"What did young Hoff do when he found it was you lying there?"

"He seemed surprised and startled."

"What did he say?"

Jane colored and hesitated. There rose in her mind the picture of his
tall figure bending over her, with anguish in his eyes, with expressions
of endearment on his lips. She could not, she would not tell them what
he had said.

"He asked if I was hurt."

"Is that all?"

Again she blushed and hesitated.

"That's all."

"Did he not seem amazed at finding you there? Did he not ask you to
account for your presence there?"

"No," said the girl, firmly, "he didn't."

"Didn't he question you at all?"

"No," she insisted, "he was busy getting Dean into the car. He was
unconscious, and it looked as if he was badly hurt."

"Queer, mighty queer," muttered Carter to himself.

"Didn't he ask you who Dean was?" questioned Fleck.

"I explained that he was our chauffeur. He may have known him by sight
at any rate."

"Go on."

"We stopped at the house of the first doctor we came to and left Dean
there, and then Mr. Hoff brought me on home in the car. At the ferry he
put me into a taxi."

"What did you talk about on the trip home?" asked Fleck suspiciously.
"Didn't he try to pump you?"

"We hardly talked at all. He seemed concerned only in getting me home
without its becoming known that I had been in an accident."

"Is that all?" asked the chief. She could see by his manner that he
mistrusted her, that he felt that she was keeping something back.

"We hardly exchanged a dozen words," she insisted.

Fleck shook his head in a puzzled way.

"I can't understand it at all," he said. "Old Otto is a common enough
type of German, painstaking, methodical, stupid, stubborn, ready to
commit any crime for Prussia, but the young fellow is of far different
material. He has brains and daring and initiative. He is far more alert
and more dangerous. I cannot understand his finding you there and not
trying to discover what you were doing."

"I can't understand that either," Jane admitted.

"There's no doubt in my mind," the chief continued, "that Frederic Hoff
is the real conspirator, the head of the plotters."

"Why do you say that?" asked Jane quickly. "What did you find out when
you searched the apartment yesterday?"

She felt certain from the manner in which he spoke that he must now have
some damning evidence of Frederic Hoff's guilt. He was not in the habit
of making decisions without proof.