Josie’s warning to Captain Lonsdale was given none too soon. The man Irene and her aunt had seen prowling around the Hathaway house was not the only one who made a tour of inspection on the very first night Mary Louise left her home. As the man, who was one of the chief’s most trusted detectives, went in the alley to get a good look at the rear of the premises, the figure of a boy flattened itself against the side of the garage where the ivy grew thick and close and where the shadow was not penetrated by the electric light at the corner of the alley.

Had the trusted detective seen the boy in the light, he would have reported him as about fifteen, perhaps an Italian, with curly black hair that escaped rebelliously from the confines of the shabby cloth cap; a dirty face, pinched and rather hungry looking, with great eyes of a beauty almost unearthly but with something in their expression that gave a lie to the first statement of the lad’s being only fifteen. Anyhow, the trusted detective did not see him, saw nothing in fact but a large cat humped up on the roof of the garage, and heard nothing but the unearthly caterwauling from Tom, who was probably singing a dirge incident to the cutting off of supplies by the departure of Aunt Sally, who always saved scraps for all the stray cats of the neighborhood.

“Idiot!” the boy muttered under his breath as the detective gave a cursory glance in the back yard and then made his way to the front again. “He might have found me if he had had any sense, but sense is the last thing to look for in a detective.”

If the detective lacked the sense that the boy had asserted, he had, at least, the quality of faithfulness and stuck to his job until daylight when he was relieved by another man. Whatever had been the purpose of the boy who clung so closely to the shadow of the garage, he had not been able to accomplish it on that night. His object seemed to be to gain access to the big house, but, unfortunately for him, the strong light in the alley was thrown directly on the back of the house, making it impossible to accomplish his purpose with the tiresome detective constantly tramping around, appearing when least expected rather as though he suspected something.

When daylight came the boy hooked a ride on the back of an early milkcart, leaving the detective none the wiser and unconscious that his vigil had been shared by an interested person.

During the morning Josie made an excuse for visiting the Hathaway house, stating she wanted to borrow a book from the Colonel’s library. Carefully she went over the house to make sure nobody had entered since she and Mary Louise had left it the day before. Everything was as it had been, not a sign of meddlers! She then went to the garage. Some one had been in there, it was plain to see. The old-fashioned lock, fastened by a large brass key, was easy enough to open with a skeleton key. Not only had it been picked, but Josie saw that some one had been in the Colonel’s dilapidated old car which now reigned supreme in the place where the fine new car had been wont to shine with polished supremacy. The scuffed cushions had been ripped open and some one in feverish haste must have searched in the stuffing. The back of the car was full of the hair torn from the inside of the cushions and springs and strips of leather thrown on the floor gave evidence of a thorough search having been made.

“I bet they didn’t find a thing,” grinned Josie. “This doesn’t look like the leavings of a successful hunt.”

Nevertheless, she made a close examination of the garage, even going upstairs to the room intended for a chauffeur. She then felt it necessary to pay a visit to the chief. As usual, he was in his inner office knitting his brows over an intricate problem of how to catch wrongdoers.

“Well, General O’Gorman, how goes it?” was his playful greeting.

“Who had the watch last night at the Hathaway house?” Josie didn’t seem to want to play.

“Will Slater.”

“What kind of a man is he?”

“Honest as the day is long and never goes to sleep when he is supposed to keep awake!”

“Well, he was asleep on his job last night, although he kept walking around the block all night.”

“What do you mean?” sternly. “I mean that whoever watched the Hathaway house was only watching with his legs and not using his head at all.”

“Well?”

“Some one got in the garage and ripped open the cushions in the Colonel’s old car. Of course, the lost money was not there but, if it had been, it would all have been got away with by now.”

“How do you know it wasn’t there?”

“Because I myself had already closely examined the cushions, examined under the seats and in the pockets, every place where papers might have been hidden.”

The chief pressed his electric bell.

“Tell Slater to come to me as soon as he comes in,” he told the man who came at his summons.

“Excuse me, Chief,” Josie said earnestly, after the man had left, “but please do not get me in bad with Slater. My father used to say that nothing was so hard to combat as an antagonistic local police force and I’m sure, if you let Slater know I have found out about the garage being entered, he will have it in for me. Isn’t he the man who let Felix Markle escape when we had him for sure? If it hadn’t been for that wonderful young newspaper chap, Bob Dulaney, Markle would have been a free man this day.”

“Strange to say he is a free man. I have just got a report that he has broken jail and is at large.”

Josie whistled, a form of astonishment she occasionally permitted herself.

“Well what’s the use?” she asked wearily. “What’s the use of nabbing these persons if you hand them over to a set of boobs who can’t keep them when once they get them? We can look out for the female of the species now, Chief. She is as certain to get back to her Felix as a homing pigeon. There is that one good thing about Hortense Markle. She is surely crazy about her old man. I wonder if they will begin operations around these parts. I shouldn’t be surprised if they did. Dorfield proved an easy mark up to a certain point.”

“No, no! They would hardly come back here.” Chief Lonsdale spoke with conviction. “They are too well known and they will, of course, be on to the fact that I am possessed of the knowledge that Markle has got out.” He spoke with a certain pomposity that very much amused Josie. However, she concealed her grin and agreed with the chief.

“You won’t put Slater on to the fact that the garage has been entered, will you?”

The chief pondered.

“Not if you say so, but I can’t have my men slighting their duty.”

“He didn’t slight his duty. I tell you he kept tramping around the block steadily. Mr. and Mrs. Conant saw him and Mrs. Conant thought he was after her garbage can. Irene Macfarlane saw him and told me he walked all night. Of course, walking is not watching, but I am sure Slater did his duty as he saw it. The thing is, he has mistaken his calling and ought to be a bill sticker whose object is publicity of his business. You might caution him a bit if he is to go on with the job and tell him to keep in the shadows a little more and sometimes turn and go the other way. My idea is that not only do we want to keep any treasure hunter from gaining access to the Hathaway home but we also want to nab anyone who is so inclined.”

“Of course!” said the chief shortly.

“See here, I haven’t offended you, have I?” asked Josie with concern. “I thought you wanted me to be frank.”

“Of course, of course! I guess I am more mortified than offended,” confessed Captain Lonsdale, who had a real affection for the daughter of Detective O’Gorman, but who was naturally a bit put out that this slip of a girl should have caught one of his prize officers bungling. He determined to give the man a stiff lecture on detective work in general and the job of patrolling a house liable to be broken into in particular. It would be a sad affair if this treasure, that must be somewhere, should be found and carried off by thieves under the very nose of the police force.

Josie left the police station, her head bowed in thought. She went by the Hathaway house again before she returned to the Higgledy Piggledy Shop. Again she walked around the yard and this time she closely examined the outside of the garage.

“Umhum! Vine a little crushed where some one pressed close to the wall,” she muttered.

Stooping she regarded the earth attentively.

“Small footprints! Tennis shoes, I should say—either a boy or a woman. Fortunate for Slater the light in the alley is so bright that that one couldn’t enter the house without being seen even by a sleep-walker. That’s what Slater is—a sleep-walker!”

Josie O’Gorman whistled thoughtfully, stared up at the silent house, and walked slowly homeward.

A little later in the day, a dark haired boy came down the alley walking jauntily and with seeming nonchalance. In his hand he carried a weapon known to boy-land as a “gumbo shooter” or a “sling shot.” It is not quite like the weapon used by David in the great killing of Goliath of Gath. That was a sling shot which must be twirled rapidly around and then let fly. But it is a similar means of offense and even more deadly.

The boy picked up pebbles, shooting at first one object then another, apparently careless of what he was doing. He stopped a moment, looked up and down the alley and, selecting a pebble with care as the shepherd might have done when he prepared to kill the doughty giant, he took accurate aim at the electric light and the sound of shattered glass was the result. Then, snuggling close to the high board fence, he was around the corner before anyone saw him and the light was not known to be broken until night-fall. Even then nobody took the trouble to report it and the rear premises of the Hathaway house were in total darkness soon after sunset.