"How?" asked Matt quietly.
"The police," returned Lorry.
"No, not the police! We don't know that Merton has the plans; it's a pretty safe guess, all right, but we don't absolutely know. When you call in the law to help you, George, you've got to be pretty sure of your ground."
Lorry dropped back in his chair dejectedly, and Matt resumed his thoughtful pace back and forth across the room.
"I've thought for the last two days," Matt went on finally, "that Merton was rather free in showing off the Wyandotte. He has her over here in Fourth Lake when she belongs in Third, and he's trying her out on the other side of Picnic Point, almost under our noses. I'm not sure but that Merton wants us to see his boat's performances."
"Then he's not running the Wyandotte at her racing speed, Matt," averred Lorry. "He's only pretending to, hoping that we'll watch her work and get fooled."
"He'll not fool us much. The Wyandotte is a thirty-seven-footer, five-foot beam, semi-speed model. She has a two-cylinder, twenty-horse, two-cycle engine, five-and-three-quarter-inch bore by five-inch stroke. The propeller has elliptical blades, and is nineteen inches in diameter by twenty-eight-inch pitch——"
Lorry looked up in startled wonder. Motor Matt had reeled off his figures off-hand as readily as though reading them from a written memorandum.
"Where, in the name of glory, did you find out all that?" gasped Lorry.
Matt smiled.