“Well, we’ve got to move,” he said after a time. “If we don’t, the others will, for they’ll be afraid the Black Star will demolish the place with a bomb. Perhaps it’ll be best, after all.”
“But where?” Riley asked. “He’d bomb another hotel just as quick if that’s his game.”
“I have a place of my own—the old Verbeck place, Riley. You know it. Muggs knows it, too, for there we kept the Black Star prisoner for a day and night before we handed him over to the police.”
“I remember it,” Riley said.
“A big, old house in the middle of a block of ground, surrounded by trees and tangled underbrush. I intend to have it torn down and a new residence erected in its place after I’m married. We can go there with fuel and provisions and make ourselves comfortable. There is a telephone, so we can keep in touch with headquarters. We’ll be by ourselves, and so need fear no spies of the Black Star. We can conduct our campaign from there.”
“Great!” the detective exclaimed.
“No fear of spies, and nobody to bother us. We’ll make it our headquarters. One of us can be on guard all the time. The Black Star will have to be very clever to get at us there. And if he does he’ll be injuring my own property, and he’ll not be hurting some outsider who has no concern in this affair. Let’s get some sleep, then go ahead with our preparations.”
It was noon when a much-relieved apartment-house manager saw them drive away in Verbeck’s recovered roadster, the back of the car heaped high with provisions. Half an hour later they had reached the old Verbeck place and unloaded the car; Muggs had built a roaring fire in the living-room fireplace, and they were making themselves comfortable.
“This thing of working in the dark gets on my nerves,” Riley admitted. “I’d rather catch sight of this Black Star committing a crime and have a chase, a sort of running fight, and either victory or defeat at its end. But what can we do? Here we must sit, waiting for him to make a move. How do we know where he’ll strike next? He may rob a bank, rifle some lady’s jewel case—we can’t tell. We’ve got to wait until he does something, and then take up the trail. You had a hot trail before, Roger—one of his men led you to him and you had a chance to get hands on him.”
“I fancy that, in his egotism, he’ll announce where he’ll strike next,” Verbeck said. “He’s done it before.”