"One moment," said the detective, throwing a warning look toward Frank. "I'm listening to Jerry now. You can tell your story by and by. Where did the man go, Jerry? Do you know?"
"No," replied the newsboy, shaking his head. "I went down to the house where the woman was murdered. You seen me there, you know."
This, of course, was true.
And yet the reader knows, as well as did Jerry Buck himself, that it was far, very far, from being the whole truth.
Of his subsequent adventures in Cagney's sanctum, of the conversation he had overheard while crouched behind the whisky barrels outside the half door, he said nothing at all.
Nor did he mention the little fact—and this the reader does not know—of his having followed the respectable Mr. Elijah Callister to the very door of his Fifth avenue mansion before allowing him to pass from before his eyes.
For reasons best known to himself Jerry Buck was silent in all these points, neither Frank nor the detective, as a matter of course, dreaming of the knowledge he thus held in reserve.
But whatever had been the motive of Caleb Hook in thus penetrating the retreat of the Bats in the Wall—the entrance to which let us say right here, his keen eyes had detected from the suspicious circumstances of the snow being cleared away around the great flat tombstone by the side of which he had come to a halt, when in company with Frank he had followed the strange apparition through the Trinity church-yard—whatever had been his motive, we repeat, it was evident that he had satisfied it now, for he leaped from the table and moved toward the foot of the ladder leading to the church-yard above.
"Well, good-bye, boys," he exclaimed, as carelessly as though his unexpected visit had been an every-day affair. "I'll call upon you fellows when I want your testimony. Never mind opening the door; I can raise the stone myself. Frank Mansfield, I want you. Come along with me."
He sprang up the ladder, Frank following him.