“I think we had better go back to Burke and Hastings,” he decided.
“Burke is right. His men can do almost as much here as we could at
present. Besides, if we go away the mice may play. They will think we
have been caught napping. That telautomaton robbery is surely our next
big point of attack. Here it is first of all the mystery of Marshall
Maddox’s death, and I cannot do anything more until the coroner sends
me, as he has promised, the materials from the autopsy. Even then I
shall need to be in my laboratory if I am to discover anything.”
“Your sallow-faced friend seemed quite interested in you,” commented
Burke as we rejoined him.
“How’s that?” inquired Kennedy.
“From here I could see him, following every move you made,” explained
the Secret Service man.
Kennedy bit his lip. Not only had Mito seen us and conveyed a warning
to Shelby, but the dark-skinned man of mystery had been watching us
all. Evidently the situation was considerably mixed. Perhaps if we went
away it would really clear itself up and we might place these people
more accurately with reference to one another.
Burke looked at his watch hurriedly. “There’s a train that leaves in
twenty minutes,” he announced. “We can make the station in a car in
fifteen.”
Kennedy and I followed him to the door, while Hastings trailed along
reluctantly, not yet assured that it would be safe to leave Westport so
soon.
At the door a man stepped up deferentially to Burke, with a glance of
inquiry at us.
“It’s all right, Riley,” reassured Burke. “You can talk before them.
One of my best operatives, Riley, gentlemen. I shall leave this end in
your charge, Val.”
“All right, sir,” returned the Secret Service operative. “I was just
going to say, about that dark fellow we saw gum-shoeing it about. We’re
watching him. We picked him up on the beach during the bathing hour.
Do you know who he is? He’s the private detective whom Mrs. Maddox had
watching her husband and that Paquita woman. I don’t know what he’s
watching her yet for, sir, but,” Riley lowered his voice for emphasis,
“once one of the men saw him talking to Paquita. Between you and me, I
wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to double-cross Mrs. Maddox.”
Hastings opened his eyes in wonder at the news. As for me, I began to
wonder if I had not been quite mistaken in my estimate of Irene Maddox.
Was she the victim, the cat’s-paw of some one?
Riley was not finished, however. “Another thing before you leave, Mr.
Burke,” he added. “The night watchman at the Harbor House tells me that
he saw that Japanese servant of Shelby Maddox last night, or, rather,
early this morning. He didn’t go down to the dock and the watchman
thought that perhaps he had been left ashore by mistake and couldn’t
get out on the _Sybarite_.”
“That’s impossible,” cut in Hastings, quickly. “He was on the yacht
last night when we went to bed and he woke me up this morning.”
“I know it,” nodded Riley. “You see, I figure that he might have come
off the yacht in a rowboat and landed down the shore on the beach. Then
he might have got back. But what for?”
The question was unanswered, but not, we felt, unanswerable.
“Very well, Riley,” approved Burke. “Keep right after anything that
turns up. And don’t let that Paquita out of sight of some of the men a
minute. Good-by. We’ve just time to catch the train.”
Hastings was still unreconciled to the idea of leaving town, in spite
of the urgency of the developments in New York.
“I think it’s all right,” reassured Kennedy. “You see, if I stayed I’d
have to call on an agency, anyhow. Besides, I got all I could and the
only thing left would be to watch them. Perhaps if I go away they may
do something they wouldn’t dare otherwise. In that case we have planted
a fine trap. You can depend on it that Burke’s men will do more for us,
now, than any private agency.”
Hastings agreed reluctantly, and as we hurried back to New York on the
train Kennedy quizzed Burke as he had Hastings on the journey out.
There was not much that Burke could add to what he had already told
us. The robbery of the safe in the Maddox office had been so cleverly
executed that I felt that it would rank along with the historic cases.
No ordinary yeggs or petermen had performed this operation, and as the
train neared the city we were all on edge to learn what possibly might
have been uncovered during the hours that we had been working on the
other end of the case out at Westport.