The detective thought he was
bewitched when he ran into Senator Meiklejohn, pallid and trembling,
standing on the terrace with Nolan.

"You?" he shrieked in a shrill falsetto. "Then, in heaven's name, who is
the man who has just been pulled into the river?"

"Tower!" gasped the Senator. "Mr. Ronald Tower. They mistook him for
me."

"Faith, an' I did that same," muttered the patrolman, whose slow-moving
wits could assimilate only one thing at a time.

Clancy, afire with rage and a sense of inexplicable failure, realized
that Meiklejohn's admission and its now compulsory explanation could
wait a calmer moment. The club attendant, attracted by the hubbub, raced
to the lawn, and the detective tackled him.

"Isn't there a motor launch on the yacht?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, but it'll be all sheeted up on deck."

"Have you a megaphone?"

"Yes."

The man ran and grabbed the instrument from its hook, so Clancy bellowed
the alarming news to Mr. Van Hofen and the others already on board the
_Sans Souci_ that Ronald Tower had been dragged into the river and
probably murdered. But what could they do? The speedy rescue of Tower,
dead or alive, was simply impossible.

The gig arrived. Clancy stormed by telephone at a police station-house
and at the up-river station of the harbor police, but such vain efforts
were the mere necessities of officialdom. None knew better than he that
an extraordinary crime had been carried through under his very eyes, yet
its daring perpetrators had escaped, and he could supply no description
of their appearance to the men who would watch the neighboring ferries
and wharves.

Van Hofen and his friends, startled and grieved, came ashore in the gig,
and Clancy was striving to give them some account of the tragedy without
revealing its inner significance when his roving glance missed
Meiklejohn from the distraught group of men.

"Where is the Senator?" he cried, turning on the gaping Nolan.

"Gee, he's knocked out," said the policeman. "He axed me to tell you
he'd gone down-town. Ye see, some wan has to find Mrs. Tower."

Clancy's black eyes glittered with fury, yet he spoke no word. A blank
silence fell on the rest. They had not thought of the bereaved wife, but
Meiklejohn had remembered. That was kind of him. The Senator always did
the right thing. And how he must be suffering! The Towers were his
closest friends!

CHAPTER III.

WINIFRED BARTLETT HEARS SOMETHING

Early next mor