“But how could they have known what it contained?”
“Gee, that’s so. They might have known, Chick, all the same.”
“Furthermore,” Chick added, “Makepeace, the lawyer who pursued them, ought to have seen them get away with the portfolio, if that was really the case.”
“Not necessarily,” Nick objected. “They were well away before Makepeace saw them and started after them. He probably saw only the backs and rapidly moving legs of the two who escaped. He might not have been able to see in the darkness of the evening what either of them was carrying.”
“By Jove, this makes a curious case of it,” said Chick. “If you are right, then, the plans have been stolen from the original thieves, Verona Warren and Captain Dillon, and now are in the hands of other crooks.”
“That would be about the size of it if, as you say, I am right,” Nick replied. “But that word ‘if’ is just as big as it ever was, or ever will be. I may be all wrong. There may be no connection whatever between the assault upon Captain Dillon and the theft of the governmental plans. The circumstances seem to warrant my theory, however, and it’s up to us to find out whether it is correct.”
“Gee! I should say so!” cried Patsy. “It looks to me like the real thing.”
“It would prove of vast advantage to us, of course, if the plans are in the hands of ruffians who cannot readily understand them, or appreciate their vast importance,” Nick added. “It might enable us to recover them before they can be traced and secured again by the original thieves, who are undoubtedly able to turn them to the worst possible use.”
“We may be too late.”
“You mean?”