Sol Burton turned and walked away a baffled man.

Spencer Vance walked to the point on the beach where he had
stood when the girl had come to him with the strange warning.

The young man was a Government officer, a special detective,
and had been assigned to the collector at the port of New
York to run down an organized gang of smugglers who were known
to be doing a large business off the Long Island coast.

Several detectives had been detailed to work up the matter,
and one after another they had mysteriously disappeared, and
the Government had never succeeded in solving the mystery of
their taking off; and further, none of the officers had ever
been able to locate the head-quarters of the gang.

One fact had been established: large quantities of smuggled
goods had been carried into New York, and each week the
Government was swindled out of thousands of dollars of
revenue; and the illicit traffic had grown to such an extent
that a number of honest merchants had subscribed a large sum
of money which had been placed at the disposal of the
collector to be used as a fund for the breaking up of the
gang, who were ruining regular importers in certain branches
of trade and commerce.

Spencer Vance, although but a young man, had quite a
reputation as a detective. He had done some daring work in
running down a gang of forgers, and in the employ of a State
Government, he had been very successful in breaking up several