"Wait a moment. Calamont has suffered a great deal from the depredations of the hoboes, and now has a force of special constables, whose duties consist in arresting and taking to jail every tramp who crosses the borders of the village. The other night, when Madge made her escape, the jail was filled with them."
"Oh," said the detective. "I begin to understand."
"Exactly."
"It was a put-up job on their part to get as many of their kind as possible in the jail for that night, and then to take their queen out of it; eh?"
"Precisely; and that is just what they did do. You see, the tramps began coming in early in the day. They made intervals between the times of their arrivals, and they appeared at different parts of the town, so that before anybody realized it, the jail was about filled with them. But they seemed not to know one another, and so the residents of the town went peacefully to sleep that night, as usual."
"Well?"
"Well, in the morning when they woke up, the jail had been gutted—literally gutted."
"In what sense do you mean?"
"In every sense."
"Tell me what you mean, please."