“Were they in that old house on the bayou?” asked Alex.
“Some of them were. As soon as I got off your boat I wired back to have the place surrounded and searched. They found all the silks and furs there! You boys did a good job for me when you permitted yourselves to be trapped.”
“It was Captain Joe and Mose who did the good job when they got us out!” Jule said.
“Did you find Sam again?” asked Case, in a moment. “He was a corker!”
“You boys found him in the swamp,” Red replied soberly, “and Mose executed the sentence of the law upon him—hanged him by the neck!”
“So you are a detective?” asked Case. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I am not,” was the reply. “I am the owner of the warehouse that was robbed, and I set out to get the goods back, that is all.”
“But you asked us to take Chet on down the river when he had the diamonds in his clothes!” Alex. exclaimed. “What about that? It was a funny stunt.”
“Of course I didn’t know that he had the diamonds,” added Red, now to be known as Mr. George Redmond. “He told me about his having had them when I told him that Sam was dead, that was last night, in New Orleans. Then he told me that he had taken the diamonds from Sam because he wanted to restore them to me, but had promised Sam that he would never reveal his, Sam’s, connection with the crime. Of course Sam never knew positively that the boy had stolen the diamonds, but he suspected.”
“And sent this riverman, Gid Brent, on board at Cairo to see if the boy was there?”