s absolutely no motive in sight; no reason on earth why he
should drug a couple of total strangers and blot them out. Just the
same, I was confident that he had done it, and that I should eventually
find you by keeping cases on him. So I dropped the detectives, who were
beginning to give me the laugh for being so pig-headed about an ordinary
elopement, gathered up your belongings on the chance that you'd need 'em
if I should make good in the search for you, and came here to Ottawa to
keep in touch with Bandish."

Prime's smile was grim. "You were taking a lot of trouble for two people
who were just about that time calling you all the hard names in the
category," he interposed.

"Wasn't I?" said the barbarian with a grin. "But never mind about that.
I came here, as I said, and settled down to keep an eye on Horace. For
quite some time I didn't learn anything new. I found that Bandish was a
club man, well known and rather popular; also that he was an amateur
aviator and had made a number of exhibition flights. Everybody knew him
and everybody seemed to like him. In the course of time we met at one of
the clubs, and I watched him carefully when we were introduced. If he
had sent the forged telegram it was proof that he knew me by name, at
least. But he never made a sign.

"It was about a week later than this when I stumbled upon Mr. Shellaby
and got my first real clew in the story of the legacy muddle. Of course,
that opened all the doors, and after that I laid for Horace like a cat
watching a mouse. Before long I could see that he was growing mighty
nervous about something, and the next thing I knew he turned up missing.
Right there I lost my head and wasted two whole days trying to find out
which railroad he had taken out of town. Late in the evening of the
second day I learned, by the merest bit of bull-headed luck, that he
had gone up the Riviere du Lievres in a motor-launch. I had a quick
hunch that that motor-launch was pointing in your direction and that it
was up to me to chase him and find you and get you back here before the
thirty-first. Three hours later I had borrowed the _Sprite_ and was
after him."

"He found us," said Prime, rather grittingly. "We had stopped to patch
our canoe, and he came up in the night and cut another hole in it. I
mistook him for you--which was the chief reason why I didn't take a
pot-shot at him as he was running away."

"I knew I had no chance to overtake him," Grider went on, "