On their way to the police headquarters the two girls gossiped pleasantly concerning the events that had happened since they last saw each other, for there are other things in the world besides lost automobiles and strange young men. There are even winter coats, and how much fur it is good taste to trim them with this year. There were, also, round hats, three-cornered hats and four-cornered hats to discuss, as well as the broad-brimmed hats and matinee, church or street hats. And by the time they reached the police station they had scarcely touched upon shoes and stockings—never mentioned gowns at all!

They found Mr. Charles Lonsdale, Chief of Police, at his desk.

“Oh, here you are,” said Josie. “Good morning, Chief.”

“Good morning, I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour,” was his response.

“Yes,” said Josie, “I knew you’d wait, knowing I’d arrived on the morning train. You see, Chief, this is one of those peculiar cases that can begin or stop at any moment, as we may decide. I don’t know what the ‘dear little thing’—eh—eh—‘Queenie,’ I believe, is her proper name—is worth, but—”

“Without a ‘trade,’ and with the accessories we loaded it with, our poor little Queenie is worth thirty-two hundred dollars,” confessed Mary Louise.

The Chief looked astonished; Josie regarded her friend with amazement.

“Whatever its cost,” commented Lonsdale, “the thing has been stolen, and it’s my duty to try and find it. As for you, Josephine, you may tackle it or not, as it pleases you. Thirty-two hundred dollars is a good bit of money for a little automobile.”

“It isn’t entirely the money that bothers me or Gran’pa Jim,” remarked Mary Louise, with another deep sigh. “We’d have paid a thousand more, gladly, if necessary. It’s the thought that Danny would betray the confidence we held in him.”

There was a brief silence, during which Josie took out her memorandum book. “What’s the record, so far?” she asked carelessly. “Well, I’ll answer myself: not much, although the whole town knows that Mary Louise’s new auto has been stolen and Danny Dexter has disappeared at the same time. Meantime certain details have reached my ears that lead me to believe that Danny Dexter is but one of half a dozen assumed names used by this ex-soldier. The fellow accepted his position with the Colonel as half-chauffeur and half-gardener so that, at the slightest warning, he could use the little auto in making a getaway. In other words, he’s playing a bigger game than we’ve given him credit for.”

“Who told you all this?” inquired Mary Louise, in amazement.

Josie O’Gorman laughed, but before she could answer, there burst into the room from a side closet a big man with the marks of smallpox scattered about his face, a broad, sensitive nose, and shrewd eyes. It was evident at once that he was interested in their discussion.

“Anyone could see that with half an eye,” he made answer. “I’ll buy you half a dozen better automobiles than ‘Queenie’ if you’ll find its driver for me.” “What about him?” asked Josie staring at him.

“Well, one name’s as good as another, just now, so we’ll still call him Danny Dexter,” responded the detective, leaning back in the chair so as to rest his feet against the wall. “For instance, I’m from Boston, and my name’s Crocker. Understand?”

Josie shook her head. She’d met a lot of detectives at one time or another, and this one seemed familiar, in a way.

“Then it’s a Boston case, after all,” she said in a disappointed voice.

“No, it’s just a Danny Dexter case, let us say,” responded the big man, also in a disappointed voice. “They gave him up in Boston as a bigger crook than they had time to handle, and the Bank was unwilling to spend more money on so elusive an individual. But I had some information of a floating character that came back to me time after time from the war zone that justified me in resigning from the government deal and taking up the case personally. So I’ve been in Dorfield ever since its famous regiment arrived—for the truth is that the Dorfield boys put up as game a fight as any Americans in the Expeditionary Force. Your boys had no press agent, nor any motion picture concern to back them up, so the truth will never be heralded broadcast in newspaper headlines, but take it from me, Dorfield comes under the A-No. 1 class.”

They regarded him a time in silence.

“How did you make your way here?” asked Josie.

“I saw you arrive in town and recognized you as John O’Gorman’s daughter. Was on old John’s force at one time. Josie O’Gorman is a friend of Mary Louise Burrows, whose auto was stolen by the man I’m hunting. That’s simple enough.”

“Have you been searching for him long in this locality?” asked Chief Lonsdale, handing him a business card.

“Oh, you’re not unknown to me, Charles Lonsdale,” he said; “I’ve hung around here for two days or more, and that’s long enough to tag any man.”

“What’s the name of your Boston fugitive?”

“Here they call him Danny Dexter—his war name. In Boston he was best known as Jim O’Hara.” “Oh!” exclaimed Josie O’Gorman, in a low tone of surprise. “Then he’s well worth finding. Forger?”

“Yes—and more,” replied the big man, gravely.

Chief Lonsdale was staring at both of them.

“What is your real name?” he asked the man. “A business card doesn’t amount to much in our profession,” and he spun the proffered card across the table.

“Well, where I live we don’t often resort to aliases. They just call me Bill Crocker.”

“Oh!” again said John O’Gorman’s daughter, both surprised and interested in the turn events had taken. “I’ll go bond for him, Chief,” she continued. “It’ll do us both good to know Bill Crocker.”

The man with the pock-marks, who leaned back against the wall in careless attitude, his clothing wrinkled and unpressed, his whole appearance unkempt and unattractive, returned their looks with a mild smile.

“Reputation is a vague thing,” said he, “and often undeserved or exaggerated. To-day Bill Crocker of Boston might be called the John O’Gorman of his city, but what will he be to-morrow? A few failures and he is totally forgotten.”

Josie gave one of her sympathetic nods.

“That’s true,” she affirmed. “If you’re pretty big you’re given a headline; perhaps your picture is printed, but in a few days no one remembers who you were. That’s a good idea, for otherwise the Book of Fate would be packed with nonsense. An author, painter or sculptor stands a chance of living in name, but no one else has a ghost of a chance.”

“Are you prepared to spend some money on this game?” asked Bill Crocker. “The Bank offers a big reward for the man, with all expenses. I’m going to try and get him.”

“Try for it,” repeated the Chief of Police. “We’re prepared to do all the Bank would—and then some,” added Lonsdale calmly. “Eh, Miss Burrows? But we want the auto more than the man.”

“That is true,” agreed Mary Louise, “and yet I will leave the whole matter in your hands. With Charlie Lonsdale, who is regarded as an especially clever Chief, and Josie O’Gorman, whom I have evidence to prove is the brightest girl detective in America, and Bill Crocker of Boston, who is regarded with such awe by his confreres, we certainly ought to win against one common soldier who has turned criminal because he likes a pretty automobile and thinks it safe to steal it from a country town.”

“You forget yourself and your own talents, my dear,” said Josie.

“Why, I seem to have a real talent for stirring up criminal cases,” Mary Louise admitted, “but not for unraveling mysteries.”

“The reason we’re not all better detectives,” commented Bill Crocker, “is that we lose too much valuable time. Let us get busy on the case before us. First, I want to see the old stables—lately used as the garage.”

“This seems like doubling on our tracks,” retorted Josie; “we all know this place so well. But as you insist on crowding yourself into this gang of investigators, we’ll make a brief survey of the premises so you may know the exact situation as well as the rest of us.”