oming?"

"Not from me. You might better consult--my wife," said Whitaker with an
embarrassed laugh.

"Thanks, no: if it's all the same to you. Besides, I've turned her over
to the stewardess, and I daresay she won't care to be interrupted. She's
had a pretty tough time of it: I judge from your rather disreputable
appearance. Really, you're cutting a most romantical, shocking figger."

"Glad of that," Whitaker remarked serenely. "Give me another drink.... I
like to be consistent--wouldn't care to emerge from a personally
conducted tour of all hell looking like a George Cohan chorus-boy....
Lord! how good tobacco does taste after you've gone without it a few
days!... Look here: I've told you how things were with us, in brief; but
I'm hanged if you've disgorged a single word of explanation as to how
you came to let Drummond slip through your fingers, to say nothing of
how you managed to find us."

"He didn't slip through my fingers," Ember retorted. "He launched a
young earthquake at my devoted head and disappeared before the dust
settled. More explicitly: I had got him to the edge of the woods, that
night, when something hit me from behind and my light went out in a
blaze of red fire. I came to some time later with a tasty little gag in
my mouth and the latest thing in handcuffs on my wrists, behind my
back--the same handcuffs that I'd decorated Drummond with--and several
fathoms of rope wound round my legs. I lay there--it was a sort of open
work barn--until nearly midnight the following night. Then the owner
happened along, looking for something he'd missed--another ass, I
believe--and let me loose. By the time I'd pulled myself together, from
what you tell me, you were piling up on the rocks back there."

"Just before dawn, yesterday."

"Precisely. Finding you'd vacated the bungalow, I interviewed Sum Fat
and Elise, and pieced together a working hypothesis. It was easy enough
to surmise Drummond had some pal or other working with him: _I_ was
slung-shotted from behind, while Drummond was walking ahead. And two men
had worked in the kidnapping of Mrs. Whitaker. So I went sleuthing;
traced you through the canal to Peconic; found eye-witnesses of your
race as far as Sag Harbor. There I lost you--and there I borrowed this
outfit from a friend, an old-time client of mine. Meanwhile I'd had a
general alarm sent out to the police authorities all along the
coast--clear to Boston. No one had seen anything of you anywhere.