Across the river and barely visible, the blackened, smoking skeleton of the Florence lay stranded on a sandbar. Throughout the night, a fireboat had steadily pumped water into the burning vessel, but even so, fires had not been entirely extinguished.
Morning papers had carried the encouraging information that there was only one known casualty as a result of the disaster. That many lives had not been lost was credited entirely to the courageous action of Captain Barker.
Becoming weary of watching the monotonous dredging operations, Jack and Penny joined a throng of curious bystanders at the Harper property. Police had taken complete charge and were raking the smoldering ruins.
“Find anything?” Jack asked a policeman he knew.
The man pointed to a small heap of charred metal which had been taken from the basement. There were many pieces of brass, but the missing lantern was not to be found in the pile.
However, from a member of the arson squad, they learned that enough evidence had been found to prove conclusively that the fire had been started with gasoline.
“Ma Harper spilled the whole story,” one of the policemen related. “She and her husband were fairly straight until they became mixed up with Sweeper Joe, who has a police record of long standing. Ma had a black market business in silk stockings that didn’t amount to much. So far as we’ve been able to learn, she and a taxi driver whom we’ve caught, were the only ones involved. Her husband and the other men considered the stocking racket small potatoes for them.”
After talking with the policemen for awhile, the young people wandered down to the river’s edge to see how dredging operations progressed.
“They’re hauling something out of the water now!” Jack exclaimed. “By George! It looks like brass to me!”
Finding a boat tied up at the dock, they borrowed it and rowed rapidly out to the dredge. There they saw that some of the metal which Sweeper Joe had dumped, had indeed been recovered.