“To-morrow night!”
“Yes; it’s the very time of times. To-morrow night it shall be.”
“It’s a big risk! We will have to bluff the detectives, old woman.”
“A fig for the detectives! They will have a cold scent; besides—we have dodged detectives before.”
CHAPTER IV.
ENLISTED AGAINST EACH OTHER.
It is early in the evening of the day that has witnessed the events recorded in the preceding chapters, and the Chief of the detectives is sitting in his easiest office chair, listening attentively to the words that fall from the lips of a tall, bronzed, gray-bearded man who sits opposite him, talking fast and earnestly.
He has been thus talking, and the Chief thus listening, for more than an hour, and the story is just reaching its conclusion when the stranger says:
“There, sir, you have the entire case, so far as I know it. What I ask is something unusual, but what I offer, in compensation, is something unusual too.”