"Yes; on that I could hold them long enough to give Trotter a chance to come here and take them or else to get them committed on a regular warrant."
"If you keep within sound of your telephone bell, then, I think you'll have authority within a few minutes," replied Jack, briskly.
"That's a live, hustling boy," muttered the jailer, looking after young Benson through a window, as the submarine boy hurried away.
Before he had gone far, Jack encountered one of the nondescript surreys, hauled by an antiquated nag and driven by a battered darkey, that often do duty as cab in Florida. Poor as the rig was, it offered a chance of greater speed than Captain Benson could make at a walk, so he quickly engaged the rig and was driven to the place where the Secret Service men were stopping.
"You've brought us the only thing like a real clue that we have," declared Mr. Trotter, very frankly, after he had heard Jack's story. "Wait a moment, and I'll have Packwood get busy over the telephone."
Within the next twenty minutes not only had the jail been telephoned to; Packwood also talked with all the nearby railway stations in that section of the country.
"If those rascals can be found," declared Trotter, "I think we shall have gone a long way in clearing up the matter. As you say, the fellow Gaston has more reason than any of the rest of the crowd to want a complete revenge against you."
Then Mr Packwood left to walk through the little town around Spruce Beach, to see whether he could encounter any two worthies who answered to the description of Leroux and Stephanoulis.
Before half-past nine, however, word came that local constables at a little railway town a dozen miles away had arrested a couple of suspects and were bringing them to Spruce Beach. The prisoners had been taken while waiting for a north bound train, and had tickets all the way through to New York.
Then Jack hastened back to Messrs. Farnum and Pollard to report what was in the air.