“You must have been brought directly here,” he said.
“Just as fast as the fellow they call Rap could get me here. Hamsa had been in Washington. Somehow he got wind that Department of Justice men were being put on his trail and he learned that Adams and I had been sent south. It was up to Rap to get us out of the way. Then Hamsa came down and it was just luck that he met you and Tully on the train. What looked like a bad situation for us turned out all right.”
Bob chuckled.
“Won’t Tully be sore when he learns that the whole case has been cleared up without him getting even as far as Jacksonville.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Tully, Bob. This is another feather in your cap. Just keep plugging away and you’ll get toward the top in the Department mighty fast.”
Merritt Hughes bent down and gathered up the smuggled gems, wrapping them in the velvet and replacing them in the leather case.
“We might as well destroy this place so that it will no longer be used for such purposes,” he said, and as he stepped out of the door behind Bob he aimed a shot at the kerosene lamp. A sheet of flame spread through the interior of the shanty and the dry wood crackled lustily as the fire ate into it.
The glow of the burning shanty illuminated the clearing and they found their way easily to the old wharf where Sheriff McCurdy and his prisoners were waiting for them. Further out the amphibian was drifting at its anchor.
“We’ll have to leave that for another trip,” smiled Merritt Hughes. “Sheriff, let’s start for town. I’m hungry and sleepy.”
With their three captives in the bow, Bob and his uncle just behind them and the sheriff at the wheel at the rear, they started out of the bayou, another successful chapter written in the bureau of investigation’s war on crime.