"He played you foul, Bart," said Shores, soothingly. He was little better than a sneak himself.
"He wouldn't have been able to do it only I—er—I sprained my arm at rowing yesterday. That's why I got you to row for me," answered Bart. But what he said about his arm was a falsehood.
Half an hour later Bart Hankers entered his elegant home at the end of the main street of the village and sneaked up to the bathroom, where he washed up and changed his wet clothing for a dry suit. Then he went downstairs and to the library, where his father sat, reading the stock reports in a New York paper.
"Father, the mystery is solved," he said, as he closed the door carefully, that nobody might hear what he had to say but his parent.
Lemuel Hankers, a thin, yellow-skinned man of fifty, looked at his son curiously.
"What mystery, Bart?" he asked.
"The mystery of the missing Washington fortune."
"You don't mean it!" And the man leaped from his chair in astonishment.
"I do mean it."
"What have you learned?"