“What do you make out of it yourself? According to your own account, you left Stevens yesterday headed off somewhere in the launch from College Point.” “But that certainly was he just now,” said I. “Most positively; and his little scheme has thus landed us not only well out of the way of the whereabouts of Stroth, but I know enough of this town to know that we can’t get another cab inside of fifteen minutes. How do you figure the little devil happened in Portland, anyway?” Pawlinson again favored me with one of those searching looks which were making me hate him more and more heartily. Fact was, I was getting vastly sick of the entire job. But a sudden thought did, momentarily, throw me into ejaculation. “By Jove, I’ve got it!” I cried. “Berth number nine!” “Berth number nine! Here, come, man, we’ve no time to waste! We’ve got to get onto some track immediately.” “And you must have been the one who occupied number three on the sleeper last night,” I continued. “You deduce well,” said he, with a grin. “Well, when I got my own reservation, the ticket seller told me that berth nine was taken from Stamford. So that’s it. Stevens, after running the launch somewhere up the Sound toward Connecticut, left it there and boarded the same train, and from there on----” “And from there on,” grunted Pawlinson, “even I can follow. But look here. Why didn’t you come out with this sooner?” “I didn’t connect the thing at all,” I replied. “No; it seems not.” “What I can’t make out, though,” I went on, unheeding his manner, “is this: Why in thunder all the care taken to effect the boarding of the Portland steamer by launch from Port Washington?” “Simply enough understood, Grey,” he said, “when you realize that I had every dock and railway station covered. And a mighty good scheme it was--that of handling the thing by water. I might have known----” He broke off short. A thought had hit him which brooked not an instant’s further delay in speculation. Much as I had come to dislike the man, I could but admire his promptitude and vim. He tugged me into a brisk run, and we caught a trolley car which he had managed to whistle to a stop on the instant it was crossing the nearest avenue’s corner. “To the water,” said he, in indefinite explanation, when we were seated. “The water, that’s it! The cue word in this little job, I believe.” “What do you mean?” “Not until to-day have I ever known Stroth to use Stevens for a thing but water work. Fact is, where Stevens is there’s a water trick.” “You mean that you think----” “I mean that I’d be willing to stake a hefty sum that the schooner is lying this very minute not two hundred yards off Orr’s Island, right here in Casco Bay.” “The schooner?” “Stroth’s boat--the one I was telling you about.” “But, heavens and earth, man,” said I, raising my voice a bit from the whisper we had kept in the car, “open and aboveboard, broad daylight like this?”