message to the manager of the Gray Taxi Company.”

Rake started. He frowned in perplexity. “How can you do that, Chester?”

“I’ve got authority to do most anything. I want a Gray taxi to meet us when we dock with the Imparada. Perhaps your nice little blonde with the turned-up nose will be driving.”

Rake shook his head when Fay disappeared. He clenched his fists and glanced upward at the topmost light in the dark tower. He swung on one heel as Yeader touched his shoulder.

“Big ship coming in!”

“The Imparada?”

“Looks like it. We’ll have to hurry. Call Chester!”

Fay appeared at Rake’s third shrilling whistle.

“All set,” he said, waving his arm toward the Government dock. “Let’s get down to the quarantine boat.”

A dark wharf jutted like a pointing finger from a green, sloping shore. Upon this wharf great, rusty cables and buoys were scattered.

Fay led the way through the buoys and presented his passes to a sailor on guard before a wire gate.

“Going out to the Imparada!” he said authoritatively.

The sailor hitched his trousers, turned, squinted through the sea mists, then swung the gate.

“You’ll have to hurry,” he said. “The quarantine boat is casting off her shore lines.”

Wrapped in the cloak of gray vapor, the three men crouched forward of the wheelhouse and stared out across the Narrows to where a great ship glided like a glow-worm in a garden.

They heard the quarantine boat’s bells as it maneuvered beneath the towering overhang of the giant passenger ship. They mounted a pilot’s ladder which had been lowered for the quarantine officers.

Fay whispered into an officer’s ear after he sprang over the rail. He motioned aft. Rake and Yeader, with the kit-bag, followed closely.

The two British bankers were seated at the taffrail. To them Fay told his mission, and his object of substituting himself and party, in order to discover who had slain Stephney. The bankers had already been informed 

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