“Sure,” Frank replied like a shot. “Lanky Wallace and I both had the same idea—that the rowboat we met on the river that night as we came home was the same rowboat that we saw in front of the Parsons place at the river bank. And both of us were puzzled about the fact that those men left in a car after Mrs. Parsons had come home in a car, yet her chauffeur had not seen the robber’s car—and everything pointing to their being in the house all the time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me these things at the hearing?” asked the chief.
“Because I wanted to tell what I knew and not what I was guessing at. Also, chief, don’t you remember that you practically accused Lanky and me of having a hand in the robbery?”
The chief did not make answer to this.
“And why did you try to have me come to your office when you saw I was in trouble? Something was the matter. Some one had put some kind of a notion into your head. Is that so?”
The chief was standing at the cockpit, saying nothing while Frank continued to pour out his thoughts.
“Those men down at the island said to-night they had the police fooled, so they’ve caused some kind of a story to get to your ears. Now, chief, there’s more to this than we think. They planned things out pretty well, and it is only an accident that we have any trail of them.”
Frank continued to talk at and to the chief while he kept an eye on the river, covered as it was with the spotlight handled by the lean lad. He went on:
“I’ll make the guess that they got the loot into that rowboat a short distance up the river, then one of them took the auto into town while the others saw to the safe conduct of the stuff to Jed Marmette’s place. And they’ve trusted the stuff with Jed because they felt that he would not get away. But he was double-crossing them, just as thieves will do.”
“I guess that part is right.” The chief spoke for the first time in several minutes.