"What's up now?" asked the newcomer, eyeing the detective.
"He's after a bank breaker," pursued Captain White, "and I'm trying to give him information, and he thinks I'm lying."
"Oh, he is, is he? I didn't know but that he was dreaming with his eyes open," said the chief, superciliously surveying the purple-visaged man on the other side of the table. "He don't belong to any staff. I never heard of him before."
"He's all right," said Captain White, generously. "Tell him I ain't a liar by profession."
"Which is more than he is," said the chief, angrily pouring out his accumulated vials of wrath on the stranger, "considering all the names he called me half an hour ago."
"And here's my gold watch, worth one hundred and fifty dollars," continued Captain White, "seals and chain, if the absentee, whom I guess we'll not name, ain't forthcoming within twenty-four hours."
"He's a sick man, he may die," sputtered H. Robinson.
"Sick man—ho, ho! I like that," and Chief Gordon, remembering the vigorous old woman at the station, began to laugh uproariously, but checked himself at the sight of Chelda's motionless figure, as she stood at one of the windows with her back to them.
"All right; go out on the Bay," said Captain White, restoring his watch to his pocket. "Go with him, chief. You'll find him easy among the hundreds of yachts from the cottages and the hotels, and he'll come back while you're gone, and I'll help him give you the slip."
H. Robinson was on the horns of a dilemma. He squirmed uneasily, but finally decided to trust Captain White.