The magpie’s words, repeated over and over as Drew and Delaney stood in the room of death, struck both men as a possible clew. It was more than likely that the murderer or the murdered man had shouted something, the moment the shot was fired. This exclamation might have been, “Ah, Sing!” The bird had repeated something it had memorized, or retained in its shallow brain.

“Ah, Sing!” suggested Drew, keenly on the alert. “Ah, Sing, eh? Never forget that! We may need it—later.”

“Sounds like a Chinaman,” said the operative. “Stockbridge was shot by a Chink!”

“Get busy! Go over the room and look for a possible hiding place. You, butler, stand across that doorway! Don’t move from there!” Drew wheeled and stared at the white faces of the servants which were framed in the somber curtains of the opening to the hall.

The detective swung back. He rounded the large table with slow steps. He bent down. One knee touched the rug. He reached and grasped the magnate’s stiff arm. He worked it like a hinge. He felt of the muscles. They were rigid.

Rising, Drew again tested the air of the library. He glanced at Delaney, who was opening the book-case doors.

“What do you smell?” he asked sharply.

The operative turned and sniffed with widening nostrils.

“It’s powder!” he said. “Gunpowder, Chief.”

“Sure?”

“It’s kind-a peculiar—at that.”

“Explain yourself—be clear!”

Delaney scratched his head. “I’d say, Chief, it was smokeless powder. It don’t smell like the ordinary kind.”

“I saw smoke when I came in!”

“That smokeless stuff smokes. It ain’t altogether what they call it. Remember the shootin’-gallery at Headquarters? There’s smoke there when the police are practicing with them steel-jacketed bullets.”

“You’re right,” said Drew. “Keep on looking about. I’m getting on. Stockbridge was shot at very close range behind and under the left ear. The weapon used was a small-caliber revolver. The bullet is undoubtedly lodged in the lower brain. Powder stains are in his hair. The opening is clotted shut. He fell forward. In falling he knocked over the little table with its load of ash-trays, match-boxes, telephone, cigar butts and the whisky bottle and the glass. He’s been dead some time.”

“I ’e’rd no shot!” cried the butler from the doorway.

Drew wheeled. “You wouldn’t,” he said sharply. “Delaney,” he added, “say, Delaney, get out your note book and pencil. I want to put down everything we can think of before I send for the coroner. We’ll take a complete record. This thing is diabolical. You see nothing?”

“Nothing,” echoed Delaney as he slammed a book-case door shut, dusted his fingers and reached in his pocket. “There’s nobody planted in this room—that’s a fact, Chief. That’s what gets me. How was the murder done?”

“Speculation is useless—now! Get ready for notes.”

“I’m ready, Chief.”

The detective strode across the library rugs and snapped on the wall switch by jabbing at a mother-of-pearl button. Each time he jabbed, more lights came on. The room flooded with soft glowing from concealed globes. This glow brought out the full details of the palatial interior. Drew chewed at his mustache thoughtfully. He measured the walls with his eyes. He glided swiftly toward the windows. He thrust aside the heavy curtains of one and glanced upward.

“Closed and locked,” he said to Delaney. “Put that down. There’s snow on the sill which has drifted through the outer slats. Put that down. No sign of footprints. Put that down. Now, the upper part!”

He climbed up on the ornate radiator box. His fingers went over the catch. “Locked here!” he said, glancing down. “Locked and the same as it was. Make a note of that!”

He sprang down and examined the other window. He went over the sill and the catch with absorbed intentness. His teeth bit against his upper lip. He shook his head as he turned.

“No chance for a bullet to have been fired through these windows!” he declared positively. “No chance at all. This end of the library is sealed as far as we are concerned. Now, we’ll consider the only other opening—the door!”

“Double locks, Delaney,” he called over his shoulder as he crossed the room and pressed the butler back into the hall. “Double locks of the superior order. Gold knobs and key-holes. The holes are not in line. The chamfering is clean, except where you struck it once or twice with the ax. No sign of outside tampering or jimmy work. I’d say we’ve covered this door. Any suggestions?”

Delaney tried both the inner lock and the bolt which was actuated with a gold butterfly-wing of heavy construction. He studied the flat key. It was gold-plated. He dropped to his knees and went over the entire lower chamfering with his broad finger.

He said, “No suggestions, Chief. This was locked twice, until we broke a hole through with an ax. I don’t see––”

“Make a note of everything!” ordered Drew with a sharp glance at the waiting servants. “Make a full record of what we have found—including your exact interpretation of the magpie’s words. What were they?”

“Ah, Sing!”

“I think the same. Let’s look the bird over. Perhaps it will repeat.”

The two detectives strode to the bird-cage. “I’m going to send for Fosdick and the coroner,” said Drew hastily. “We’ve got to hurry. What do you make of this bird? Could it have had anything to do with the murder?”

The magpie protested against this accusation. Its feathers ruffled. Its claws clamped over the perch. Its tail extended upward and seemed to dart with indignation.

“Ah, Sid!” exclaimed Drew close up to the gilded bars. “Ah, Sid. Ah, Sid!” he repeated as the bird sprang to the bottom of the cage and set this jumping up and down at the end of the spring.

“No go,” said Delaney. “This black parrot don’t like our looks.”

Drew fingered the cage. He tested the spring. He stooped and glanced underneath. He tapped the belfry. It was of inlaid wood. It rang solid. “No use,” he said. “This is all, all right. Let’s get to the other matters before the clews get cold. Look everywhere for a possible trapdoor or a secret panel. Test the walls. Move the book-cases. Turn the pictures. Lift up the rugs. Then put everything back like you found it. Fosdick will be on the job with both feet and the Homicide Squad, before we know it. We haven’t much time.” Drew glanced at his watch as Delaney started by moving out one of the book-cases.

The detective ignored the body which lay upon the floor near the little table. He was holding his investigation down to outside facts, and bringing them to bear upon the crux of the matter. In this way, he believed, he would secure better results. He did not want to be blinded by an impossibility at the beginning. His first glance at Stockbridge sufficed to assure him that the lethal instrument which had felled the magnate was not in evidence. The bright light from a score of globes would reveal any such object as a revolver or rifle. No one of the servants had seen anything. They still were peering into the room like men and women who had lost all they owned. Stockbridge, despite his temper and sins, had been a good master to those who served him without questioning.

Drew glared at his watch for a second time, in preoccupation. He strode to the library door and beckoned a hooked finger toward the butler who towered over the other servants.

“You!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t obey orders. You didn’t stay where you were told to stay! Why did you leave this door at all?”

“S’ ’elp me, sir, I didn’t, Mr. Drew. If I did it wasn’t farther than the foyer or the downstairs steps. I took very careful pains to call the second-man, sir, when I went after you.”

Drew’s eyes smoldered with inner fire. “I told you,” he repeated, “I told you to stay by this door and not leave it—even for a minute. You went after the second-man, by your own admission. You went to the foyer hall. You went to the staircase leading down to the lower part of the house. In other words, you didn’t watch the door, and you lost your master through your own foolishness!”

“But, sir, nobody could ’ave gotten through the door. Hit was locked and bolted on the hinside, sir! I ’e’rd Mr. Stockbridge do that when you left ’im! I did, sir!”

“We may have been mistaken when we thought we heard that! Perhaps he just fumbled with the locks, and left it unlocked.” Drew eyed the servant’s red face with a keen-lidded glance. He waited.

“That cawn’t be right, sir,” said the butler, after thought and a wild glance about. “’Ow can that be right? I tried the door when the telephone loidy called me hup! I tried hit twice. James tried hit! ’E fixes hall the locks in the ’ouse, sir. ’E says it was most excellently secured, sir.”

“How about that?” asked Drew, turning to the second-man. “What of that, James?”

“’E’s right. I’m a little of everythin’ about the ’ouse. I tends the door and I watches the lights and locks, sir. I was born in Brixton, sir, where the old man kept a lock-shop, sir. That’s twenty years, and more ago, sir. Beggin’ your pardon, sir.”

Drew swung upon the butler. The second-man was the living picture of truth. His dereliction, if any, might consist in sly tapping of the wine-cellar. His nose attested to this habit, in a brilliant rosette.

“You’re partly to blame!” Drew told the butler. “There’s nobody in this room who could have committed the murder. There was nobody here when we left Mr. Stockbridge. There is no way for anybody to get in, save through this door. The same applies in getting out—escaping. If you were awake and always here, and if you were honest,” he added, “I could presume that the master was slain by—well, let us say, unnatural causes. Such things do not exist. This is a material age. Nothing as much as a pin-head or point was ever moved save through a natural cause. No bullet could be fired into a man’s brain without a hand which planned or pulled the trigger.”

The butler stared at Drew with blank expression. He gulped. His eyes dropped. “I’m thinking,” he said, “that the whole blym occurrence his unnatural. I never left that door until they told me the telephone company’s loidy wanted me on the wire. It was then I left it.”

“Ah!” said Drew. “We’re getting there. Then, if you are speaking truth, and I won’t help you if you are not, we have reached a point in the case which will bear considerable thought. It is evident that Stockbridge was murdered by a pistol shot, at or about the time the table and contents were spilled over. In other words, the shot which bowled him over brought down with it the telephone transmitter and receiver. That is the thing which fixes, within minutes—perhaps seconds—the time of the murder. The telephone girl will have a record which will help us considerable. Many criminals have been caught—and convicted by the time element. There is no alibi against truth! A man can’t be in two places at the same time!”

Drew turned toward the door. He hesitated and wheeled.

“You heard nothing fall in this room?” he asked sharply.

“I did not, sir.”

“No shot?”

“I cawn’t say that I did, sir.”

“No telephone bell ringing? Ringing at any time after I left the house?”

“Not downstairs, sir.”

“You did!”

“’Ow, sir?”

“Didn’t you tell me the telephone company rang up and wanted you to put the receiver on the hook in the library?”

“I didn’t ’ear it ring. James brought the word, sir.”

“Then, what happened upstairs?”

“’Ow do you know, sir? ’Ow’d you know it rang up there!”

“By elimination! It rang then, in Loris’ room? You said ‘nothing downstairs’ in such a way I presume it rang upstairs.”

The butler stroked his chin. It was blue and close-shaved. The purple of his cheeks and neck had deepened. He glanced about the hallway. His eyes wandered toward the grand stairway which, coiled upward to the second story. “I’m ’iding nothing, sir,” he said. “Miss Loris often is called up at night. She’s very popular, sir. I ’e’rd ’er telephone ringing once or twice while I was standing by this door, waiting for the master to come out—which ’e never did.”

Drew hesitated. He plucked out his watch and glanced at the dial. He turned swiftly. “Stay right there,” he said as he parted the portières and faced Delaney who wore the puzzled expression of a man baffled and entirely at sea.

“What did you find?” he snapped to the operative.

“Not a thing, Chief.” Delaney mopped his brow with his sleeve. “Nothing at all!” he added. “Everything regular. Modern—very modern house! Thick, new, fireproof, soundproof, million-dollar building. No trapdoors or panels. No loose boards. No hole in the ceiling. No nothing to hang a ghost on. The gunman who shot Stockbridge went right up in blue smoke, Chief. I quit!”

Drew glided around the table and kneeled by the magnate’s body. His swift, light-fingered touch went through the trousers and vest. The pockets he turned inside out. The watch attracted his attention. Its dial had been cracked by the fall. A splinter of glass pressed against the minute hand. He rose with a low cry. He pressed the repeater and listened to the time chimes. He counted the strokes. He had a test in a million. Had the watch been tampered with by the murderer, the chimes would have proved a lie. It was possible to set the hands to any position. It would be difficult to change both the hands and the repeater.

“Delaney!” he said with his dark eyes glowing, “we’ve got the exact time of the murder. As I told the butler—it is very important. Both, chimes and hands, show that Stockbridge was shot at four minutes and eighteen seconds past midnight—this morning! This is a fine watch. It cost several thousand dollars. Robbery was not the motive. An ordinary crook, and they’re all ordinary—with few exceptions—would have taken this timepiece.”

“That’s all right,” said Delaney with a quick frown. “That’s fine, Chief, but—but how did that exceptional—crook get into this room? How did he get out? That’s what I want to know!”

Drew combed his fingers through his black hair. He described a complete circle about the library, with his eyes taking in everything, before he faced Delaney.

“I don’t know!” he said frankly. “I don’t want to think of it, either. We’ll turn the case over to other men for the time. Let them do some thinking. I believe we have secured everything we want.”

The detective dropped his glance to the telephone receiver upon the floor at Stockbridge’s elbow. He stooped, grasped the silk-insulated cord, and fished it up.

“I’ll try to get Central,” he said. “This has been off a long while. She may have sent the trouble-man again.”

Drew worked the hook of the ’phone up and down. He was answered after a short wait. The girl’s surprised voice at hearing life at the end of a dead set of wires was drowned in the detective’s request to get him, “Spring 3100—quickly!”

“Hello! Hello!” said Drew as he got the connection. “Hello! Is this Spring 3100? It is? Who’s talking? ... Jones? This you, Jones? ... Say, Jones, plug me in on the Fifth Deputy Commissioner’s private house wire!... Sir? ... I don’t care! ... This is Drew talking.... Drew! ... D—r—e—w! ... That’s right ... Drew, of Drew’s Agency!”

The Detective turned. He eyed Delaney who was searching the floor about the millionaire’s upturned shoes. He tapped the receiver against the transmitter’s silver-plated edge. His eyes lifted. His lips hardened as the diaphragm of the receiver vibrated harshly.

“Hello!” he answered tersely. “Hello! This you, Commissioner? Is this Fosdick? ... This is Drew talking. Yes! ... Drew.... Yes! I say, Fosdick, there’s been a murder committed at Stockbridge’s.... You know—the munitions magnate! ... The millionaire! ... Morphy’s old partner.”

Drew waited a moment. He dropped his eyes upon the body below him.

“Yes!” he continued into the transmitter. “Yes, Fosdick. I hear better, now. Yes—Stockbridge is dead! ... He’s stone dead! He was shot down in cold blood! ... Yes! ... Shot in the brain.... Yes! Send your best operatives.... Yes! ... Send a fingerprint man and photographer. You’ll need ’em! ... Yes! ... Yes! ... Shot with a small-bore revolver, I guess! ... Wound behind ear looks like it! What? ... No! ... Room was bolted.... He was inside.... Butler on guard.... Windows closed and locked! ... No! ... No! ... No! ... It wasn’t suicide. He was threatened twice, this time!... By letter and telephone call.... What? ... What? ... No! ... He didn’t shoot himself! ... There’s no gun. It’s on the left side—close up! ... Hair is singed ... flesh is powder spotted.... Burned? ... Yes.... You’ll be right up?... Yes! ... I’ll be waiting! ... Come! ... come––”

Drew lowered the receiver and clicked it upon the hook of the telephone which stood on the hardwood floor. He slowly turned toward the open doorway of the library. The servants had drawn back and out of sight. Delaney leaned forward with both hands on his bent knees. A girl’s voice had sounded in the mansion. It came closer. The portières parted with a silken sweep. Drew braced himself against the larger table. His hand went back to his hip. It dropped to his side. He stared across the flood of light with line-drawn eyelids.

Loris Stockbridge, gowned in lace chiffon and cloaked with ermine and sable, glided across the rugs and stood framed beneath the soft, rose-light of the central dome. Her dusk-black eyes burned and blazed like flame through tinder smoke as she confronted the detective.

Clasped in the fingers of her jewelless right hand was a tiny, ivory-handled revolver.

“What are all these people doing here?” she asked hysterically.

Detective Triggy Drew flushed slightly beneath his olive skin. He bowed, with his keen eyes fixed upon the little, ivory-handled revolver clutched so tightly in Loris Stockbridge’s right hand. He bowed for a second time. His eyes lifted and his brows arched as he said distinctly:

“Miss Stockbridge, something very serious has happened to your father. It happened in this library. It happened this morning. Won’t you please go back upstairs to your rooms until I call for you. At present I am in charge of matters.”

“Matters? What do you mean?”

The girl swayed slightly. She glanced down at the revolver as if she were unaware that it was in her hand. Drew advanced a step in her direction. He feared a woman and a gun more than anything else in the world. Both were liable to form a dangerous combination.

“Something happened,” he repeated. “I’m very sorry for you, Miss Stockbridge.”

“Happened!” she exclaimed. “Happened to him? You don’t mean that letter—that telephone call—do you?”

Loris’ splendid, dusky eyes, within the depths of which high lights shone, wandered over the polished table. They fastened upon the envelope from the cemetery company. They fixed where the letter lay with one corner beneath the center piece. They lifted in thought. They swung toward the waiting detective who had placed himself between her and the body of her father. She divined this movement with quick intuition. She stepped to one side and bent downward with a graceful movement of her hips. She gasped and pointed a left hand finger, which wavered and went up to her hair as her palm pressed against the side of her head. She started sobbing—short, throaty sobs of poignant distress.

“Please don’t,” whispered Drew holding out a guarding arm. “Please don’t, Miss Stockbridge. Your father is beyond this earth. You should not have come down here.”

“Dead?”

The word came from the depths of a soul. “Dead?” she repeated with her taper fingers spreading across her face.

“Yes, Miss,” said Drew with a catch in his voice. “Yes, he is quite dead. He was slain in this room by a revolver shot which struck behind and under his left ear. No one was in the library when he locked himself in, save himself. No one was here when we broke the door down. And, save his servants and you, no one was in this house. He was––”

“Murdered!” Loris’ voice had lifted to one wild shriek of final conviction and grief. She swayed. Her knees bent beneath her skirt and bulged outwardly. She sank into a slow faint at the detective’s feet. She pillowed her head upon the rug. A silence followed.

Drew stooped, after a glance at the servants in the doorway, thrust his body as a barrier, and reached along Loris’ white arm until his hand closed over the barrel of the little revolver. He untwisted her cold fingers, and palmed the weapon under a shielding cuff. He rose, saying to Delaney, who had hurried forward:

“I’ll take charge of this.”

“Sure, Chief. Plant it. She didn’t have it.”

“She had it all right, but—we’ll suspend judgment. You and the butler carry her upstairs. Go easy. Her bedroom is on the third floor, I think. That’s the reason she didn’t come down sooner. Perhaps, well, I say, she didn’t hear us breaking down the door. We are her agents in this matter, now. Remember that, and say nothing to anybody. I’ll do the talking.”

Drew dropped his hand into his side pocket. It came out without the revolver but with a handkerchief between his fingers. He mopped his brow gracefully, then replaced the handkerchief. The motion was a natural one.

He followed Delaney and the butler with their soft burden as far as the first steps of the stairway. He turned and strode back to the doorway leading into the library. He faced about in this. He eyed the servants, who lowered their heads beneath his accusing scrutiny. Focusing his gaze to a searching squint he tried to single out a culprit from their midst. There seemed to be none. Each face was terror-lined and drawn. Each seemed to want to avoid his direct glance. None of all of them faced him with boldness or assurance. It was as he expected things to be. There was no evidence shown in the case that the servants of the Stockbridge régime had ever threatened the master. They were old, tried and trusted. They had the faults of their kind. These faults only served to strengthen Drew’s opinion that the murderer of the magnate had struck from the outside, without benefit of inside information. The letter and the telephone call were foreign. A note, pinned upon the millionaire’s pillow, would have been more effective. Nothing had been tried like that. This proved to Drew that he could eliminate the servants, for the time being.

“Which one of you is the valet?” he asked with final resolve.

“I am, sir!”

Drew ran his eyes over an aged man in white vest and tight-fitting clothes which were studded here and there with gold-plated buttons. The fit of the stockings—the neatness of the low patent-leather shoes—the smartness and aloofness of the individual, caused the detective to smile slightly. The man was better dressed than his master.

“Your native country is Germany?” said Drew.

“It was, sir.”

“No, it is yet. You can’t change that part of it. When did you come to the United States?”

“Fourteen—fifteen years ago, sir. The master brought me from England where I was employed by the Right Honorable Arthur Sandhurst, sir.”

“You are now a naturalized American?”

“Going on thirteen years, sir.”

“Come down to my office about noon to-morrow. I want to speak to you then. I haven’t time now. Be sure you bring that magpie with you.” Drew turned and jerked his thumb toward the front of the library. “Do you understand?”

“I do, sir!”

“That’s all!” exclaimed the detective. “One of you may stand by the door until Mr. Delaney returns. The rest may go downstairs. Remember, no talking to anybody but accredited police officers, who will soon be here.”

“I’ll stand guard!” announced the second-man with a pompous voice. “Nobody’ll get by me, sir. I’ll ’ave them know I’m right ’ere, sir.”

Drew backed through the curtains as the second-man was speaking. He dropped them behind him and started another search, which was done in solitude and in silence. He went over everything in the library with the trained eyes of an operative who had learned his profession in many schools. He left deduction and surmise for a later hour. He was after cold facts which might lead to an answer to the riddle. He held, with some slight scorn, the theory of the armchair detective and the puzzle worked out by retrospection. His experience had been, that only through hard work could he expect to find his answer. He had been credited with visiting six hundred laundries in search of a certain mark. He had a note book filled with his failures to find the man he was after. The men he had found caused him no concern whatsoever. They had gone to prison and closed their accounts with him.

He applied hard work over the minutes to the case at hand. He went over the body of the aged millionaire. He took scrapings of the blood stains on the floor. He scratched up some few atoms of dried whisky. He examined the bottle. He searched each square inch under and about the body. He went through Stockbridge’s pockets and beneath his vest. He tried everything in the way of getting facts which might bear on the case. A tape measure furnished certain distances which were recorded upon the back of an envelope. His data was complete, insofar as he had time to go. He desired to spend at least twelve hours in the library. This could not be. The case would be taken from his hands within minutes. Already there was a stir in the front part of the house. The bell had been ringing for some time. Delaney and the butler had hastened forward to answer it.

“The Central Office bunch!” announced the operative, parting the curtains and staring in at Drew. “Here they are, Chief!”

The detective stepped briskly out of the room and glided through the foyer hall to the front door. Here Delaney joined him, as steps were heard coming up from the servants’ quarters as well as outside. It was as if a raid were in progress.

“Brass band methods!” said Drew. “You get out, Delaney, and go to our taxi. Stay there! I want to speak to Fosdick.”

The door opened. A burly form blotted out the light from the Avenue and stamped in, shaking the snow from his overcoat. It was Fosdick—Chief of Detectives.

“Hello,” he said cuttingly. “Hello, Drew! What’s this you’ve been giving me over the ’phone?”

The detective drew Fosdick aside and allowed five Central Office men to stream into the hallway.

“Go and see,” he suggested into the detective’s ear. “Go and see. I’ve left everything just as I found it. The body is still there. The servants have been kept in the house. Question them. I’m off, now. ’Phone me not later than eight this morning. I’ll be at my office. I’m acting in a private capacity. I’m protecting Loris Stockbridge—the sole heir!”

“Protecting!” exclaimed Fosdick. “What d’ye mean?”

Drew dropped his hand to his pocket and crammed down the little ivory-handled revolver. “Well,” he smiled broadly. “You know what I mean. She’s alone in this world—save for her friends. The old man called me in the case. I’m still in the case—remember that!”

Fosdick gulped hard. “All right,” he said, turning and peeling off his coat. “I’ll soon get to the bottom of this! Case looks easy to me. It’s suicide! That’s all it ever could be!”

Drew found his hat and coat where the butler had hung them. He went out through the front door without answering Fosdick. He crossed the Avenue on a diagonal which brought him to the waiting taxi where Delaney stood muffled to the chin. The two men climbed upon the running-board. The driver started up with a jerk, from his frozen position in the snow. They rounded the block and stopped in front of the drug-store where Loris had met the officer.

The Central Office man who had taken O’Toole’s place had little to report. O’Toole had vanished toward the south. When last seen he was close on the heels of the man in olive-drab.

“Come on, Delaney,” said Drew at this information. “We’ll walk over to Fifth Avenue and then downtown. The driver can pick up our men in the alley. I want to clear my head of this muddle. A walk will do it!”

Delaney fell in behind his chief. They turned the corner. They struck through a side street and westward. They saw ahead of them the white expanse of untrodden snow, and beyond this the faint blue barricade of the Palisades.

The hour was after three. The crisp underfooting brought wine to their cheeks. The grip of winter air cleared both men’s heads like a draught of ether. They stepped out. Their shoulders went back. Their thoughts passed from the case at the mansion to other things. The night had been filled with a thousand disappointments. Greatest of these was the stabbing memory that they both had been picked by the multimillionaire to protect him and save him from his enemies. They had failed in this trust. Their patron lay dead, and somewhere a whispering voice chuckled over a victory.

“Fifth Avenue!” announced Drew as they reached the corner. “Now, downtown, Delaney,” he added cheerily. “Old Kris Kringle has nothing on us to-night. I believe we’re the only ones out.”

The operative caught his chief’s humor, and glanced into his face with a smile. “Whew!” he breathed. “Whew!” he repeated from the depths of his lungs. “I’m glad, Triggy, to get from that damn house and that damn magpie and that––”

“So am I!” said Drew, thrusting out his hand and linking his elbow into the cove of Delaney’s arm. “So am I. Fine night for the poor firm of Drew and Company.”

Delaney glanced around and over his left shoulder. He blinked with frosty lids as he saw the towering façades of Stockbridge’s mansion; its turrets and towers spiraled in the winter sky. He drew in his lips and compressed them. He puffed them out as he turned.

“I’m deducting,” he said, “that there’s more at the bottom of this thing than we think. Put it down for me that the Germans are mixed up in it.”

Drew walked on for a block before he answered. He gripped the operative’s arm by closing his own as he said:

“Quit deducting! It’s fatal! Get your facts! Get all of them. The answer will come then, without an effort. It will be the right answer or none at all.”

“Just the same, Chief––”

“The trouble with you,” broke in Drew severely, “the trouble is, that you are forcing a conclusion to meet your own suspicions. The Germans, with the exception of a small clique, are behaving very well in this country at the present time. In other words, the most of them are good Americans and sane.”

“That walley-sham?”

“He is not even under consideration! Did you notice him?”

“Sure, Chief!”

“Anything strike you as peculiar?”

“N—o.”

“There were tears in his eyes—the only ones shed in that house for Stockbridge—outside of the daughter.”

Delaney gulped. “I didn’t see them,” he said frankly.

“No! Well, I did—and when he wasn’t expecting me to see them. A woman is never wholly lost who can blush, or a man who can shed tears.”

“Sounds like good deduction,” admitted the operative. “But then, Chief, there are a lot of fine actors in this world. I think there has been some in this case.”

“This case, Delaney,” Drew said, “is like many others which appear at first impossible of solving. All things can be solved by first principles. Give me all the facts and I’ll give you the answer to any riddle. The answer will come! Don’t try to write your plot until you have words to form your story. Don’t make the mistake of forcing an answer to father a wish. In other words, Delaney, best of friends, we haven’t all the facts we are going to get in this case and therefore it is idle to attempt to deduce who shot Stockbridge!”

“Or how he was shot, Chief?”

“It’s almost the same thing. Both answers will come with hard work and plenty of it. We must keep along the main stem. Truth is a tree with many branches. It rises from the roots named cause, and reaches the top called effect. It springs from motive up to crime in one straight stem. We must trim away the branches and the false-work, and then we can see the trunk.”

“There’s one I’d like to trim right now,” said Delaney, pausing in his snow-caked stride.

“Which one?” asked Drew.

“That noise in the library like a cat getting its tail twisted.”

“I can explain that!”

“It’s been driving me to drink, Chief.”

“The telephone company, Delaney, have a device they call a howler. They cut this device in on the wire when a receiver is left off the hook. It is simply a high-frequency current generated for the purpose of vibrating the receiver’s diaphragm until somebody hears the noise and puts the receiver back on the hook.”

“It’s a howler, all right, Chief!”

“Oftentimes a book or magazine gets under a receiver and lifts it up an inch or more. This attracts the attention of the central operator who thinks somebody is trying to get a number. When the situation is clear to her that the receiver is off the hook, or that the circuit is closed without anybody being at the receiver end, she notifies the wire-captain or chief-operator. It was either one or the other who put the howler on after Stockbridge was shot and the ’phone had fallen to the floor. Is that satisfactory? Does that explain the noise we heard in the library before we broke down the door?”

“I see now, Chief. I thought all along it was spirits like the rest of the job. Outside of spirits, what is the answer to the things that happened in that house? I know it. I deduct it, Chief. The old man was expecting somebody all of the time. He let this somebody into the library when the butler wasn’t looking. Maybe it was a woman, for all we know. Maybe a German spy. Maybe anybody. This somebody got in an argument with him over spoils on some deal, and shot him dead. That’s my idea, Chief!”

“You’ve missed your profession, Delaney. You’ve disgraced the firm! How did the library door get locked on the inside? How did that happen? Did Stockbridge, shot through the brain, rise and do it? It was mighty well locked—you remember!”

“I never thought of that,” admitted the operative. “Then it looks, Chief, as if it was a case of suicide.”

“Fosdick said the same thing without having many facts. How could a right-handed man shoot himself behind the left ear? How could he do a thing like that and then get rid of the weapon without leaving a trace of it? How—oh, well, get facts and you won’t ask such questions!”

“Then it was done by an outsider?” blurted Delaney, staring through the wind-blown snow which came off the housetops. “It was done by the fellow who ’phoned and wrote that letter, or had the letter written? I don’t see how he could do it!”

Drew smiled at Delaney’s candor. “Neither do I,” he said simply. “But we’ve crossed Forty-second Street and we’re on the trail by everyday, up-to-date methods which never fail if they are continued long enough and men work hard enough. We’ll start with Harry Nichols—the man in olive-drab! I’ve his address!”