“All right; I’ll be right over,” said Hodgins. “Hold him tight until I get there. If you let him get away it will cost both of you your shields.”
That the Camera Chap had been captured was indeed true. After lingering in the Bulletin office for several hours after the visit of the chief of police, he had gone to the garage with the intention of taking his motor cycle and returning to his host’s mountain retreat.
He realized that he ran some danger of being recognized as he walked along Main Street, but the distance from the Bulletin office to the Invincible Garage was so short that he thought he could safely risk it.
The possibility of the place being watched by some of Hodgins’ men, in expectation of his coming, did not enter his mind, and, therefore, when he reached the garage without being challenged, he considered himself out of danger.
It was a great shock to him when, just as he was wheeling the motor cycle out to the street, the two detectives pounced upon him, and told him fiercely that if he preferred a whole skin to a broken one he had better keep very still, and give them no trouble.
Those men were big and brawny, and they were so sore at their captive for the injury he had done Oldham’s police force that they would have been well pleased if he had offered resistance so they would have had justification for using violence. But Hawley disappointed them in this respect. He accepted the situation with a rueful smile. He fully believed that he was booked for jail, and the prospect was not pleasant, but he saw no use in making a fuss about it.
Chief Hodgins arrived at the garage a few minutes later, and took personal charge of the prisoner.
Greatly to the latter’s astonishment, he was not taken to police headquarters. He was marched to the city hall, and conducted by Hodgins into the private office of the mayor.
And what astonished him still more was the fact that the mayor received him with a pleasant smile.