e.
I've learned something, anyhow!"

There was a grinding of gears, and the "Spanish Omelet" shot away.
Captain Poland watched it for a moment, and then, with a shrug of his
shoulders, threw in the clutch and speeded down the road in the opposite
direction.

Harry Bartlett lost no time in acquainting Colonel Ashley with the
admission made by Captain Poland.

"So the wind is veering," the detective murmured. "I shall watch him.
I wondered why he didn't answer my letters. Now we must see LeGrand
Blossom."

"I'll come with you," offered Bartlett. "I want to see this thing
through now. Shall we tell her?" and he motioned toward Viola's room.

"Not now. We'll see Blossom first."

If the head clerk was perturbed at all by the visit to the office of
Colonel Ashley and Harry Bartlett, he did not disclose it. He welcomed
the two visitors, and took them to his private room.

Colonel Ashley went bluntly into the business in hand.

"Have you any papers to show that Captain Poland acknowledged the
receipt of the fifteen thousand dollars owed to him by Mr. Carwell?"

"I have not," was the frank answer. "I have been searching for something
to prove that the debt was paid, as I knew of its contraction. It was
not canceled as far as I can find."

"Yet Captain Poland says it was paid," said Bartlett, "and that he sent
you the receipt."

"I never got it!" insisted LeGrand Blossom. Harry Bartlett and Colonel
Ashley looked at one another, and then the detective, with an effort at
cheerfulness which he did not feel, said:

"Oh, well, perhaps in the confusion the papers were mislaid. I shall ask
Viola about them. Another search must be made."

And so the two went back to The Haven, not much more enlightened than
when they left it.

"'What is to be done?" asked Bartlett. "Blossom says he knows nothing of
it."

"Then I must know a little more about Mr. Blossom," mentally decided the
colonel. "I think I shall shadow him a bit. It may prove fruitful."

And when two nights later LeGrand Blossom left his boarding place and
met a veiled woman at a lonely spot on the beach, Colonel Ashley, who
had been waiting as he so well knew how to do, hid himself on the sand
behind some sedge grass and began to think that the game was coming his
way after all.

"For a man who pretends to be open and above board, his actions are
very queer," mused the detective, as he silently crawled nearer to where
LeGrand Blossom and the woman stood talk