"Now that you're here," returned Graydon brusquely, "you'll consider yourself my prisoner."
"Not your prisoner, officer, but King's. He's the one who captured me."
"You got away from King and——"
"No, I didn't. I was on parole." A cool smile wreathed itself about Brady's lips. "That's all it amounted to, King," he added to Matt. "When I slipped away from the air ship, last night, I was intending all the time to come back to you. I've found out something, and if you make the most of my information it must be acted upon at once."
"What have you found out?" asked Matt.
"I've discovered where Pete and Whipple went with Helen."
"Well, strike me lucky!" muttered Ferral. "You're a queer combination of crook and honest man, Brady, douse me if you're not! You come back and give yourself up, when you know it means the 'pen' for you."
"When the warden finds out what I've done," said Brady, "it will mean favorable mention, and several months of good time. They'll forget, at the prison, the way I knocked over the guard and borrowed his uniform. But to come back to our mutton, as the English say, when I heard that automobile in front of Hooligan's, last night, I got the notion that those two members of my old gang had made a getaway. I was about as sure of it as I was that I was lying on the bottom of the air-ship car, with my ropes so loose that all I'd have to do to get clear was to pull out my hands. After you started for the house, King, I watched my chance, freed my hands and then took the rope from my ankles. I couldn't explain where I was going, because you wouldn't believe me, and I knew that Dutch pard of yours, or the sailor, either, wouldn't believe me. So I just hiked out. I had an idea where Pete and Whipple had gone, but I wanted to make sure of it. That's what I've done."
"Where are they?" inquired Matt.
"River Forest."