Outside, Shirley enjoyed the stimulus of the bracing early morning air.  A new inspiration seemed to fire him, altogether dissimilar to the glow which he was wont to feel when plunging into a dangerous phase of a professional case.  He slowly drew from his pocket the typed note-paper which had nestled in such enviable intimacy with that courageous heart.  The faint fragrance of her exquisite flesh clung to it still.  He held it to his lips and kissed it.  Then he stopped, to turn about and look upward at the tall hostelry behind him.  High up below the renaissance cornice he beheld the lights glow forth in the rooms which he knew were Helene’s.

As he hurried to the club, he muttered angrily to himself:  “I have made one discovery, at least, in this unusual exploit.  I find that I have lost what common sense I possessed when I became a Freshman at college!”

CHAPTER XVIII

ON THE RISING TIDE

A hurried message to the Holland Agency brought four plain clothes men from the private reserve, under the leadership of superintendent Cleary.  Monty met them at the doorway of the club house, wearing a rough and tumble suit.

They sped downtown, toward the East River, the criminologist on the seat where he could direct the driver.  At Twenty-sixth Street, near the docks, they dismounted and Shirley gave his directions to the detectives.

“I want you to slide along these doorways, working yourselves separately down the water front until you are opposite the yacht club landing.  I will work on an independent line.  You must get busy when I shoot, yell or whistle,—­I can’t tell which.  As the popular song goes, ’You’re here and I’m here, so what do we care?’ This is a chance for the Holland Agency to get a great story in the papers for saving young Van Cleft from the kidnappers.”

He left them at the corner, and crossing to the other pavement, began to stagger aimlessly down the street, looking for all the world like a longshoreman returning home from a bacchanalian celebration from some nearby Snug Harbor.  It was a familiar type of pedestrian in this neighborhood at this time of the morning.

“That guy’s a cool one, Mike,” said Cleary to one of his men.  “These college ginks ain’t so bad at that when you get to know ’em with their dress-suits off.”

“He’s a reg’lar feller, that’s all,” was Mike’s philosophical response.  “Edjication couldn’t kill it in ’im.”

A hundred yards offshore was the beautiful steam yacht of the Van Clefts’, the “White Swan.”  Lights on the deck and a few glowing portholes showed unusual activity aboard.  Shirley’s hint to Warren about the contemplated trip to southern climes was the exact truth.  Naked truth, he had found, was ofttimes a more valuable artifice than Munchausen artistry of the most consummate craft!  The longshoreman, apparently befuddled in his bearings, wandered toward the dock, which protruded into the river, a part of the club property.  He staggered, tumbled and lay prostrate on the snowy planks.