"If they serve us no better purpose, we can show them to our chief when we get back to New York, so he will have evidence of what we are doing," said Old King Brady, with a faint smile.
"He expected a report from us to-night, on the case he put us on, but he won't get it," said Harry, grimly.
The boy referred to some work they had been doing before they stumbled upon the Thirty-sixth street affair.
Information had reached the Central Office that Oliver Dalton, a Broad street broker, suspected his nephew, Ronald Mason, of robbing his mail.
The detectives had gone to the broker's house in West Thirty-eighth street to get the particulars privately. But the man's daughter, Lizzie, told them her father had not yet come home. They waited for him till nearly eight o'clock, and as Mr. Dalton did not appear, they were going back to headquarters when they stumbled upon the suspicious case already recorded here.
Old King Brady smiled at Harry's remark.
"There's no great hurry about that case," he remarked.
"Well," said the boy, "are you ready to go through the cars on a hunt for Solomon Gloom? We must make sure of our man before he has a chance to alight at a way station and elude us."
Old King Brady bent nearer to Harry, to reply, when suddenly a cloth was thrown over their heads by a man who sat behind them.
The cloth was saturated with chloroform.