"There was a drug store right opposite and I went in, took a soda, and asked the clerk about the locality—said I was looking for lodgings in that section. I got him round to the house, where I heard I might get a room cheap. He said maybe I could—being summer there’d be vacancies—that the place was decent enough, but he’d heard pretty poor and mean. Just as I got through talking to him and was leaving I saw the door across the street open, and Mr. Price come out. He came quick, on the slant, and was among the folks on the sidewalk before you could notice. It was the way a man acts when he doesn’t want to be seen. He walked off toward Seventh Avenue, his head down, keeping close to the houses. I didn’t wait for Miss Maitland—thought I’d better come back here and report." "Well!" said Mr. George. "I’m jiggered if I can make head or tail of it." The Chief took the cigar out of his mouth and addressed O’Malley: "Find out Price’s movements on the night of July seventh, everything he did, everywhere he went." He turned to me. "And you want to remember not a hint of this gets to Mrs. Janney. She hates Price and when her blood’s up she’s a red Indian. We don’t want the family drawn in until we know something." CHAPTER XI—FERGUSON’S IDEA During these days Dick Ferguson thought a good deal and said very little. Like the rest of his world he wondered over the unsolved mystery of the Janney robbery, but his wonderings contained an element of discomfort. He heard the subject discussed everywhere and often the name of Esther Maitland came up in the discussions. Not that any one ever suggested she might be involved;—it was more a sympathetic appreciation of her position. Every one spoke very feelingly about it:—poor girl, so uncomfortable for her, knowing the combination and all that sort of thing—the Janneys had stood by her splendidly, but still it _was_ trying. It tried _him_ a good deal, made inroads on his temper, until it lost its sunny evenness and he was sometimes short and surly. The day after Molly and Esther went to town he had been called to a conference in the Fairfax house on the bluff. A gang of motor boat thieves had been operating along the Sound, had already stolen two launches, and the owners of water-front property had convened to decide on a course. Ferguson, with a small fleet to his credit, had taken rather a high hand, and shown an unwonted irritation at the indecision of his associates. If they wanted their boats protected it was up to them to do it, establish a shore police patrol financed by themselves. That was what he intended to do and they could join with him or not as they pleased. He left them, ruffled by his brusqueness and remarking grumpily that "Ferguson was beginning to feel his money."