gh they said nothing in the hearing of the strange chauffeur,
they were no more than inside Jacob's Farnum's room when they let loose
their indignation.

It was not many minutes, however, ere the chief of police arrived.

"I've been talking with Graves, gentlemen," announced the chief, "and
I'm wholly satisfied that the rascal, Hodges, is the first one we want
to find. When we get him we'll try to make him tell who's behind him."

"Did you get anything out of the four fellows you caught night before
last?" asked Jack Benson.

"Not a word to amount to anything, so far," replied the chief. "But
their case was continued a week by the court, and I'll find a way to
make 'em talk! Just now, my whole thought is centered on finding
Hodges."

"He isn't stopping at this hotel?" asked Jack.

"Not much! He wouldn't wait for us to come and gather him in like
that," answered the chief. "No; I'm dragging the town, and I also have
a man at the railway station, and another watching the water front."

"I can't understand how the fellow who called himself Hodges ever got
Judson to write him a letter of introduction to me," muttered Mr. Farnum.

"Do you know Judson's writing?" asked the police chief, suspiciously.

"No-o-o," admitted Mr. Farnum. "But the letter was written on the
letter-head of Judson's hotel."

"Anyone can get a hotel letter-head," retorted the police official,
sagely. "You'd better let me have that letter, and I'll write Judson
to wire me whether he ever signed it."

Farnum passed over the letter, though he muttered, disgustedly:

"Good heavens, have I reached my present only to be taken in with a
faked letter of introduction?"

"If you have," responded the chief of police, grimly, "you won't be the
only traveled, wide awake business man who has been caught by a trick
like that. In this country, where letters of introduction are passed
around as freely as cigars, it's very seldom that a man stops to wonder
whether the letter handed him is genuine."

An hour later the chief was back, to report that a man answering Hodges'
description had taken a train north bound, not buying a ticket.

"I've telegraphed to have the fellow arrested at a point along the
route," continued the police official. "I don't expect to get Hodges
as easily as that, though. He undoubtedly will have left the train
before it gets to where I have some one waiting to receive him."

"But the young woman he called his daughter?"