr. Trevor, in a somewhat unsteady voice, read the headlines and began the column, and they followed breathless with astonishment and agitation.  Once or twice the senator paused to frown upon the Celebrity with a terrible sternness, thus directing all other eyes to him.  His demeanor was a study in itself.  It may be surmised, from what I have said of him, that there was a strain of the actor in his composition; and I am prepared to make an affidavit that, secure in the knowledge that he had witnesses present to attest his identity, he hugely enjoyed the sensation he was creating.  That he looked forward with a profound pleasure to the stir which the disclosure that he was the author of The Sybarites would make.  His face wore a beatific smile.

As Mr. Trevor continued, his voice became firmer and his manner more majestic.  It was a task distinctly to his taste, and one might have thought he was reading the sentence of a Hastings.  I was standing next to his daughter.  The look of astonishment, perhaps of horror, which I had seen on her face when her father first began to read had now faded into something akin to wickedness.  Did she wink?  I can’t say, never before having had a young woman wink at me.  But the next moment her vinaigrette was rolling down the bank towards the brook, and I was after it.  I heard her close behind me.  She must have read my intentions by a kind of mental telepathy.

“Are you going to do it?” she whispered.

“Of course,” I answered.  “To miss such a chance would be a downright sin.”

There was a little awe in her laugh.

“Miss Thorn is the only obstacle,” I added, “and Mr. Cooke is our hope.  I think he will go by me.”

“Don’t let Miss Thorn worry you,” she said as we climbed back.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.  But she only shook her head.  We were at the top again, and Mr. Trevor was reading an appended despatch from Buffalo, stating that Mr. Allen had been recognized there, in the latter part of June, walking up and down the platform of the station, in a smoking-jacket, and that he had climbed on the Chicago limited as it pulled out.  This may have caused the Celebrity to feel a trifle uncomfortable.

“Ha!” exclaimed Mr. Trevor, as he put down the paper.  “Mr. Cooke, do you happen to have any handcuffs on the Maria?”