I wouldn't mind betting you the best dinner you ever ate at
Delmonico's or at your English Savoy that that box with the broken
seals they all got so excited about doesn't contain a single one of
the papers that we're after. Why, those blasted Teutons wanted us to
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.
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