Footsteps sounded in the lower hall.
"That's Storg, coming back!" cried Higgins. "I hope he got his man."
He leaned over the balustrade and called down:
"Any luck, Storg?"
"No, he got away," was the reply. "He's a good runner. I couldn't keep up to him."
"Never mind," consoled Higgins. "Maybe it's
just as well. We'd have trouble proving anything illegal against him, though I could have had him held on a charge of vagrancy until I investigated a bit."
The officers, followed by Larry, left the ramshackle structure, with the wind whistling mournfully through the broken windows, and the shutters banging, while the doors creaked on the rusty and broken hinges.
"I wouldn't want to stay there all alone at night," thought the young reporter, as he started toward home. "A man must have a strong motive to cause him to hide in there. I'd like to find out what it is. Perhaps I shall, some time."
Larry spoke of the matter to Mr. Emberg the next day. He said he thought it might be a good idea to devote some hours to working up the story, in an endeavor to learn who the queer man was.