The Box with Broken Seals by Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips), 1866-1946

A waiter had answered the bell.

"Don't have our luggage brought up," Crawshay directed. "We are leaving for New York to-night. That's so, isn't it, Hobson?" he added, turning to his companion.

"You bet!" was the grim reply. "I'd give a thousand dollars to be there now."

"The Limited's sold out," the man told them. "There are two or three persons who've been disappointed, staying on here till to-morrow."

"I'll get you on the train," Downs promised. "I can do as much as that for you, anyway. I'll stop and go on to the station with you from here. I'm very sorry about this, Hobson," he continued, fingering the dispatch. "We shall have to get right along to the station, but if there's anything I can do after you've left, command me."

"You might wire New York," Hobson suggested, as he struggled into his overcoat. "Tell 'em to look out for the _City of Boston_, and to hold her up for me if they can. I've got it in my bones that Jocelyn Thew is running this show and that he is on that steamer."

"Those fellows at Washington must have collected some useful stuff," Chief Downs observed, as the three men left the room and stepped into the elevator. "They've been working on their job since before the war, and there isn't a harbour on the east or west coast that they haven't got sized up. They've spent a million dollars in graft since January, and there's a rumour that the new Navy Department scheme for dealing with submarines, which was only adopted last month, is there among the rest."

"Anything else?" Crawshay asked indolently.

The Chief of Police glanced first at his questioner and then at Hobson.

"What else should there be?" he enquired.

"No idea," the Englishman replied. "Secret Service papers of the usual description, I suppose. By-the-by, I hear that this man Jocelyn Thew has stated openly that he is going to take all the papers he wants with him into Germany, and that there isn't a living soul can stop him."

Hobson's square jaw was set a little tighter, and his narrow eyes flashed.

"That's some boast to make," he muttered. "Kind of a challenge, isn't it? What do you say, Mr. Crawshay?"

Crawshay, who had been gazing out of the window of the taxicab, looked back again. His tone was almost indifferent.

"If Chief Downs can get us on the Limited," he said, "and if we catch the _City of Boston_, I think perhaps we might have a chance of making Mr. Jocelyn Thew eat his words."

The Chief smiled. The taxicab had turned in through the entrance gates of the great station.

"I have heard men as well-known in their profession as you, Hobson, and you too, Mr. Crawshay, speak like that about Jocelyn Thew, but when the game was played out they seem to have lost the odd trick. Either the fellow isn't a criminal at all but loves to haunt shady places and pose as one, or he is just the cleverest of all the crooks who ever worked the States. Some of my best men have thought that they had a case against him and have come to grief."

"They've never caught him with the goods, because they've never been the right way about it," Hobson declared confidently.