Two revolvers barked over the taffrail of the yacht, as the hydroplane raced onward, dragging Shirley and his prisoner at the end of the rope, through the water. Again the shots rang out, but they were out of range, on the dark waters so quickly, that before the police boat had set out from shore to investigate the firing from the pleasure vessel, the criminologist's struggle with his wounded antagonist was over.
Half drowned, himself, with Warren completely past consciousness, Shirley was pulled into his own boat as the engines were slowed down. They returned rapidly to the dock.
“Help me work him—that was a pretty rough yank. He's been shot in the hand already.”
They rolled Warren on a barrel, “pumped” his arms, and by the time the Cronin automobile had returned with the other detectives, Warren was restored to understanding again. Shirley forced some liquor between his teeth, to be greeted with a torrent of strange oaths.
“The jig is up, Warren,” said the criminologist. “As a chess-player in the little game, you are a wonder. But, I think I may at last call 'Checkmate.'”
“I'm not dead yet, Shirley,” hissed Warren. “I gave you your chance to keep out of this. But you wouldn't take it. I'll settle the score with you before I'm finished. There's one man in the world who knows how to get away from bars. I'm that man.”
Then his teeth snapped together with a click. He said nothing more that night, even during the operation for probing Shirley's bullet, and the painful dressing. At the station-house, and his arraignment before the magistrate at Night Court, where he saw some other familiar faces of his fellow gangsters—now rounded up on the same charges—he still maintained that feline silence.
And his eyes never left the face of Montague Shirley, as long as that calm young man was in sight!
Shirley merely presented his charge of murder—for the strangling of Shine Taylor. The names of the aged millionaires were not brought into the matter—there was no need. He had done his work well.
At Cronin's agency, late that night, there came a cablegram from the greatest detective bureau of France.