endly tap it's your
affair, not mine," he said. "Anyhow, beat it, both of you!"

Carshaw was not interested in Fowle or the policeman. He had been
vouchsafed one expressive look by Winifred as she hurried away, and he
watched the slim figure darting up half a dozen steps to a small
brown-stone house, and opening the door with a latch-key. Oddly enough,
the policeman's attention was drawn by the girl's movements. His air
changed instantly.

"H'lo," he said, evidently picking on Fowle as the doubtful one of these
two. "This must be inquired into. What's your name?"

"No matter. I make no charge."

Fowle was turning away, but the policeman grabbed him.

"You come with me to the station-house," he said determinedly. "An' you,
too," he added jerking his head at Carshaw.

"Have you gone crazy with the heat?" inquired Carshaw.

"I hold you for fighting in the public street, an' that's all there is
to it," was the firm reply. "You can come quietly or be 'cuffed, just as
you like. Clear off, the rest of you."

An awe-stricken mob backed hastily. Fowle was too dazed even to
protest, and Carshaw sensed some hidden but definite motive behind
the policeman's strange alternation of moods. He looked again at the
brown-stone house, but night was closing in so rapidly that he could
not distinguish a face at any of the windows.

"Let us get there quickly--I'll be late for dinner," he said, and the
three returned by the way Carshaw had come.

Thus it was that Rex Carshaw, eligible young society bachelor, was drawn
into the ever-widening vortex of "The Yacht Mystery." He did not
recognize it yet, but was destined soon to feel the force of its
swirling currents.

Gazing from a window of the otherwise deserted house Winifred saw both
her assailant and her protector marched off by the policeman. It was
patent, even to her benumbed wits, that they had been arrested. The
tailing-in of the mob behind the trio told her as much.

She was too stunned to do other than sink into a chair. For a while she
feared she was going to faint. With lack-lustre eyes she peered into a
gulf of loneliness and despair. Then outraged nature came to her aid,
and she burst into a storm of tears.

CHAPTER VI

BROTHER RALPH.

Clancy forced Senator Meiklejohn's hand early in the fray. He was at the
Senator's flat within an hour of the time Ronald Tower was dragged into
the Hudson, but a smooth-spoken English man-servant assured the
detective t