“No; I was just congratulating myself that I had not. All my assistants are out, however, so I can hardly call myself care free. I never am, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Say, old chap, the Goalong”—he referred to his palatial steam-yacht—“is lying at the dock, over at the foot of West Twenty-third Street, waiting for us, and I want you to go aboard with me. Will you?”

“I’d like to do so, Kane,” replied the detective; “but there are several things here to which I ought to give my attention to-day, now that I have a few moments at my disposal in which to do so. You see——”

“Hold on, Nick. I haven’t finished yet.”

[7]

[7]

“Well, go ahead, then.”

“This is a business proposition I’m making. I was boarded by pirates last night, and I want you to see if you can’t catch them.”

“Boarded by—what?”

“Pirates—p-i-r-a-t-e-s—pirates. The real thing, too. Honest Injun, Nick! Did you ever read Cooper’s ‘Red Rover’? Well, I could take my oath that he has risen from the bottom of the sea and resumed business at the old stand. I hope to goodness he won’t hear me; he might think I am joking, and I was never more in dead earnest in my life.”

“Do you mean that the Goalong was boarded by pirates—really?”

“Do I mean it! Huh! Can’t you see that I’ve lost flesh? It takes a pretty good-sized man, with a mighty big proposition on his side of the question, to scare me, Nick, as you are aware; but that pirate chap did the act, without a hitch. I haven’t got over it yet.”

“You aren’t trying one of your jokes on me, are you, Kane?”

“No—on my honor, no!”

“Tell me all about it.”

“Not here, old man. Come aboard the yacht. I’d rather tell you there. You see, that is what I have come here for. When this thing happened, I said to my wife and her sister—they are aboard the Goalong with me, you know—I told them that there was only one thing for us to 

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