"I was just thinking," replied the other. "Where is Thane at the present moment, Webster?"
"He just went off in an automobile with Dick Hurdle and a couple of fellows to stretch one of Joe Hart's big fish nets across the river down at the Narrows, five or six miles below here."
"Would you mind inviting me up to your room at the Tavern for a little while, Webster?"
"Well, I was going down to the ferry. There are half a dozen skiffs down—"
"See here, Webster, as I understand it, my real job is to find out all I can about this chap Thane. I am really working for you, not for Miss Crown, although she is putting up the money. I am just as thoroughly convinced as you are that Thane staged that masked robber business himself. It's an old gag, especially with lovers—and occasionally with husbands."
Charlie grinned sheepishly, a guilty flush staining his rubicund face.
"I guess I might as well confess that I was guilty of something of the sort when I was about seventeen," he said. "That's how I came to figger out that maybe he was up to the same kind of heroism."
"Nearly every kid has done the same thing. It's boy nature."
"I reckon that's right. I fixed it for a boy friend of mine to jump out of a dark place one night when I was walkin' home from a church sociable with my girl. He had false whiskers on. I helped him glue them on,—and he had an awful time getting 'em off. Course when he jumped out and growled 'hands up,' I just sailed into him and the fur flew for a few seconds. Then he run like a whitehead. It didn't work out very well, however. That kid's sister got onto the trick and told my girl about it, and—well, I almost had to leave town. But it ain't a game for a grown-up man to play, and that's what I think this feller Thane has been pulling."
"What you want to find out, before it's too late, is whether Thane is all that he professes to be," said the other. "Well, I'm simply sitting tight on the job, stalling along until I hear from our people in New York. They have cabled England to find out whether he was connected with the British air forces. Now, what I want to do is to get into that fellow's room for ten or fifteen minutes. Can you fix it?"