Shortly before the noon hour, Peter Ames halted the old automobile from Green Fancy in front of the Tavern and out stepped O'Dowd, followed by no less a personage than the pseudo Mr. Loeb. There were a number of travelling bags in the tonneau of the car.
Catching sight of Barnes, the Irishman shouted a genial greeting.
"The top of the morning to ye. You remember Mr. Loeb, don't you? Mr. Curtis's secretary."
He shook hands with Barnes. Loeb bowed stiffly and did not extend his hand.
"Mr. Loeb is leaving us for a few days on business. Will you be moving on yourself soon, Mr. Barnes?"
"I shall hang around here a few days longer," said Barnes, considerably puzzled but equal to the occasion. "Still interested in our murder mystery, you know."
"Any new developments?"
"Not to my knowledge." He ventured a crafty "feeler." "I hear, however, that the state authorities have asked assistance of the secret service people in Washington. That would seem to indicate that there is more behind the affair than--"
"Have I not maintained from the first, Mr. O'Dowd, that it is a case for the government to handle?" interrupted Loeb. He spoke rapidly and with unmistakable nervousness. Barnes remarked the extraordinary pallor in the man's face and the shifty, uneasy look in his dark eyes. "It has been my contention, Mr. Barnes, that those men were trying to carry out their part of a plan to inflict--"
"Lord love ye, Loeb, you are not alone in that theory," broke in O'Dowd hastily. "I think we're all agreed on that. Good morning, Mr. Boneface," he called out to Putnam Jones who approached at that juncture. "We are sadly in want of gasoline."
Peter had backed the car up to the gasoline hydrant at the corner of the building and was waiting for some one to replenish his tank. Barnes caught the queer, perplexed look that the Irishman shot at him out of the corner of his eye.
"Perhaps you'd better see that the scoundrels don't give us short measure, Mr. Loeb," said O'Dowd. Loeb hesitated for a second, and then, evidently in obedience to a command from the speaker's eye, moved off to where Peter was opening the intake. Jones followed, bawling to some one in the stable-yard.
O'Dowd lowered his voice. "Bedad, your friend made a smart job of it last night. He opened the tank back of the house and let every damn' bit of our gas run out. Is she safe inside?"
"Yes, thanks to you, old man. You didn't catch him?"
"Not even a whiff of him," said the other lugubriously. "The devil's to pay. In the name of God, how many were in your gang last night?"