There was a flash of something bright, a metallic click--two of them, in
fact--and the ticket seller tried to break away. But he was held by the
handcuffs on his wrists, one of the four grasping them by the connecting
chain.

"Get the other!" cried a sharp voice.

There was a scuffle, another flash of something bright, two more clicks,
and one of the four cried:

"That'll be about all from you, Jed Lewis, _alias_ Inky Jed."

The two handcuffed men seemed to know that the game was up. They
shrugged their shoulders, looked at each other, and grew quiet suddenly.
The set trap had been successfully sprung.

"Hey! what's the big idea?"

"What's it all about?"

"Don't we get our tickets?"

Thus cried the men from the shipyards.

"You don't want these tickets," said Joe Strong, for as Bill Carfax
looked more closely at one of the four he recognized him as the young
circus man. "You don't want any tickets these men could sell you."

"Why not?" demanded a man who had bought one.

"Because they're counterfeit," was Joe's answer. "This man, Bill
Carfax," and he nodded toward the one first handcuffed, "used to work
with the Sampson show. He was discharged--ask him to tell you why--and
soon after that we began to be cheated by the use of counterfeit
tickets. We have been trying ever since to find out who sold them, and
now we have."

"You think you have!" sneered the man who had been called "Inky Jed."

"We know it," said Joe decidedly. "Ham Logan overheard your plans
discussed, and he's told everything."

"Oh!" exclaimed Bill Carfax, and there was a world of meaning in that
simple interjection.

"And who might you guys be?" asked one of the shipyard men.

"I'm one of the circus owners," said Joe quietly, "and this is the
ringmaster," he went on, indicating Jim Tracy. "These other two
gentlemen are detectives who have been working on the case since we
discovered the counterfeits. We disguised ourselves in this way in
order to trap these two," and he pointed to the handcuffed men.

The ship workers nodded. One of them asked:

"And aren't they with your show, and can't they sell tickets at reduced
prices?"

"Never!" exclaimed Joe. "You might get in on the tickets you bought from
them, but it would be illegally. The counterfeits are clever ones," he
said, holding up four he had bought for evidence. "But we can detect the
difference by means of the serial numbers. And now, if you men really
want to see the show