"I'd have had him, anyway," said Patsy, afterward. "He turned on me in the woods up there in Nyack and knocked me down, and tied me.
"He thought I was done, but I wasn't. I was just going for a tug when you ran him aboard the police-boat.
"At any rate," he said in conclusion, "it's some satisfaction to know that it was you, and not he, that outsailed me."
The two Deevers were punished in due course for conspiracy, and Flint for perjury.
"On the whole," said Superintendent Byrnes to Nick, "I think that was about the prettiest work I ever saw. The most puzzling thing in the world, I've noticed, is apt to be a perfectly plain case."