“Wait just one minute, please,” cried Miss Gale, as the Camera Chap was mounting his motor cycle. “Fred, is this Mr. Hawley, the New York Sentinel’s camera man? Because, if so, I am just in time.”
“Just in time for what, Melba?” inquired Carroll, while the Camera Chap stared at her wonderingly.
“To prevent him from going to Oldham,” the girl answered. “It was solely on his account, Fred, that I sent you that note asking you to meet me here. I wanted to tell you to warn Mr. Hawley of the trap which had been set for him.”
“The trap!” exclaimed Hawley and Carroll in chorus.
“Yes,” said the girl. Then, turning to the Camera[Pg 43] Chap, she exclaimed tensely: “You spoke just now of having a pressing engagement in town, Mr. Hawley. Isn’t it your intention to take a photograph of the city hall?”
“It is,” Hawley replied. “I am on my way to get that picture now. But how in the name of all that’s wonderful, Miss Gale, do you happen to know about my assignment?”
Instead of answering his question, the girl asked him another.
“You received a telegram to-day, did you not?” she said. “A telegram supposed to have come from the managing editor of the New York Sentinel?”
“Supposed to have come from the managing editor!” Hawley repeated, a suspicion of the truth suddenly dawning upon him. “Do you mean to say, Miss Gale, that——”
“I mean to say that that telegram was a fake,” she declared, without waiting for him to finish. “It didn’t come from New York. It didn’t come over the wire at all. It was composed and written by my cousin on one of the typewriters in the Chronicle office. It was part of the trap which my cousin and the chief of police have set for you, Mr. Hawley.”