"Well, we've got to locate him. I'll stake my life he is George Ritchie. I compared this snap-shot with the photograph I have with me. Shave off that dinky little moustache and I'll bet a hundred to one you'll have Ritchie's mug all right. Hustle back there, Gilfillan,--you and Simons. He'll be turning up at the house unless he's got wind of us. Don't let him see you. You stay here with me, Constable. The chances are he'll come back here to wait for Miss Crown, if he's as badly stuck on her as you say, Gilfillan. They're all fools about women." The hidden listener was no longer quaking. His body was tense, his mind was working like lightning. He was wide awake, alert; the fingers that clutched the weapon in his pocket were firm and steady; he scarcely breathed for fear of betraying his presence, but the courage of the hunted was in his heart. The little group broke up. Constable Foss and one of the strangers remained on the spot, the others vanished up the road. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the wharf. A long dark object was lying near the edge, while some distance away a small knot of men stood talking. The moon, riding high, cast a cold, sickly light upon the scene. "I've always been kind of suspicious of him," Foss was saying, his voice lowered. "What did you say his real name is?" "His real name is Thane, I suppose. I guess there's no doubt about that. Mind you, I'm not sure he's the man we've been looking for these last six months, but I'm pretty sure of it. Last February two men and a woman tried to smuggle a lot of diamonds through the customs at New York. I'll not go into details now further than to say they landed from one of the big ocean liners and came within an ace of getting away with the job. The woman was the leader. She was nabbed with one of the men at a hotel. The other man got away. He was on the passenger list as George Ritchie, of Cleveland, Ohio. The woman had half a dozen photographs of him in her possession. I've got a copy of one of 'em in my pocket now, and it's so much like this fellow Thane that you'd swear it was of the same man. This morning Gilfillan,--that's the Pinkerton man,--telephoned to his chief in Chicago to notify the federal authorities that he was almost dead certain that our man was here. He's a wonder at remembering faces, and he had seen our photographs. Simons and I took the three o'clock train. Gilfillan met us in the city and brought us out after we had instructed the police to be ready to help us in case he got onto us and gave us the slip." "How much of a reward is offered?" inquired Foss. "We are not supposed to be rewarded for doing our duty," replied the Secret Service man curtly. "He got away from us and it's our business to catch him again. You can bet he's our man. He wouldn't be hanging around a burg like this for months unless he had a blamed good reason for keeping out of sight."