“Sorry to trouble you, Inspector,” opened Hammond, “but I’d like to make an appointment to meet you privately on a confidential matter.”
The inspector turned the papers he was examining face downwards on the little camp table and looked up. “If it is an important matter,” he suggested crisply, “we may as well deal with it at once.”
“It is quite important,” Hammond assured him.
Inspector Little turned to his aide. “You may go, Sergeant,” he indicated.
Alone with the officer, Hammond briefly explained that he was a personal friend of the young lady, Miss Josephine Stone, who had been carried away by force from Amethyst Island, and he had come to offer his services in helping to locate her. He added that he had a theory where she could be found and was ready to start on an expedition by himself to locate her once he had gained the necessary permission of the police. He briefly referred to the arrest of Rev. Nathan Stubbs and the rumour that he was suspected of being a party to the abduction. He said nothing, however, about his knowledge that the fake preacher was really a detective in the employ of Norman T. Gildersleeve, fearing such a statement would lead him into complications that would only delay the expedition he had in mind. He did express the opinion that the camp preacher could have had no part in the abduction.
The inspector stared at him fixedly. “What particular grounds have you for that last statement, Mr. Hammond?” he asked.
“Well, for one thing he was down here at the dock at noon when I left that day. I scarcely see how he could have got back here so soon.”
“That was Stubbs’ own contention when we quizzed him about it. So we arrested him on a nominal charge of vagrancy to hold him on suspicion of being implicated in the abduction. In the first place,” argued the officer, “if he were innocent, why should he jump one thousand dollars bail put up by his lawyer through mysterious friends? With much less than a thousand dollars he could have cleared himself of the vagrancy charge.”
Hammond knew the very important reason Norman T. Gildersleeve had for getting the pseudo preacher out of the awkward position his continued incarceration would have brought about, but he cautiously held silence on that point.
“We had, as a matter of fact, very good grounds for suspecting Stubbs of not only being implicated but of being the ring-leader in the abduction of the young lady,” Inspector Little continued.