Ike Harrity was frankly frightened. It was plain that something very much out of the ordinary had happened. Harrity was a timid and inoffensive old chap who had perched on a high stool behind the wicket at the steamboat office day in and day out for as many years as anyone in Bayport could remember.

“I was just countin’ up the mornin’s receipts,” he was saying, in a frightened and high-pitched voice, “when in comes this fellow and he sticks a revolver in front of my nose⁠—”

“Just a minute,” interrupted the chief grandly, as the boys entered. He dipped his pen in the inkwell and poised it in the air, as he peered at the lads over his spectacles.

“What are you boys doing here? Can’t you see we’re busy?”

“I came to report a theft,” said Chet Morton. “My roadster has been stolen.”