at it is if I never do anything else!"

"At that rate you're bound to win, Jack. Keep on trying."

CHAPTER XIII

THE MOVING PICTURES

Captain Haskin, though he took no one into his confidence as to just
what he was doing, impressed Dick and Jack alike as a man who, once
started, would never drop any undertaking until he was successful. He
might not always succeed, but failure in his case would never be due to
lack of effort. So they were not surprised when he came to them a day
or two after the Burtons had left town and told them that he had what
might be a valuable clue.

"I want you to come to the theatre with me," he said. He smiled as he
said it. "That may seem like a frivolous thing to do when we are at
work on a mystery of this sort, but you'll see what I mean when we get
there."

Dick and Jack, who liked the railroad detective and trusted him
implicitly, were certainly surprised, but they made no bones about
accompanying him. He had called for them at Dick's house, where Jack
was spending the evening, and he said he wanted Tom Binns and Pete
Stubbs to be along, too. So they rode with him in the automobile which
he was using, and picked up the other Scouts.

"I don't believe you ever saw the particular theatre I'm going to take
you to," he said, when he had all four of them in the car. "It isn't
much of a theatre, even for a moving picture place. It's a little
place over near the river, and the films are cheap and not very good.
But you'll see why I picked it out later."

It was a long ride, after they had picked up Tom Binns, even in the
detective's big car. As they rode, Haskin kept looking around behind
him.

"I've had a queer feeling two or three times to-day," he said, "that I
was being followed. I've shadowed so many people in my time that I'm
pretty well acquainted with the ways of doing it, and I must say I
don't like the look of things. Those fellows are desperate enough to
do anything at all, but if they're actually shadowing the detective
who's in charge of the efforts to run them down and catch them they've
got even more nerve than I thought was possible."

Two or three times, now, as they made their way along, at a slow pace
by Haskin's direction, those in the car got a glimpse of a smaller
automobile that seemed to hang pretty persistently on their track.
They were evidently never out of sight of the occupants of the other
car for very long.

"I suppose they know what