h and he swung it effectively. The State Police,
hearing his story, made a routine check of doctors and hospitals along
the route the truck probably had taken; they assumed it would not turn
around on the narrow shore road. The trucker Jerry had felled was in a
small clinic two towns below Seaford, and an interstate alarm had gone
out for the others, giving license numbers and descriptions supplied
by the reporter. They wouldn't get far.

Jerry's luck had been bad, but Captain Douglas' luck had been good.
The accumulated evidence probably would have been enough, but one of
Brad's seamen had talked, hoping for a lighter sentence.

Rick was most pleased to find that his theory about Smugglers' Light
had been close to the truth. The marks on the old tower had been made
by a powerful light supplied by Brad Marbek. The light, once used for
night purse seine fishing, was powered by a carbon arc. A cable,
connected into the same junction box that supplied Smugglers' Reef
Light, had furnished the power. The police officers had found signs of
tampering in the junction box, but they had called the authorities
responsible for the light to make a definite check. The light itself
had been stowed in Brad Marbek's home. One quarter of the cylinder had
been blacked out with paint. Red cellophane was pasted on to another
quarter.

There were still no answers to who had phoned the warning to Rick, or
why Carrots had trailed them into Whiteside, but those things weren't
important, anyway. Probably their original guesses had been right.

The others had fallen silent, engrossed in reading Jerry's story. Rick
went through it again, more carefully. The young reporter had done
well. It was an exciting yarn. Then he looked at the "side pieces,"
other stories dealing with the case, written by both Duke and Jerry in
the feverish rush to make the morning paper. There was a simple
statement by Captain Killian, who long since was asleep in his own bed
at Seaford. There was a photo of Rick and Scotty with the infrared
camera and a story by Duke of its use in the collecting of evidence.
The staff photographer had taken that one after they all returned to
Whiteside, accompanying the police and the prisoners to jail. The
entire back page was devoted to pictures, some reproductions from
Rick's movie and some taken at the jail by the staff photographer.
There was one of Cap'n Mike holding Carrots' rifle, and the caption
explained how he had rescued th