“To be honest with you,” he said, “I don’t know that there is any man. The girl may be waiting here to sneak away on the train, though it seems strange that she would wait until this hour, when early trains stop here. A girl met a man here last night, and she may meet him again to-night. It looks to me as if that girl was Bernice. We shall soon know if I have doped the case wrong. Here comes the train.”
Chick glided through the shrubbery, and came out at the front of the locomotive, keeping under the headlight. By moving about a little he could see along both sides of the line of cars. Presently he saw a man step off the smoking-car platform, on the side opposite the station. He dodged the lighted windows and ducked away to the right, where a patch of bushes hid a view of the field beyond. Chick was not far behind him. He was wondering if Nick was prepared for this, but in a moment he understood.
Bernice came out of the copse to meet the man, and a rustle of bushes off to the right told Chick that his chief was there, observing the interview.
Chick could not get near enough to hear what was being said, but it looked to him as if Nick was better placed. As the starting bell rang, Chick saw the man take something from his purse and pass it over to Bernice.
Then the man moved toward the train, with the girl facing in the same direction.
Chick then saw his chief rise up out of the bushes and point to the man who was making for the train. As the fellow sprang upon the lighted platform, Chick mounted the steps of the now moving train, and took a seat in the smoker. He was bound to obey orders, though he knew little of the significance of his own actions.
As the train moved off, Bernice skirted the station building and started off toward the house at a swift walk. Nick, who had heard considerable of the girl’s talk with the man, followed close behind her.
Arriving on the house grounds, she passed around to the kitchen door, which was opened at her knock. Some one had evidently been waiting for her. Nick moved up to a window, and looked in. The servant girl he had before talked with stood in front of the maid, a lighted lamp in her hand. The maid’s hand bag lay on a table between them.
As Nick waited, the girls moved into the pantry, as if to get a luncheon, and Nick hastened back to the door, which he found unfastened.
The lamp was still in the pantry when the detective opened the outer door and looked into the kitchen. He crept in, seized the hand bag, and hastened out again.