believe it! That's why some of the seals were broken, and why the old
man himself hung about like a hen that's lost one of its chickens.
They want us to believe that we've got the goods right in that box,
and to hold up the search for a time while they get the genuine stuff
out of the country. I admit right here, Mr. Crawshay, that it was you
who put this into my head at Halifax. I couldn't swallow it then, but
when Downs didn't meet us at the depot here, it came over me like a
flash that you were right that we were being flimflammed."

"We ought, perhaps, to have separated," the Englishman ruminated. "I
ought to have gone to New York and you come here. On the other hand,
you must remember that all the evidence which we have managed to
collect points to Chicago as having been the headquarters of the whole
organisation."

"Sure!" the American admitted. "And there's another point about it,
too. If this outsider who has taken on the job for them should really
turn out to be Jocelyn Thew, I'd have banked on his working the scheme
from Chicago. He knows the back ways of the city, or rather he used
to, like a rat. Gee, it would be a queer thing if after all these
years one were to get the bracelets on him!"

"I don't quite see," Crawshay remarked, "how such a person as this
Jocelyn Thew, of whom you have spoken several times, could have become
associated with an affair of this sort. Both the Germans and the
Austrians at Washington had the name of being exceedingly particular
with regard to the status of their agents, and he must be entirely a
newcomer in international matters. From the _dossier_ you handed me,
Jocelyn Thew reads more like a kind of modern swashbuckler spoiling
for a fight than a person likely to make a success of a secret