“Our dope was phoney. We were tipped off wrong by someone, out of mischief or malice—I’ll have to look into that—and we’re all in wrong. It was a case of mistaken identity, but Mr. Denby’s been very nice about it, very nice, indeed. Let the lady go, Jim.”
“I asked Mr. Taylor to send for you,” Denby explained, “because I thought it was due you, and I didn’t want any come-back. I want you all to understand the facts, if you don’t mind waiting, Miss Cartwright.”
“Of course I’ll wait,” she said brightly. What had happened to change things she could not guess, but she was confident the man she loved had some magic to save them both.
“Listen to him, boys,” Taylor counselled. “You see, he’s a bit anxious to straighten things out, so tell him all you know. Fire ahead, Mr. Denby.”
Denby addressed himself to James Duncan. “You got a tip from Harlow that a Steven Denby had bought a necklace at Cartier’s?”
“Yes, sir,” Duncan agreed.
Denby now turned to Gibbs who assumed a character of importance.
“Then you got a wireless that this Denby had sailed with Mrs. Michael Harrington and Mr. Montague Vaughan, which threw suspicion on the lady as a possible smuggler?”
“That’s right, too,” Gibbs conceded, contentedly.
“And yet,” Denby remarked with inquiry in his tone, “you let Denby slip through the Customs to-day, didn’t you?”