This heroic measure was agreed upon and the routes were laid out and the three reporters began the process of arousing every family in Port Monmouth. An hour later each one had rare stories to tell of encounters with dogs and threats of arrest and wordy combats with sleepy and irate householders. But there was no sign of the chief of police. The search had been so thorough that it was certain he was not in Port Monmouth. “It’s a false alarm,” Hills said in a disgusted tone. “Fine work this, hunting a chief of police in a New Jersey forest.” “And there’s an oyster supper a-cooking for me at home,” Dick added; “and here I am, hungry as a bear.” “Well, we can only send in ‘good-night’ and go to bed,” Atwater said sadly. “I thought we were going to have a fine story. There’s a little hotel here, and we can all go home in the morning.” Dick’s second dispatch was very brief. It merely said, like the dispatches of Hills and Atwater: “Chief not been seen here. Good-night. Sumner.” The “good-night” was not a message of politeness, but a signal well understood in the office that Sumner had nothing more to send. “I’d like to know, Atwater,” Dick said when they were settling themselves in a big double-bedded room in the hotel, “how you heard of this thing in Long Branch.” “Would you, sonny?” Atwater answered. He was very young himself, not more than two or three years older than Dick, and they had met several times before and had become well acquainted. “Then I’ll tell you. You must know that before I became a distinguished journalist I was an ornament to the telegraphic profession; in other words, I was a country operator. Last evening I had some business in Long Branch, and while waiting in the station for the train to take me home, I heard the sounder say something about the chief of police. That made me prick up my ears and listen to the message going through. It wasn’t intended for me, but it may have gone to a worse man. It said that the chief had come to Port Monmouth looking for Sterling’s body; and the minute I heard that, I chartered a horse and buggy and drove up here. That unravels the mystery, doesn’t it?” It did, and at the same time it gave Dick an idea. “To understand telegraph operating,” he thought, “must be a great advantage to a reporter. This case is an example of it. I must learn enough of it, at any rate, to send and receive a message.” “Say, you fellows, dry up, will you?” Hill grunted from his bed. “I want to go to sleep.” To return to the office with nothing, after his midnight voyage in the tug, was what Dick confidently expected. But he was not done with the great Sterling’s body case yet.