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28 to steal the steamboat money on me."

"Now just a minute. Just a minute!" demanded the chief. "Let me say a word here. The situation is this. A man drove up to the steamboat office a little while ago and tried to hold up Mr. Harrity. But a passenger happened to come into the office just then and the fellow got frightened and ran away. Is that right?"

"That's right," said Harrity.

"I'll make a note of it," said the chief, suiting the action to the word. When he had scribbled industriously for some time he raised the pen again and pointed it at Chet.

"Now you," he observed, "say that somebody stole a yellow roadster on you this morning."

"Yes, sir! From our farm. He was seen driving into Bayport just a little while ago."

The chief made a note of it.

"And you," he said, pointing the pen at Ike Harrity, "say the hold-up man drove up to the office in a yellow roadster?"

"That's right, chief. That's right. A yellow roadster, it was. And now that I come to think of it, I've seen Chet Morton's car before and it was the spittin' image of it."

"Then," declared the chief, putting down his pen with the air of one making a momentous discovery, "it looks to me very much as if the