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She would come to his office in the morning. There was nothing for him to do but to await her arrival.
He was expecting Carter, too. He had sent him to Nyack the evening before as soon as he had learned of Dean's whereabouts. Carter was to find out everything that Dean had learned and report as soon as he could. It was Carter who arrived first.
"Dean doesn't know what happened to him, nor where the girl went," said Carter. "They had lost the Hoffs' trail at the Garrison ferry, as he told you over the 'phone. They had to wait there half an hour for another boat. They scouted around West Point, and nearly three hours afterward they picked up the trail heading toward New York. About ten miles south of West Point they were clipping along a mountain road when something happened. Dean is not sure whether he hit a stone in the road or whether an automobile struck them. He was knocked unconscious and didn't remember anything more until he came to and found the doctor setting his arm."
"Who took him to the doctor's?"
"It was a couple, the doctor said, who explained that they had found Dean lying in the road under his wrecked motorcycle. The doctor could not remember what the couple looked like. Said he had been too busy looking after the injured man. I did worm out of him, though, that the man had left two hundred dollars with him to take care of Dean."
"That's funny," said the chief.
"It sure is," said Carter. "Looks like hush money to me. What does the girl say?"
"Nothing yet," said Fleck. "She wouldn't talk at all last night, but she's coming here at ten."
"That's funny," said Carter. "Why wouldn't she talk?"
"I don't know yet," said Fleck decisively, "but I am going to find out.
Do you really suppose that she has fallen in love with young Hoff?"
Carter shook his head.
"Dean thought so, and I know that Dean was in love with her himself, but I don't know. I'd bank on that girl somehow, even if she is in love."
"There she comes now," said the chief as he heard the door of the outer office open.
As Jane entered she faced the two men almost defiantly. She too had had a sleepless night. Although she herself had been physically uninjured in the accident the shock to her nerves had left her unstrung, and besides she had been bothering all through the dark hours as to how much of what had happened in the last few hours it was her duty to tell to Chief Fleck.