I looked up and the next moment was shaking hands with the Chief, while Captain Peters grinned in the background. The Chief’s big frame and bigger personality seemed to fill the little cell, although neither the captain nor I are small men. I was glad to see him, I can tell you. And my anxiety died a little. Capable men had the thing in hand now.
“Well done, Clayton!” the Chief was kind enough to say as he shook my good hand. “Peters was all for letting you sleep, after what you have been through. But I knew that you would want to be in at the death. And that won’t be long now, after what you have found out. The captain here has told me all about it.”
“I would have called the captain out if he had let me sleep!” I answered, and the Chief laughed while the captain looked puzzled.
“We put you in here for safe keeping,” my Chief went on. “I don’t know of any safer place. But I’d like to hear the whole story from you again if you can tell it in five minutes. Our plans are made now, and we are merely waiting for a couple of police cars before we start. How’s the shoulder?”
“First-rate, sir. Here goes then,” and I started at the beginning when Pride and I drove up to the house of Ivanovitch the preceding afternoon and told him everything that had happened to me since. When I had finished the story he nodded. “Peters had it as straight as a die. But it’s as well to have the details confirmed in a case of this magnitude. Eh, Peters?”
The captain laughed. “It is that, sir. But I listened pretty carefully. I’ve come across some queer tales in my time. But Mr. Clayton here has them all beat.” He turned to me. “You had better join the police, Mr. Clayton, for a quiet life. I never ran across anything like it.”
“Would you tell me the plans you have made, sir?” I asked. “I know these customers pretty well now.”
“Certainly.” He drew a little closer and lowered his voice. “From your description of the place, they must have a pretty big staff of men there, so I am not taking any chances. I have a force of fifty plain-clothes men, some of them police patrolmen and some Secret Service operatives. I have called in all the men I could lay my hands on at such short notice. That is, the men that I could rely on with certainty. And Captain Peters here vouches for the policemen.
“It’s about four o’clock in the afternoon now. The fifty men are taking the 4.30 train from the Pennsylvania in plain clothes, and will get off at the ——— station, after changing at Jamaica. They will wait there till we arrive. You and Peters and I and possibly another operative will go down by car, meet the men outside the ——— station and lead them to the place. What do you think of the plan?”
I thought for a moment. “Are we going in one car or two, sir?”