Chapter TEN: "a Woman Calls"

The business of a modern detective agency is managed in much the same manner as a corporation or a large firm of corporation lawyers. Its tentacles, or operatives, are spread over the globe. Its news and assignments come in via wire. Its telephone and telegraph bills amount to thousands of dollars every year. In no other way can satisfactory results be secured.

Drew had started his agency on a shoestring and ran it into a "tannery," in the parlance of the street. He had made many mistakes. He had once, to his knowledge, sent the wrong man to prison. This mistake had been so costly, he never spoke of it. It was soon after the conviction of the innocent man, that Drew gave up circumstantial evidence and got down to hard work, wherein the evidence accumulated was tempered with some degree of fact and common sense.

The first Stockbridge case had been in connection with an absconder. This man, Drew brought back in person from Adelaide. The work so pleased the millionaire that when Morphy broke under the financial strain and robbed everybody, right and left, Drew was called in to bring the promoter to the bar of justice. It was a long fight, fraught with danger and disappointment. The courts dragged. War broke over the civilized world. Morphy fought fiercely--like a cornered hyena. He was sent away, after dragging down his confederates. He had sworn at the time of conviction that he would get Stockbridge if it took to the longest day of his life. Drew remembered this oath and promise as he waited for Harrigan to appear from the booth.

He turned to the magpie and the cage. He studied both with keen eyes which had been trained in the school of hard facts piled upon each other until they pointed a way. Stockbridge had owned the pet for many years. It was the one domestic trait in his make-up, save Loris. It would be a strange thing, Drew concluded, swinging toward the window, if Morphy and Morphy's confederates were to fall through a remembered couplet dropped by the magpie. It was in the order of events, however. It was the bright, particular finger which pointed toward the prisoner at Sing Sing. Nothing would be more logical than for the bird to remember the millionaire's last words--or dying words. They would be shrieked aloud and unforgetable.

"More snow," said Drew to himself. "This is a white day if ever there was one. I wonder if Delaney got to the house in time?"

He turned as a "Buurrrr! Burrrr!" sounded at the ringing-box below the desk.

"Hello!" he said sharply into the transmitter. "Hello! Who's this?"

He waited as some out-of-town connection was made. A thin voice broke in from the silence. The voice rose in timber. "Oh, Hello!" exclaimed the detective, recognizing Flynn, one of his operatives. "Hello, Flynn," he said. "What's the weather like out at Morristown? Yes! ... Yes! ... Oh, is that so.... What? ... Too bad! ... Well, you better come in.... Take the first train and jump on the job.... He's in Florida, eh? ... Well, that lets him out.... Good-by, Flynn!"

Drew reached for a pencil and scratched a name off his list before he hung up the receiver. "That leaves six," he said, running his eyes down the names of the suspects. "Six to go. We'll round them up--or out. It looks bad for one or two of them!"

He dropped the pencil to the desk with a flip of his fingers. He replaced the telephone receiver on the hook. He twirled the chair and leaned forward with his hands on his knees.

"Nice bird, you," he said, addressing the magpie. "We're alone, you and I. Why don't you tell me what you know--what you heard in that library, when the millionaire talked over the phone and then received the cupronickel bullet in the base of his brain? He said, 'Ah, Sing!' eh? He said it, or we are jumping at conclusions. Have Delaney and I erred--as once or twice before?"

The bird strutted about the cage. It pecked at a hard, white fish-bone, thrust between two bars. It dipped its bill into the water-holder, then held high its head as it gulped. It switched its tail and hopped onto the first perch. There it sat, with coiled claws, as Drew leaned closer.

"Ah, Sing!" he repeated confidentially. "Ah, Singing! Ossining! Sing Sing! Let me hear you do your prettiest, birdie. Don!"

The magpie lowered its head and peered outwardly. It lifted a wing with ruffled dignity. Drew narrowed his eyes. "You were there," he whispered. "You were in that sealed room--that double-locked and triple-watched library. How did the murderer shoot down the old man? How could he do it, Don? I think I know _why_ it was done. I'm fairly sure who is directing matters. What I want to know is, what devilish ingenuity of the criminal tribe projected that bullet into the old man's brain? Answer that, Don!"

The bird was as stately as a raven. It seemed to Drew that he heard an echoed "Nevermore." He sat upright and took his hands from his knees. "Answer that, Don?" he repeated.

"Gone batty, Chief?" asked Harrigan, thrusting his shoulders through the open door.

Drew glanced up. He passed his hand over his forehead in a sweeping motion as if brushing cobwebs from his brain. "Guess I am," he admitted, with a sparkling glance at the paper held in the assistant's hand. "Well!" he snapped, recovering himself. "Well, what luck? I see that you got something!"

"Yep! I got him, all right. He's hanging around the front office of the prison seeing what he can find out. He says," Harrigan consulted the paper. "He says, Morphy has been worried all morning. That he acts like a man in a daze. Always----"

"I don't want that, now! Didn't I send you out to call up the vice-president of the telephone company? The same man who helped us early this morning. Westlake!"

"I was getting to him, Chief! He was busy when I called, so I thought I'd get Frick again. That's all Frick had to say, except a----"

"Well?"

"Except he'll stay there until he receives instructions from you to the contrary. Says he'll report if anything turns up."

"Go on with Westlake!" The detective's voice hardened.

"Well, I got him, finally. Had to wait till he cleaned out the callers in his office. He's in charge of maintenance and equipment. He says that their records show----"

"Show what?" Harrigan had scowled at his own writing. "It took some time to get this, Chief. Oh, I see. Well, the records of the Westchester Company shows three long-distance calls from the prison between six o'clock last night and this morning. The first one was at seven-ten P. M. to a slot booth at the east end of the New York Central Railroad Station."

"Good!" snapped Drew. "Good! Go on! We're getting there!"

"This call was for seventeen minutes. It was charged to the prison."

"What was the booth number?"

Harrigan consulted his sheet. "I didn't get that," he said, scratching his head. "Westlake didn't give it to me."

"Go on--we'll get it! Go on! What was the next call?"

"The second call, Chief, was to the State Capitol Building at Albany. It was for three minutes. No more! I guess that was the warden talking to the Pardon Clerk, or something like that. We'll forget it, eh?"

"Chop it out!"

"The third and last call, Chief," said Harrigan with haste, "was to the same telephone-booth at the Grand Central Station. Ah, here's the number! That's why Westlake didn't give it to me on the first call to the booth. Number, Gramercy Hill 9845, Chief. That's over near the east end of the building--on the lower level."

"A quiet place!" mused Drew.

"Yes! Well, Chief, here is the time. The call was for twenty-two minutes, extending from a quarter to twelve--midnight--to seven minutes after twelve. It was charged to the Auditing Department of the prison."

Drew rose from his chair. "That covers the hour in which Stockbridge was murdered!" he declared, reaching for the roll-top of his desk "That's nice work on your part."

Harrigan flushed slightly. He leaned over and laid the paper upon the desk. Drew took it, folded it with two fingers forming the creases, then crammed it into his breast pocket The roll-top came down with a bang. Harrigan lifted an overcoat from a tree, helped Drew on with it, and found the detective's hat.

"When will you be back, Chief?" he inquired.

"Hard to say! Get me some French-gray powder. A little will do. I'm going to see if I can get any fingerprints in that booth. They might help!"

"Will you be back by night!" Harrigan asked, leading the way through the door.

"Don't know! Get that powder! Tell Delaney, if he calls up, that I'm hot after my man. Tell him to stick up where he is, till he hears from me. Tell Flynn, when he comes in from Morristown, that he can relieve O'Toole who is trailing Harry Nichols. I don't think there is much in that. I'm covering every one--that's all."

Harrigan opened the drawer of a cabinet and fingered about till he found a small, round box of gray powder used for preserving fingerprints. He turned with this and saw that Drew had crammed into his side coat-pocket, a flat camera which the telephone girl brought to him. "Got flash lights?" asked Harrigan.

"Yes. There's some in the back of this camera." Drew slapped his overcoat. "I got everything, I guess. Remember about Delaney and Flynn."

The detective moved toward the door which led to the hallway where the elevators were. He turned as Harrigan laid a hand on his shoulder. "What's that sticking out of your other pocket, Chief?" asked the assistant-manager. "A paper, ain't it?"

Drew flushed beneath his olive skin. He pressed the object down with soft fingers. He turned and said simply:

"That's a picture of the girl in the case. Forgot I had it. Good-by!"

The door slammed as he strode over the white tiling and jabbed at an elevator button with his right thumb.

Swirled in wind-blown snow from the office buildings and wrapped to the chin with the collar of his overcoat, Drew plunged, with head downward, for the nearest subway station.

He caught an up-town express, and, after three grinding station-stops, he reached the Grand Central Station wherein was the telephone-booth to which the calls had been sent from the prison.

He made swift work of the matter at hand. Time was pressing. The booths, to the number of three in that portion of the station, were fortunately empty.

Going over the slot-box and the tiny shelf in the center booth, which bore the number "Gramercy Hill 9845" on the transmitter, Drew pulled the door shut and dusted all the nickel work and the polished surface of the receiver, with French-gray powder of superior make.

He took three exposures by aid of small flashes. He opened the door and allowed the smoke to escape. Pocketing the camera, after winding on a fresh film, he entered the booth for a second time and inspected its lower paneling for possible clews.

An oath, close-bitten and expressive, escaped his lips as he discovered a small hole drilled through the woodwork. He stooped and peered through this opening. It led to the next booth. It had been made with a long auger of quarter-inch diameter. Shavings lay upon the floor of the booth.

He emerged and investigated the second booth. The hole came through, underneath the slot-box. It had been drilled in order to make a connection between the two telephones. He found splinters and sawdust at his feet. He backed out and stood perplexed. There was no way of finding out just what sort of connection had been made between the two booths. All evidence of wires had been taken down. Only an expert could give an answer to the new riddle. Drew recalled Westlake as he rushed to the subway-platform.

He found the vice-president busy, with a score of men waiting in the outer room of the telephone company's office. The secretary-in-charge hurried in with his card and his urgent request for three minutes' important matter which could not well wait.

Drew, however, was forced to wait seven minutes by his watch. He chafed at the delay. He crossed his legs at least once each leaden minute. He feared that the trail was getting cold. Twice he rose, as if to go. Each time the secretary had indicated patience by an arching of her brows and a jerk of her thumb toward the ground-glass door.

"Send in Drew!" boomed as the door opened and let out the caller. Drew strode in with his notes in his hand.

"Just a minute, Westlake," he said, dropping into a chair and leaning over the desk behind which sat a good-natured official of the superior order. "A minute! I'm in a jam! What d'ye make of this?"

Drew related his discovery in the booths of the Grand Central. He went right to the point. He explained the auger-hole, the shavings, and the fact that it was the same set of booths to which the call had been sent from the prison, over the time Stockbridge had been slain.

Westlake listened with dawning light. He leaned back as Drew finished talking. He smiled. He thrust his thumbs under his vest. "You're a hardworking man, Drew," he said, "but you didn't get it all. Do you remember the third call that I gave you this morning?--the one when the chief-operator at Gramercy Hill put the howler on? It was from the same booths you just mentioned!"

"What?"

"It certainly was. There's no use looking at the record. The number was 9844 Gramercy Hill. In other words we have the evidence to show that a thin, whispering voice called up Stockbridge from one booth in the Grand Central at the same time the prison was connected to the adjacent booth."

"For the love of Mike!" said Drew.

"Yes--your case grows interesting, Chief. You've got a lot of tangled leads and all that, but a little more work should untangle them. A telephone engineer ought to make a crackerjack detective. He's trained to unsnarl the worst snarls in the world. You ought to see some of our wiring diagrams. It takes study to trace them out. You're learning!"

"I don't know if I am, Westlake. I think that Morphy, up at the prison, has been 'phoning New York. I believe he has a confederate in this town. This confederate, we will say, received his instructions about midnight last night. He bored a hole through the booths and called up Stockbridge. But what was it all for?"

"That I can't answer!"

Drew rose from the chair and crammed his notes in his inner, overcoat pocket. "What the devil did they do that for?" he asked with flashing eyes. "Morphy calls up Gramercy Hill 9843 at, or about, midnight. Gramercy Hill 9844 calls up Stockbridge. Stockbridge was killed by a bullet in the neck as he's talking over the 'phone. Was the call to warn him? Was it to threaten him? Was it to occupy his attention so that the murderer could get in the room and fire the shot?"

"Did you find out how he got into the room?" asked Westlake, leaning forward.

"I have not! The whole thing gets weird. I can't sleep! I'm not going to sleep till I get some light on this!"

"You look healthy," said Westlake, as he pressed the buzzer for the next caller.

Drew emerged from the elevator and hurried to the street with short, quick strides. He crossed the snow and pressed open the door to a cigar store. He fished out a nickel and called up his office.

To Harrigan who answered, he said tersely, "Get Flynn up to the Grand Central! Get him to the east-end telephone-booth, on the lower level. Tell him I'll be there. He's back from Morristown, isn't he? He phoned, eh? Get him to me! I need him!"

Drew hung up with a swift flip of the receiver. He hurried to the subway station and caught a local up-town. He had time to flash a fourth and fifth set of photos before Flynn came puffing across the lower level.

"See here!" snapped Drew, drawing the operative into the middle booth. "Bend down there where that hole is, and tell me what you see on the varnish."

"It's fingerprints, Chief. Two, three of them. Looks like somebody pressed hard when they drilled that hole. The outer print is a good one of a thumb. Left thumb, I should say."

"That's right! I'm going to find out who made that impression, within one hour. You stay here and grab anybody who tries to talk with the prison. Frick is up there!"

"How about O'Toole, who's watching Nichols?" asked Flynn.

"Leave him stay on that assignment. I need you here. Stick now! Watch everybody who talks over these three phones. Arrest anybody who receives or sends a call to the prison. There's plenty of Central Office men handy for a pinch. Fosdick will back them up!"

Drew rushed for the subway. He realized that he had wasted valuable time by not taking the complete set of fingerprint photos on his first inspection of the booths. It was a detail he had overlooked. But then, he could afford to make mistakes. The men or man he was after, dared not make any. This was a thing he had often recalled in dealing with super-criminals.

Fosdick's rooms at Detective Headquarters, on Center Street, were luckily deserted as he rushed down through the hallway. The Commissioner widened his eyes as Drew handed over the camera, with a request that the films be developed and prints made within twenty minutes.

"Can't be done that soon," said the detective. "Give us fifty minutes."

"I'll make it twenty-five!" shot Drew. "I got lots to tell you, but it'll keep. Get those prints and we'll land our man. The last two films have perfect samples of finger-work. Our man slipped there! He signed his own death warrant!"

The Commissioner pressed a button. To the young man who came, he explained the necessity of rushing the developing and printing of the films. He turned as the messenger hurried out with the camera.

"What about that bullet?" he asked.

"Just as I said, Commissioner. It was fired from a smooth-bore pistol or gun. What do you think?"

"Oh, maybe not! Sometimes there isn't much rifling on an old revolver. Those little twenty-two affairs are made out of cast-iron."

"But the cupronickel bullet shows smokeless powder and high-class criminal activity. I doubt if one of those little rods would take a modern steel-jacketed bullet. They're used in automatics."

"But automatics have good rifling. That bullet was as smooth as before it was shot. Here it is!"

Fosdick opened a drawer and pulled out a later-day projectile of the lesser-caliber.

"This is smooth!" he repeated with heat. "It was cut from the old millionaire's brain. It ain't scratched. It never took the rifling it was intended for. My theory is, that it was fired from a gun of larger caliber. That is to say, it didn't fit the bore. A thirty-thirty rifle might be used to hold a twenty-two caliber bullet. It would not take the rifling of this."

Drew shook his head. "That's hardly possible," he declared. "It's too vague and doesn't suit me. We're going to find that the deeper we get in this thing, the simpler will be the explanation. I remember any number of cases which have been solved in this city where the mystery was so wrapped up in speculation and the improbable that our minds failed to grasp the simple thing which was the solution."

"Then you think the lack of rifling on the bullet might be the opening wedge to catching the man who shot Stockbridge?"

"It could well be, Fosdick. The lack of a thing sometimes is just as important as the visible clue. Do you remember the Rajah case at Gramercy Park?"

Fosdick leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. "Seems to me that I do," he said, thrusting out his lower lip. "There was a big jewel missing. Sort of an Idol's Eye case--wasn't it?"

"Exactly! A white diamond was missing at a dinner. Lights went out as they were passing the stone around the table. Lights came on again and the diamond was gone. Everybody accused. A strange print was found on the sideboard. Servants knew nothing about it. The print didn't correspond to any which we took there. Seemed impossible and all that. Well, the very fact that the print didn't correspond was the means of finding the stone and the culprit. You remember it?"

"Vaguely."

"Simple! A Lascar who waited on the table slipped off his shoes, crept into the room, secured the diamond and climbed to the sideboard where he hid it on top of a picture. The thumbprint which we puzzled our heads over was a toe-print! We got the fellow!"

"I recall it now," said Fosdick. "I think one of our men thought out the matter."

"He didn't!" declared the detective. "We worked it out! The city department had given up the case. This may be the same. I'll venture to say that as soon as you get a good operative some private agency secures his services. Now, Commissioner, confess up. What manner of gun could fire a bullet, such as a cupronickel one, without leaving markings?"

"Smooth bore. An old flint-lock--for instance."

"We'll grant that! They're clumsy, however. The shot which killed the millionaire was fired at very close range through a smooth tube of a greater caliber than the diameter of the bullet found in his head. If it were fired through a gun which was rifled, then there was a collar or collars on the bullet, which we didn't find. The same thing was discovered by examination of the shells which the Germans fired at Paris. There was no rifling on those long-range projectiles. The bands dropped off after the shell left the gun."

"Then this bullet was fired at long range?" Fosdick was openly incredulous.

"No! Again we have the impossibility or seeming impossibility. I examined that library, both before and after the murder. No shot could have been fired from the outside so that a bullet would reach the old man. If that were the case there would have been an opening in the walls or at the windows or the ventilators. Besides, we have the powder burns on the millionaire's head. We are squarely confronted with a paradox. Riddle me that paradox and we will go a long ways toward finding the man who murdered Stockbridge."

Fosdick frowned. "I can't see it at all," he confessed. "I still hold to the theory that we should third degree all of the servants. I've got some of them. If they don't squeal, I'll get the others!"

Drew glanced at his watch. "Personally," he said, "I'm of the opinion that you will not get anything out of them. I think it was a mistake to arrest them. It would have been far better to trail the butler and the doorman and see if they connected with anybody."

"I'm doing this!" exclaimed Fosdick with asperity. "I've got charge of this case, Drew. I got charge and I don't want any meddling. I've my own methods."

"All right," said the detective. "All right! I want a check-up on the finger prints and then I'll be going. I had to come to you for this. You have such an interesting collection."

"Here's your answer!" said the commissioner, rising and striding around the desk. "Take this bullet and look it over. Put it in your pocket. And----"

Drew turned swiftly. The messenger stood in the doorway. He came forward as Fosdick nodded. He passed over the hastily developed prints which Drew had taken. The commissioner glanced at them, frowned, held them to the light, then said:

"We'll try these on the Man Who Can't Be Beat! He's the best in the world. He'll know in three minutes who made these prints if the fellow is on our records."

The fingerprint expert nodded to Drew as they entered a huge room which was lined with mahogany cabinets in the manner of a filing system in a mail-order house. Fosdick passed the five photos into this man's hand. He smiled as the expert adjusted his glasses, pulled out a pocket magnifying-glass, and leaned close up to the prints.

"We're infallible!" exclaimed the Commissioner with superiority. "Watch Pope get your man. He'll hound him out in no time. Eh, Pope?"

The expert was not of a sanguine disposition in the minute which ensued as he ran over the prints, studied them, held them to the light then laid them down on a table and shook his head.

"We have no record of this fellow," he said coldly. "It looks like a man's print. Here's the thumb and here is the middle finger of the right hand, I think. Hard to tell, sometimes. I'd say, as a pretty sure thing, that we have no duplicates in our collection. Shall I look?"

"Yes! Look!" said Fosdick.

Drew felt that the case was slipping from him as Pope fluttered from cabinet to cabinet, pulled out drawers, replaced them and tried still others.

"No go?" he asked as the expert shot back the last cross-index cabinet and turned with shaking head. "No go? Try again."

"Absolutely no record of the maker of these prints," said Pope, holding out the photos. "He hasn't registered with us yet. Whoever made these prints has never been arrested in the United States for a felony."

"How about a misdemeanor?" asked Drew.

"No! They're all in this cabinet. Even if he was picked up on suspicion or for auto speeding or beating his wife,--if he has one,--he would be here. I'm sorry, inspector."

Drew pulled down the lapels of his black coat and turned toward Fosdick.

"Have you got a print of Finklestein?" he asked. "You remember the fellow who was arrested in the Morphy case. He was afterwards released for lack of evidence or else he claimed exemption. I've forgotten how he got off. He's supposed to be in Florida or somewhere in the South. I had a man out to Morristown who reports along those lines. I wish you'd compare these prints with Finklestein's."

"Go ahead," said the commissioner. "Go as far as you like. I don't think that there is anything in these prints. You got the wrong ones--that's all."

"What's Finkle--Finklestein's initials?" asked the expert.

"J. B.," said Drew quickly. "Julius B.!"

A quick search through an alphabet-index, a consultation of two drawers, out of which the expert pulled some tiny squares of cardboard, and then a slow shaking of his head, brought Drew back to where he had started from before taking the prints in the booth.

"No record could be more different," Pope said. "Finklestein has a big hand and very broad fingers. The fellow who made these prints has a little hand with thin fingers. The whorls and loops are entirely dissimilar. He comes under classification 2-4-X. Finklestein is in cabinet 2-9-0. They couldn't be further away."

Drew started out through the doorway with Fosdick following him. They stood on the landing leading to the downstairs steps, where the detective was about to leave the commissioner with a curt good-by. His hand was out when he drew it back, dropped it to his side and wheeled with sudden intuition.

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed. "Are you and I detectives or children? Come back to the fingerprint room. Hurry now. I want to see Pope. I forgot something!"

The expert rose as they entered. "Well?" he asked with arching brows and a slight frown on his face. "Well, what is it?"

Drew pointed a finger as steady as a rifle. He bared his eyes into Pope's own. "Were you up to Stockbridge's house?" he asked swiftly.

"Yes! Why?"

"Did you take prints and photos of everything in the library? I understand that this was done after I turned the case over to Commissioner Fosdick."

"It was done!" rasped Fosdick. "Of course it was done. It's always done when a case looks like a homicide!"

"This case looked worse than that!" said Drew. "It was slaughter!"

The commissioner turned to the fingerprint man. "Where are the prints and photos you took up at the house?" he asked.

"Still in the developing room."

"Do you think they are developed?"

"I'll soon know, sir," he answered, pressing a button.

The messenger entered who had attended to Drew's prints which the detective took in the telephone-booth.

"Get down to the developing room," ordered Pope. "Get me all the prints and positives of Exhibit 12 of the Stockbridge case. Bring what is already developed. Tell them to rush the others."

The three men waited in silence for the return of the messenger. Drew paced the floor thoughtfully. He clasped and unclasped his hands behind his back. He had almost slipped in an important matter. It was a chance he was taking, but a vital one in the case. The fingerprints taken by the expert in the library might and might not jibe with those taken in the slot-booth. If they were the same, or any one was the same, the case would offer a new line for investigation.

A sliding footstep at the door announced the messenger. He held a sheath of curling papers in his hand. Pope reached and snatched the photos. He ran over them with widening eyes. He sorted them into two piles upon the table.

"Five prints!" he announced, glancing at Drew with a sly smile. "Five of these prints are the same as your set. In other words, the man who made the impressions in the telephone-booth was also in the library at or about the time of the murder!"

"Impossible!" snorted Fosdick.

"Ah!" said Drew. "Photos don't lie. Now we're getting there! That's the first light I've seen in some time. It clears the case of the supernatural. It puts it where it belongs--in the material world of flesh and blood and hate and revenge."

"It does that!" corroborated the expert, siding with Drew. "Now," he added good-naturedly, "I'll help out some more. I've got a book of notations made in the library. I spent two hours there this morning. I flashed every print I could see. There's some of the butler on the bottle and the tray. There's a number on the polished table. There are at least six on the door knob, to say nothing of the smashed panel. I suppose yours is among them, inspector?"

Drew held out his right hand. "Look and see," he suggested with a short laugh. "I've never been printed in my life."

"That won't be necessary. These three prints which correspond with the ones you took in the booth, settle the matter. There's no record of this fellow in our cabinet. But--he was in that library!"

"Where did he leave his prints?" asked Drew.

Pope consulted a page of his note book. He thumbed over another page, thrust his finger between the sheet and turned to the photos. "What's the number on the back of that one?" he asked, nodding toward the topmost photograph.

"Ten," said Drew, turning it over and studying a penciled number.

"Ten," repeated the expert. "That is a print which was flashed on the corner of the little table which was overturned when Stockbridge fell to the floor after being shot."

"And the same man made it who made my prints in the booth?"

"The same!" declared the expert dryly.

"I don't see where you two are getting," said Fosdick. "How could a man get into that library, shoot the old millionaire, get out again and go over to a slot-booth?"

"He might have been in the slot-booth first," suggested Drew with slow smiling. "From the booth he went to the house and killed Stockbridge."

"The fact is established," exclaimed Pope, "that the man you are after was in the library and in the booth. That's all you can say. There's no way to determine the exact hour these two sets of prints were made."

Drew lifted a second print. "No. sixteen," he said, turning to the expert. "Where was that made?"

Pope consulted his book. He glanced up at Fosdick, who was ill at ease over the development in the case. "That," he said, swinging his eyes till they met Drew's, "that was made on the hardwood floor directly under Stockbridge's body. We found the print, with others of the little finger and middle finger when the coroner moved the corpse!"

The detective stared at Pope. "You mean," he said shrewdly, "that the man who made the prints in the booth and on the little table, also was down on his knees arranging Stockbridge's body, or doing something like that?"

"He made a distinct impression on the floor despite the fact that the body was moved over it. The polish and the varnish helped to hold this impression. I venture to say that it is there yet."

"Good!" said Drew. "I may have a look at it. I never went after prints in my investigation. I left that to men who knew their business--like yourself."

Pope smiled. He glanced at his book for a third time. "What's the number of that last print?" he asked.

"Forty-four!"

"Taken from the edge of the heavy door which was broken down by Delaney, I guess. Looks like his work."

"I had a hand in that," admitted Drew.

"This print was close to the knob. There's none like it on the knob itself."

"Umph!" declared Fosdick.

Drew glanced at the commissioner. He smiled as he laid his hand on Fosdick's shoulder. "I've got you to thank," he said, "for letting me use the brains and facilities of the police department. I think it clears the case in a remarkable manner."

"How?" asked the commissioner.

"Well for one thing," Drew said, lifting the third photo. "For one thing, we know that our man passed through the doorway before or after the murder. He was in the library. He was in that booth which is a half mile or more away from the mansion."

"I'll grant you that, but what does it prove?"

Drew laid the photo on the table and turned toward the doorway. "It proves," he said, "that Stockbridge was murdered by a man who was never arrested in New York."

"That's a large order!" chuckled the commissioner. "There are a few good citizens and a number of bad ones we haven't got--yet!"

"I'm satisfied," said the detective, pulling his hat down over his head. "I'm going to look for a man who is too clever for his own good. He's stayed out of your clutches. He's forgotten more about telephones than most men know. He's as slippery as an eel and as clever as the very devil. In one thing only did he err, so far in this chase."

"What's that?" asked the commissioner.

"He didn't wear gloves on the job. That's where we may trip him up."

"They all forget something," said Fosdick, as Drew hurried out through the door with a bow toward the staring fingerprint man.

The detective hurried down the steps,--passed the sergeant at the entrance, and turned up his coat collar as he plunged from the building and lowered his head beneath the down driving snow. The entire matter was as he had told Delaney. He would have to find who made the prints!

Deep, drifted snow barred his progress as he struck down through a towering canyon and walked eastward. He had no coherent idea save the one that he wanted the grip of the open places in his lungs and the feel of freedom from stifling rooms and skeptical men.

The case had resolved itself into a battle of wits wherein the culprit who had murdered Stockbridge, by unknown means, had all the advantages. He was unknown. He had the largest city in the world to hide himself in. He could strike at any time and in any quarter. Also, the detective realized, with a chilly oath, the murderer might already be fleeing the city for the south or west. It would be a natural thing for him to do.

Drew had one undisputed qualification for a detective. He was a worker. He lacked the Latin sense of deduction, or the cleverness of a great operative who secured his men through quick brain work and shrewdness.

Hard work, and more work and still more work had won for him the little position he held in the city. He did not overrate his own powers. He had failed too often to hold himself too highly. Chance was a big factor in the criminal game. The members of the criminal tribe worked through luck and sheer audacity. Many escaped from the net and moved in the underworld until they made their final mistake which was probably so glaring it couldn't be overlooked.

Despite the fact that the finger prints were not of record, Drew held to the swirling conviction that the man he was after was of the criminal horde. There was much to lead him to this belief. The cleverness in connecting up the two telephone booths--the warning through the mail to Stockbridge--the manner in which the murder had been covered up in a score of details, all pointed to a criminal mind of the cunningest order. It savored of practice in crime and study of natural conditions. Its bizarre features placed it out from other crimes and raised it to a class of its own.

The snow which impeded the detective's steps, in some manner cleared his brain. He began to review the series of events. He boxed the case with returning shrewdness. He went over the points like a sailor repeating the compass-chart. He even saw a light.

This light was a star that guided him around a corner and then along the long reach of a white-mantled street where children shrilled and played. Snow-balls flew past his head. Sleighs and muffled taxis churned by. Women in furs and heavy cloaks glanced up at his olive face from which peered sanguine eyes bent upon a known destination.

He paused at the foot of a flight of steps leading to a library. In this building he knew there would be on file certain data concerning three links of the chain which he was trying to forge about the criminal or criminals who had slain Stockbridge.

He entered the storm-door, shook the snow from his coat, and removed his hat with a swinging bow as he drew erect in front of a prim lady at a desk.

"I want all the books you have on modern telephony," he said with a winning smile. "I'm sure that you have one or two."

The prim lady who knew a gentleman when she saw one, raised her brows and rapidly thumbed over a filing-card system.

"One or two," she repeated. "Why, we have over twenty. Now just what branch of Telephony do you want? There are a number of divisions in the subject. We have Smith on Central Office practice. We have Steinward on Induced Currents in Relation to Magnetism. We have Oswerlander on Switchboards and Carbon Transmitters. We have Burke on Circuits and Batteries. We have----"

"Hold on, please," said Drew, catching his breath. "I better try something easy. One of those Juvenile books with simple diagrams and switchboards or junction-boxes."

Drew carried the book to an alcove which was deserted. He took off his coat, hung it on the back of a chair, upended his hat and sat down with a tired smile. Soon he was busy in the mystery of electricity in relation to the telephone. He conned over the pages. He browsed along like a novice trying to understand trigonometry. He frowned over such terms as micro-ampere and micro-volt. He grew dizzy following wiring diagrams which were far worse than any clue he had ever attempted.

"A telephone engineer," he said half aloud. "A man who could trace out this stuff ought to make a mighty fine detective. I never saw such a snarl. Now what does hysteresis and laminations mean? What's the idea of having an alternating current of low voltage on the same line with a talking current of three volts? I don't see how they can get two currents on one set of wires. Maybe they don't."

He tossed the book to the table in front of him and rose with a frown. This frown changed to a wrinkled furrow of half amusement as he hurried back to the little prim lady.

"Too deep for me," he said, referring to the book she had given him. "That may be a beginner's treatise, but I'm in the kindergarten class in electricity. What's a micro-volt?"

"I'll look it up, sir," she said.

"Never mind. I wouldn't know, after you did. Suppose you get me a book on magpies."

The librarian fingered her files. "Try Birds of England," she suggested, coming from behind her desk and gliding like a pale shadow over to a book-case. "Try this. It's complete. You'll find magpies and starlings and piemags and any number of plates of six colors in this splendid volume."

"The one that interested me was black as a crow," he said, as he turned toward his alcove. "Perhaps there are white magpies as well as white crows. I never saw one, though. My bird's a deep one."

The little librarian stared after Drew's vanishing form with a slight pucker between her eyes. For a man of his solid respectability, the series of actions were strange indeed. She sat down and wondered if he was a moving picture editor trying to connect black magpies and telephones.

Drew appeared in two minutes. He leaned over the desk and startled the lady with a request for anything pertaining to guns and projectiles. These she had in plenty. A great many war books had been purchased during the period which followed America's declaration.

The detective erected a breastwork with the books she brought. He conned them with understanding until he came to ballistics and trajectory. He stopped there. He rose. His brain was crammed with fact upon fact. He had the formulae of smokeless powder and the analysis of cupronickel bullets. He had absorbed muzzle velocity and angle of fire. He fairly bubbled over with good humor as he thrust his hands into his overcoat, caught up his hat and started out the door after glancing back and bowing to the librarian who smiled a good-by.

The street was dark save for the glow of the overhead arcs. He thrust out his arm and tested the snow fall. It was not as heavy as when he had entered the library. He went down the steps, turned toward the north and plowed along the sidewalk.

Suddenly the thought came to him to glance at his watch. He had forgotten time and place over the hours in the pursuit of knowledge which might and might not be applied to the case at hand. It was almost six o'clock.

"Lord," he said in surprise. "I'm going crazy. Two hours in a trance. Now for work. I wonder what the operatives will have to report? They ought to have something. I wonder," he added, peering under the fine drizzle of snow, "I wonder where the nearest telephone is located? Another block, I guess."

His brain gathered up the skeins of the case as he hurried along. Fingerprints, plaster-casts, smooth bullets, locked rooms and a raven-black magpie, trooped into their proper formation. He dwelt longest on the telephone information he had gathered in the library. The case seemed bound up in whispering wires and broken connections which might be spliced together with patience and hard work.

The whole matter, from the call of the millionaire, down to the clew discovered in comparing the finger prints at Detective Headquarters, was a city-spread network of telephone connections which had to be traced back to an elusive individual who flitted like a shadow or a whirling dervish across the detective's vision.

He reached the drug-store, paused outside, glanced up and down the white-robed street, then pressed the door open and stamped inside. He found a nickel. Dropping this in the slot and closing the booth, he asked Central for his office phone.

The connection was made with Harrigan on the other end. "What's new in the Stockbridge case?" asked Drew in a whisper.

He listened. He grew rigid as the faithful operative summed up the entire series of reports. There were six of them. The last was from Delaney.

"Hang up!" the detective almost shouted in his eagerness. "Hang up, Harrigan, and let me get him."

Finding a quarter instead of a nickel, Drew dropped it in the large slot and jiggled the receiver's hook until Central answered.

"Get me Gramercy Hill 9764!" he exclaimed. "Quick! 9764 Gramercy Hill!"

"That's her number," he said aloud. "Loris Stockbridge's number. It must be her number. I haven't forgotten that, have I?"

The time consumed in getting the connection seemed endless. Drew lifted one damp sole from the floor of the booth and then the other. The receiver's diaphragm clicked finally. "Hello!" he snapped. "Hello, who's this?"

He waited a full second. "This Delaney?" he asked. "Who?" he added. "Oh! you're the maid! Well get me Miss Stockbridge or Mr. Delaney. Yes, Delaney. D-e-l-a-n-e-y!"

"This Delaney? ... No! ... Who?... Nichols? ... Harry Nichols? Hello, Nichols! ... Is Delaney there?"

The big operative's voice sounded with a rasp on the wire. "What's the news?" asked Drew. "What's that you've been telling Harrigan? Something about a coffin? A coffin? What--a casket? A hardwood casket. I'll be right up! I'm coming!"

The detective's olive face was the color of burnt pottery as he flipped the receiver on the hook, thrust his knee against the door and charged out of the booth and into the drug-store. He wheeled, turned his coat collar up, drew down his hat and dashed outside as an astonished clerk leaned over the prescription counter and stared after him.

The message that Delaney had sent over the snow-crusted wires, and along the underground conduits, was laden with menace. It drove Drew westward through the drifts like a man who had a whip held over him. He crossed two avenues before he sighted a taxi. He charged after this, sprang to the running board, and shouted into the driver's muffled ear.

"Drive like sin--full speed and more--up Fifth Avenue! I'll tell you when to stop! The devils are not going to kill that little lady if I can help it," he added, as he opened the door and climbed inside the taxi.