Forrester pulled reflectively at his cigar. He was overwhelmed. The suspicions he had entertained regarding the weird negress, the girl on the horse and her colored servant, were knocked flat. The half-formed theories he had been building up around them were completely shattered. The growing pride he had felt in his own detective talents was crushed, and the discoveries in which he had exulted were rendered valueless. After all, the hard-headed, plodding, unimaginative city detectives knew their business best. There was really no mystery or romance to crime; no clever men pitting their brains against those of astute detectives. The criminal class was nothing more than the police claimed it to be—just a stunted, unnatural, evil-smelling plant, with its roots buried deep in the sordid, filthy dives and foreign settlements of the West Side. Forrester was disappointed; deeply disappointed. In spite of the danger, worry and uncertainty, the thing had gotten into his blood during the last few days. It had fired his imagination, stirred his latent energies, and awakened his brain. And now the whole elaborate structure which had been slowly building up toward the skies collapsed in one moment to reveal nothing save a few murderous thugs concealed in the cellar. Forrester heaved a sigh. "Relieved, eh?" chuckled Cahill. "Thought the police were no good, and that you had to kiss ten thousand bucks good-by?" Forrester laughed. Now the humor of the situation struck him. Green’s long study of the problem, his careful tabulation of information and secretly developed theories, were in the same class with Humphrey’s suggested scientific solution, and Forrester’s own investigations and conjectures. No wonder the Chief of Detectives had said, "Novices only hamper us." "No," explained Forrester, in answer to Cahill’s comment, "I hadn’t exactly lost faith in the police. But I will say this: I have recently made some peculiar and interesting discoveries on my own account, and now you have practically knocked the foundation from under them with your very matter of fact solution of the mystery." "We ain’t solved it yet, remember," objected Cahill. "We’ve simply got a line on the right people, and in due time we’ll get our hands on them. We may still have to ask you to help us. That’s what we dropped in for this evening." "What do you want me to do?" asked Forrester. "Well, you see it’s this way," explained Cahill. "If those Dagos come back to the garage between now and Saturday, we’ll have them. But if they get wise that we found the car, they may chuck it and steal another one. In that case we’ll sure get them at the oak tree up there on the North Shore Saturday night. What we want you to do is to put that money in the tree at the time we tell you to, so that we will be ready." "But nobody has ever succeeded in locating these people at the tree," protested Forrester.