“With fair luck they ought to manage to slip along,” Jack went on to observe, confidently. “You heard me warn them to keep a watchful eye out for smugglers and hijackers by land and sea and air? Anyway we’ve finished our part of the job and this paper proves that our find was all I cracked it up to be when I talked with Mr. Ridgeway.”
“Course, you knocked up against the gent then, eh Jack?”
“Sure, or I shouldn’t have been able to fetch those lads back with me to take over the sloop and contraband cargo,” the other told him. “But I was in a tail spin at first when I learned that Mr. Ridgeway had gone down to St. Pete to interview some people who had reasons for not wanting to be seen going into his Government offices in Tampa. But I got his address and jumped my boat, slipped down Tampa Bay, and pulled in at the long municipal pier at St. Petersburg.”
“I first hired a dependable man to keep watch over my ship while I was off hunting my superior officer but I found him after a bit and he was sure glad to see me, shook hands like a good sport, and asked me a bunch of questions before starting to tell me what important fresh news he had picked up through his agents working the spy game for all it was worth.”
“Was he tickled to learn how we managed to run off with that slick little sloop that carried so neat a pack o’ cases marked with foreign stamps?”
“Seemed to be,” came the ready answer. “He isn’t a man of many words, you know, Perk, but what he says he means. He told me they were banking on the pair of us to bring the high-hat chaps at the head of this smuggler league to the bar, with plenty of evidence that would convict them, no matter how many big lawyers they employed to beat the case.”
“That sounds all to the good with me, old hoss,” snapped the pleased Perk. “’Taint often we get half the praise that’s comin’ to us–not that I care a whiff ’bout that, though–satisfied to do my duty by Unc’ Sam, an’ let them high-ups have the main credit. But I guess we’ll get some kick out o’ the game just the same an’ that’s worth all it costs us. Tell me, did this Mr. Ridgeway fork over any news worth knowin’?”
“He did,” the other assured him. “I showed him those papers I found hidden in the cabin of the sloop, with a fine list of names, such as would cover customers who’d ordered the stuff they had aboard and he reckoned that several of them might point to the heads of the combine swinging the big smuggling deal.”
“That would be a clue worth while, I’d say,” Perk asserted warmly, his eyes flashing with renewed zeal as though he might be telling himself they must be getting on a pretty warm scent which would soon lead them to the party they sought above every one else–the capitalist whose word was law, and whose money purchased all the supplies, from liquor and vessels to aircraft and everything else needful for carrying on their business of swindling the Government through the Treasury Department.
Just as he always did in forestalling any likely move when an important case was placed in the hands of himself and Jack, Perk was already engaged in mentally spreading the net destined to gather in the chief culprits–the outlook promised a multitude of warm episodes calculated to stir the blood to fever heat and afford him the wild excitement without which life lost much of its charm–in his eyes at least.