ter
who figured in the case was caught by the truckmen who delivered the
arms to Creek House. After being beaten, bound, and gagged, he was
taken to the hotel. His questioning was interrupted by the arrival of
Brant and Scott.'"

And that really was modesty. Jerry had been returning from the boat
landing when he passed a big trailer truck that carried the name of a
large manufacturer of industrial castings. He thought quickly,
surprised at seeing such a vehicle in Whiteside. Such trucks always
used the shorter main route. To his positive knowledge, there was not
a single manufacturing plant on the entire shore road on which
Whiteside and Seaford were located. There was a definite chance, he
decided, that the truck might be carrying a load for Creek House. He
knew the smugglers had made fast changes in their plans, as witness
the moving up of the ship sailing. There was a strong possibility they
had been forced to ask for immediate shipment of contraband, too.

Jerry passed the truck and stopped at the newspaper long enough to
scrawl a note to Duke, explaining what had happened, then he passed
the truck again and drove furiously toward Seaford. He went by Salt
Creek Bridge and parked his car in a pasture, then ran back to the
bridge, made his way into the marsh and waited.

The trailer truck arrived, stopped, and put out flares, and three men
got out. They jacked up the rear wheels of the trailer, then started
to unload. By so doing, they had a perfect reason for being there. If
a police car came along, they had only to explain that they had broken
an axle and were replacing it, and that they had taken out part of
their cargo to lighten the load until repairs were completed.

The stage was no sooner set than up the river came the flatboat from
Creek House. It pushed its way into the marsh, toward Jerry. Not until
the actual loading started did he discover his bad luck. He had taken
a fairly well-defined path into the marsh. The path was artificial,
made by the Kelsos. They had carried rocks to make both the path and
the stone jetty to which the flatboat had come. The deception had
worked, because the path and jetty surfaces, strong enough to carry
the weight of men with heavy cases, were under an inch of mud and
water!

Jerry had described the end simply. "They fell over me. I tried to get
away, but there were too many of them."

But he had gotten in one good blow. His hand closed over one of the
rocks of the pat