"We, too, have fought with beasts at Ephegus, so let us into this," cried Devar. "What came off, and where was the risk of failure? To my mind, you had Lamotte in a double Nelson grip all the time."
"That's where you are in error, young man," said Steingall cheerfully. "Sometimes it pays to pretend a knowledge you don't possess, and this was one of the occasions. Mr. Clancy and I knew that somewhere in New York were two Hungarians named Gregor Martiny and Ferdinand Rossi. We knew that they were the men who killed Mr. Hunter, but we had no more notion where they were hiding, or how to lay hands on them, than the man in the moon."
"Great Scott. Haven't you arrested them?"
"No, sir. That is a pleasure deferred."
"Do you mean that you wanged that address out of the Frenchman?"
"That's about the size of it. I might have searched for a week for Martiny and Rossi, but no one in East Broadway would have owned up to seeing or even hearing of them."
"Still, you had their names pat?"
"Yes," said the detective, cutting the end off a cigar, "we had their names, and we ascertained why they killed Hunter, or would have killed any other person who tried to balk their scheme, but our information stopped there."
Steingall, usually so communicative, evidently meant to keep to himself the source of his inspiration, and, in a few minutes, Brodie was driving the four men to the Police Headquarters.
They went to the Detective Bureau, and Steingall telephoned the Clinton Street police station-house.