“I have most excellent letters!” he boasted, and for the moment he seemed to rouse himself from the sluggishness that marked him that morning.
“I'll bear it in mind,” said the colonel again.
But as they drove on, and Colonel Ashley noted with what exaggerated care Jean Forette passed other cars—giving them such a wide berth that often his own machine was almost in the ditch—the impression grew on the detective that the Frenchman was not as skillful as he would have it believed.
“He drives Like an amateur, or a woman out alone in her machine for the first time,” mused the colonel. “He'd never do for a smart car. Wonder what ails him. He wasn't drunk last night by any means, and yet—”
They reached the town, and paused at the only place where there was any congestion of traffic—where two main seashore highways crossed in the center of Lakeside. Jean held the runabout there so long, waiting for other traffic to pass, that the officer who was on duty called:
“What's the matter—going to sleep there?”
Then Jean, with a start, threw in the clutch and shot ahead.
“That's queer,” mused the colonel. “He seems afraid.”
The purchase of the shedder crabs was gone into carefully, and having questioned the bait-seller as to the best location in the inlet, the detective again got into the machine and was driven to the office of the late Horace Carwell. It was a branch of the New York office, and thither, every summer, came LeGrand Blossom and a corps of clerks to manage affairs for their employer.
Colonel Ashley, who by this time was known to the office boy at the outer gate, was admitted at once.