“We’re fairly up against it, boss,” Laura sighed. “The best thing we can do is to get on to another job. The Rheinholdt woman has got her jewels back, or will have at noon to-day. I bet she won’t worry about the thief. Then the Professor’s mouldy old skeleton was returned to him, even if it was burnt up afterwards. I should take on something fresh.”
“Can’t be done,” Quest replied shortly. “Look here, girls, your average intellects are often apt to hit upon the truth, when a man who sees too far ahead goes wrong. Rule Craig out. Any other possible person occur to you?—Speak out, Lenora. You’ve something on your mind, I can see.”
The girl swung around in her chair. There was a vague look of trouble upon her face.
“I’m afraid you’ll laugh at me,” she began tentatively.
“Won’t hurt you if I do,” Quest replied.
“I can’t help thinking of Macdougal,” Lenora continued falteringly. “He has never been recaptured, and I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive. He had a perfect passion for jewels. If he is alive, he would be desperate and would attempt anything.”
Quest smoked in silence for a moment.
“I guess the return of the jewels squelches the Macdougal theory,” he remarked. “He wouldn’t be likely to part with the stuff when he’d once got his hands on it. However, I always meant, when we had a moment’s spare time, to look into that fellow’s whereabouts. We’ll take it on straight away. Can’t do any harm.”
“I know the section boss on the railway at the spot where he disappeared,” Laura announced.
“Then just take the train down to Mountways—that’s the nearest spot—and get busy with him,” Quest directed. “Try and persuade him to loan us the gang’s hand-car to go down the line. Lenora and I will come on in the automobile.”
“Take you longer,” Lenora remarked, as she moved off to put on her jacket. “The cars do it in half an hour.”
“Can’t help that,” Quest replied. “Mrs. Rheinholdt’s coming here to identify her jewels at twelve o’clock, and I can’t run any risk of there being no train back. You’d better be making good with the section boss. Take plenty of bills with you.”
“Sure! That’s easy enough,” Laura promised him. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
She hurried off and Quest commenced his own preparations. From his safe he took one of the small black lumps of explosive to which he had once before owed his life, and fitted it carefully in a small case with a coil of wire and an electric lighter. He looked at his revolver and recharged it. Finally he rang the bell for his confidential valet.
“Ross,” he asked, “who else is here to-day besides you?”
“No one to-day, sir.”
“Just as well, perhaps,” Quest observed. “Listen, Ross. I am going out now for an hour or two, but I shall be back at mid-day. Remember that. Mrs. Rheinholdt and Inspector French are to be here at twelve o’clock. If by any chance I should be a few moments late, ask them to wait. And, Ross, a young woman from the Salvation Army will call too. You can give her this cheque.”
Ross Brown, who was Quest’s secretary-valet and general factotum, accepted the slip of paper and placed it in an envelope.
“There are no other instructions, sir?” he enquired.
“None,” Quest replied. “You’ll look out for the wireless, and you had better switch the through cable and telegraph communication on to headquarters. Come along, Lenora.”
They left the house, entered the waiting automobile, and drove rapidly towards the confines of the city. Quest was unusually thoughtful. Lenora, on the other hand, seemed to have lost a great deal of her usual self composure. She seldom sat still for more than a moment or two together. She was obviously nervous and excited.
“What’s got hold of you, Lenora?” Quest asked her once. “You seem all fidgets.”
She glanced at him apologetically.
“I can’t help it,” she confessed. “If you knew of the many sleepless nights I have had, of how I have racked my brain wondering what could have become of James, you wouldn’t really wonder that I am excited now that there is some chance of really finding out. Often I have been too terrified to sleep.”
“We very likely shan’t find out a thing,” Quest reminded her. “French and his lot have had a try and come to grief.”
“Inspector French isn’t like you, Mr. Quest,” Lenora ventured.
Quest laughed bitterly.
“Just now, at any rate, we don’t seem to be any great shakes,” he remarked. “However, I’m glad we’re on this job. Much better to find out what has become of the fellow really, if we can.”
Lenora’s voice suddenly grew steady. She turned round in her place and faced her companion.
“Mr. Quest,” she said, “I like my work with you. You saved me from despair. Sometimes it seems to me that life now opens out an entirely new vista. Yet since this matter has been mentioned between us, let me tell you one thing. I have known no rest, night or day, since we heard of—of James’s escape. I live in terror. If I have concealed it, it has been at the expense of my nerves and my strength. I think that very soon I could have gone on no longer.”
Quest’s only reply was a little nod. Yet, notwithstanding his imperturbability of expression, that little nod was wonderfully sympathetic. Lenora leaned back in her place well satisfied. She felt that she was understood.
By Quest’s directions, the automobile was brought to a stand-still at a point where it skirted the main railway line, and close to the section house which he had appointed for his rendezvous with Laura. She had apparently seen their approach and she came out to meet them at once, accompanied by a short, thick-set man whom she introduced as Mr. Horan.
“This is Mr. Horan, the section boss,” she explained.
Mr. Horan shook hands.
“Say, I’ve heard of you, Mr. Quest,” he announced. “The young lady tells me you are some interested in that prisoner they lost off the cars near here.”
“That’s so,” Quest admitted. “We’d like to go to the spot if we could.”
“That’s dead easy,” the boss replied. “I’ll take you along in the hand car. I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Quest, some time ago.”
“How’s that?” the criminologist asked.
Mr. Horan expelled a fragment of chewing tobacco and held out his hand for the cigar which Quest was offering.
“They’ve been going the wrong way to work, these New York police,” he declared. “Just because there was a train on the other track moving slowly, they got it into their heads that Macdougal had boarded it and was back in New York somewhere. That ain’t my theory. If I were looking for James Macdougal, I’d search the hillsides there. I’ll show you what I mean when we get alongside.”
“You may be right,” Quest admitted. “Anyway, we’ll start on the job.”
The section boss turned around and whistled. From a little side track two men jumped on to a hand-car, and brought it round to where they were standing. A few yards away, the man who was propelling it—a great red-headed Irishman—suddenly ceased his efforts. Leaning over his pole, he gazed at Quest. A sudden ferocity darkened his coarse face. He gripped his mate by the arm.
“See that bloke there?” he asked, pointing at Quest.
“The guy with the linen collar?” the other answered.