“You can search us, if you want––” began Hank’s growling voice, but Joe Dawson stood before him, towering in grim purpose.
“Don’t you open your mouth again, Hank, until you’ve collected some sense,” warned Joe. “Let Tom do the talking. He’s the captain, anyway.”
“You’re right,” responded Powell Seaton, looking up in a good deal of a daze. “I must do something—quickly—yet what?”
“If anyone has stolen the final set of papers,” advanced the young skipper, “it must have been either Dalton or someone working for him. In either case, Dalton must now have the papers, or he soon will have.”
“But what does this lead to?” inquired Mr. Seaton, regarding his young captain dubiously.
“Why, sir, it must be plain that the best 108 course is to drop all other steps and concentrate every bit of your energy and ingenuity on getting hold of Anson Dalton.”
“Yet what can I do to him, if I do?”
“In the first place, you might charge him with being the man who struck Albert Clodis over the head. That would be enough to have your man arrested on, even if you couldn’t prove the charge. A charge that you can fight on is that of having helped to steal the ‘Restless’ the other night. If you can only get the fellow locked up, then you’ll have more time to find out whether there’s any way of getting the missing papers away from him, or from any hiding place in which he has put them.”
“Lock the fellow up?” jeered Powell Seaton. “Bah, boy, you don’t seem to realize the money that’s behind him. Ten thousand dollars, or a hundred thousand, it would all be the same, and Dalton, out on bail, could flee in whatever direction he wanted to.”
“Then what are you going to do?” demanded Captain Tom, incisively.