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Still holding Dana Phelps between us, we hurried toward the tomb and entered. While our attention had been diverted in the direction of the swamp, the body of Montague Phelps had been stolen.

Dana Phelps was still deliberately brushing off his clothes. Had he been in league with them, executing a flank movement to divert our attention? Or had it all been pure chance?

“Well?” demanded Andrews.

“Well?” replied Dana.

Kennedy said nothing, and I felt that, with our capture, the mystery seemed to have deepened rather than cleared.

As Andrews and Phelps faced each other, I noticed that the latter was now and then endeavouring to cover his wrist, where the dog had torn his coat sleeve.

“Are you hurt badly?” inquired Kennedy.

Dana said nothing, but backed away. Kennedy advanced, insisting on looking at the wounds. As he looked he disclosed a semicircle of marks.

“Not a dog bite,” he whispered, turning to me and fumbling in his pocket. “Besides, those marks are a couple of days old. They have scabs on them.”

He had pulled out a pencil and a piece of paper, and, unknown to Phelps, was writing in the darkness. I leaned over. Near the point, in the tube through which the point for writing was, protruded a small accumulator and tiny electric lamp which threw a little disc of light, so small that it could be hidden by the hand, yet quite sufficient to guide Craig in moving the point of his pencil for the proper formation of whatever he was recording on the surface of the paper.

“An electric-light pencil,” he remarked laconically, in an undertone.

“Who were the others?” demanded Andrews of Dana.

There was a pause as though he were debating whether or not to answer at all. “I don’t know,” he said at length. “I wish I did.”

“You don’t know?” queried Andrews, with incredulity.

“No, I say I wish I did know. You and your dog interrupted me just as I was about to find out, too.”

We looked at each other in amazement. Andrews was frankly skeptical of the coolness of the young man. Kennedy said nothing for some moments.

“I see you don’t want to talk,” he put in shortly.

“Nothing to talk about,” grunted Dana, in disgust.

“Then why are you here?”

“Nothing but conjecture. No facts, only suspicions,” said Dana, half to himself.

“You expect us to believe that?” insinuated Andrews.

“I can’t help what you believe. That is the fact.”

“And you were not with them?”

“No.”

“You’ll be within call, if we let you go now, any time that we want you?” interrupted Kennedy, much to the surprise of Andrews.

“I shall stay in Woodbine as long as there is any hope of clearing up this case. If you want me, I suppose I shall have to stay anyhow, even if there is a clue somewhere else.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” offered Kennedy.

“I’ll give it.”

I must say that I rather liked the young chap, although I could make nothing out of him.

As Dana Phelps disappeared down the road, Andrews turned to Kennedy. “What did you do that for?” he asked, half critically.

“Because we can watch him, anyway,” answered Craig, with a significant glance at the now empty casket. “Have him shadowed, Andrews. It may lead to something and it may not. But in any case don’t let him get out of reach.”

“Here we are in a worse mystery than ever,” grumbled Andrews. “We have caught a prisoner, but the body is gone, and we can’t even show that he was an accomplice.”

“What were you writing?” I asked Craig, endeavouring to change the subject to one more promising.

“Just copying the peculiar shape of those marks on Phelps’ arm. Perhaps we can improve on the finger-print method of identification. Those were the marks of human teeth.”

He was glancing casually at his sketch as he displayed it to us. I wondered whether he really expected to obtain proof of the identity of at least one of the ghouls by the tooth-marks.