All we knew was that even this man was unidentified and at large. The murderer, desperate as he was, was still free and unknown, too. Were they one and the same? What might not either one do next?
We sat down in one of the stolen cars and held a midnight council of war. There were four of us, and that meant four different plans. Dillon was for immediate and wholesale arrests. McBirney was certain of one thing. He would claim the cars he could identify. The garage people could not help knowing now that we had been there, and we conceded the point to him with little argument, though it took great tact on Garrick's part to swing over Dillon.
"I'm for arresting the garage-keeper, whoever he proves to be," persisted Dillon, however.
"It won't do any good," objected Garrick.
"Don't you see that it will be better to accept his story, or rather seem to, and then watch him?"
"Watch him?" I asked, eager to propose my own plan of waiting there and seizing each person who presented himself. "How can you watch one of these fellows? They are as slippery as eels,—and as silent as a muffler," I added, taking good-humouredly the general laugh that greeted my mixed metaphor.
"You've suggested the precise idea, Marshall, by your very objection," broke in Garrick, who up to this time had been silent as to his own plan.
"I've a brand-new system of espionage. Trust it to me, and you can all have your way."