Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

Henry Tydings is dead, but the machinery of hatred which he created continues to turn out bitter jealousy, gnawing suspicion and stalking murder.

Henry Tydings, a wealthy art collector, has invited his bitterest enemies to spend a week-end with him prior to his marriage. Gene Chatham, Tydings’ arch-foe, is there, only so that he may be near Charlotte Reid, the bride-to-be, whom he loves. Winifred Staunton, Tydings’ former mistress, is also present, and at dinner, when Tydings is baiting his guests, including Rupert Walden, another collector rival, and Willard Hamblin, his resident physician, Winifred wounds Tydings with a gun belonging to Lionel Reid, Charlotte’s brother.

Sergeant Detective Angus Campbell and his bickering team-mate, Sergeant Detective Patrick O’Rourke, arrive at Tydings’ Island to learn that Tydings’ body has vanished. Only one clue is found. Hamblin’s amateurish copy of Raphael’s Granduca is smeared in the corner with Tydings’ bloody fingerprint. A bit later, Campbell surprises a sneak thief, William Kearton, in his room, examining the copied Granduca canvas. Campbell is convinced that the copy is the key to the mystery.

Lionel Reid is found struggling with his sister for a cancelled check. Campbell recovers it, forces Lionel to confess that it’s a forgery which Tydings honored only so that he would have a hold over Charlotte.

Kearton makes a break, tries to escape with the Granduca copy, and Walden, the butterfly collector, stops him and betrays his own keen interest in the picture.

In the meanwhile, a police launch has recovered Tydings’ body, floating in the bay. An autopsy is ordered by the dead man’s daughter, Vivian, and it is learned that Winifred Staunton’s shot did not kill the collector. He died of accumulative arsenic poisoning. Dr. Hamblin collapses when he hears the news. He had been prescribing an arsenic tonic for Tydings. An analysis proves that it is a much stronger solution than the pharmacist had prepared. In the midst of the questioning, Kearton, with the aid of someone inside the house — probably Chatham — escapes. Shortly thereafter, Campbell accuses the doctor of Tydings’ murder. O’Rourke third-degrees Hamblin, learns that he was the one who moved the dead body around. He had found Tydings dead in his room just after the shooting at the dinner table. Afraid of suspicions, he carried the body to the armory, put it into one of the suits of armor. Then he managed to spirit it from the armory to the dumb-waiter, where the cook saw it, and from there to the cellar, where he cast it into the sea. While O’Rourke goes to lord it over Campbell with this information, Hamblin falls from his window and is killed. On a sudden hunch, O’Rourke goes to the laundry, directly above Hamblin’s room, and discovers that a flatiron, tied to a length of laundry cord, was dropped on the doctor’s head as he leaned out the window.

O’Rourke goes to the room of Clifford, the butler, and surprises the servant writing a letter, threatening to expose someone in the household. Together, the detectives force Clifford to send the blackmail letter to each of the suspects. Gifford balks at sending one to Chatham, on account of the man’s violent temper.

“And you think he might have killed Tydings?” O’Rourke asked.

“Yes, sir,” Clifford answered.

“And Hamblin?” the Irishman added.

“Yes.”

“You hear that, Campbell? Look here, Clifford. Are you ever wrong in the way you dope out people?”

“No, sir,” Gifford answered, at the door. “I am never wrong.”

Chapter XXI Sneak!

Campbell sat steadily at his work on the books, his pondering of the picture, an hour later when O’Rourke came back to the room from his meanderings. He carried a small bottle in his hand.

“You remember when the druggist sent back the bottle of the arsenic tonic?” asked O’Rourke.

“I remember,” said Campbell.

“Remember how much stuff there was in the bottle?”

“Yeah, and what of it?”

“Take a look now.”

O’Rourke set the bottle on the table Campbell said: “That ain’t possible.”

“Take a look-see,” said O’Rourke. “It’s been back there in Tydings’ medicine cabinet ever since the druggist sent it back with his report.”

“Half the stuff is gone,” said Campbell.

“Half?”

“I think so.”

“So do I,” agreed O’Rourke. “You only got half an eye in your head, but I wanted to get your idea. Who’s been stealing the stuff? Who’s it being fed to?”

The night was hot, but that was not the reason that Sergeant Angus Campbell broke into a heavy sweat. He pushed back his chair from the table and stood up. He leaned his weight on his arms and stared at the Irishman.

“There’s still murder turned loose in this hell-hole,” said Campbell. “Who are they after now? Who’s getting sick?”

“Lionel Reid is looking damn’ bad.”

“We’ll keep the stuff in here,” said Campbell. “D’you think there’s enough been used to kill a man?”

“I dunno,” muttered O’Rourke. “It’s gonna be a big setup for you and me. It’s gonna build us right up to the sky with the Inspector. He sends us out on a job and the dead begin to fall all around us. And Sergeant Campbell, like a damn’ fool, spends his time lookin’ at a lousy picture that somebody painted a thousand years ago!”

Such an idea came to Campbell that he paid no heed to the latest insult. He merely exclaimed: “Kearton!”

O’Rourke started and looked over his shoulder at the door.

“What about him?” demanded O’Rourke.

“What about him? Why, you seen something shine the other night when he chucked it out the window... It was another bottle of this damned stuff. When I came in behind him, the first thing he did was to chuck the bottle out the window into the sea. Then he turned around and took a shot at me. That must of been it. Kearton! If we could get hold of that rat! Kearton’s at the bottom of it. He comes to the house, and Tydings is scared to death. He fades right out of our hands with maybe Chatham helping him. Chatham and Kearton are the men we want, Pat.”

“That sounds like sense,” said O’Rourke.

Here came a knock at the door.

In response to Campbell’s call, Walden entered, with a paper in his hand. “I thought you people might like to hear this,” he said.

He stood close to a light and read aloud, calmly, the letter which Clifford had printed with such care in copy after copy, and which had been distributed secretly to every suspected person in the house.

O’Rourke and Campbell listened with the greatest attention.

“Who signed it?” said O’Rourke.

“No one, naturally,” said Walden. “I wonder what to make of it. Blackmail barking up the wrong tree, perhaps?”

“Maybe,” agreed Campbell. “Want to go down to the lake about eleven and see who turns up?”

“D’you think I should?”

“One of us will be on hand,” said O’Rourke.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” said Walden. “And in the meantime, I have to ask how long we are to be held here, Sergeant Campbell. I’ve remained past my time. I have no work that absolutely demands me, but at the same time there’s a good deal of unpleasantness in the atmosphere of a house of death such as this, Sergeants, as you can understand.”

“Understand perfectly,” said O’Rourke. “We can’t hold people beyond tomorrow morning, anyway, I suppose. You’ll be free then... And don’t bother about the lake at eleven, if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t think I shall,” said Walden. “It’s some sort of a practical jester choosing a particularly horrible moment for a joke. Good night.”

He went out of the room, followed by the stern regard of Campbell.

“I don’t like that one,” said Campbell.

“He’s got some flesh on his ribs,” said O’Rourke, rubbing his own paunch thoughtfully, “and you never could stand a man that looks like he ate three meals a day... Anyway, Walden’s the only one of the lot that was man enough to come up and show us the letter. What do the rest of ’em think? I’ll be down there at eleven, at the pool. Damn it, Angus, I’ve got an idea that I’ll catch a whole netful of fish.”

“Maybe,” said Campbell. “Tell me one thing, Pat. What the devil can the murderers be up to now? Who do they want to bump off? They knock over Tydings — plenty of motives for that. But who wants to keep on killing? What’s to be gained?”

“The two gals hate each other because of Chatham,” said O’Rourke. “Ever think of that? Then there’s Chatham and Kearton. Maybe it’s a partnership, and one of them wants to break away from the other...? There is that damned Clifford — golly, I wanted to sock him, just now!”

“Yeah,” agreed Campbell. “To bash in the dirty, smooth, sleek face of him with the heel of a gun. That would be something worth while. Pat, it’s close to eleven now. Will you take a look down by the lake?”

“While you keep on at the picture?” sneered O’Rourke.

Campbell shrugged his shoulders. “There’s the news of the murder and all, right here in this paint,” he said. “I feel it as clear as ever a Scotchman ever felt a ghost in the prickling of his skin.”

O’Rourke growled an oath and left the room. He went down to the garden entrance, found the old porter once more asleep, stared cynically at that fallen head, and then let himself out into the open night.

The stars were half obscured by the humidity of the air. They burned small and dim. Even the slight exercise of walking made the sweat stand on his forehead and then run down his temples.

“I gotta reduce,” said O’Rourke to his soul. “I gotta start in and take it off. I gotta melt it off. I’ll give up potatoes and bread and butter and beer. I’ll give up the bread, anyway. I’ll give up the butter except for the baked potatoes. A baked potato without butter — well, what the hell, anyway?”

He got down by the pool, keeping to the grass where his footfall sounded small. Something stirred; someone moved at the end of a narrow path. He dropped to his knee and pulled his gun... it was only the dim flash of a statue at the farther end of the path.

“What a mug I turned out to be!” said O’Rourke through the fat of his lips.

He no longer felt too warm when he went on. The moon was coming up. It threw from the pergola a long-slanted pattern of shadows across the sleek face of the pool. O’Rourke got into the shadows.

You take people that have swimming pools, and whole islands for their gardens, and fast motorboats, and big cars, and houses full of fancy junk, it’s no wonder that murder pops up among them, every now and then. That’s the way things are kept even. Champagne is all right, but beer is safer. You take it from O’Rourke, beer is a hell of a lot safer. You don’t be apt to have any flossy females around, when you’re drinking beer... It goes with cheese sandwiches and things that don’t cost you a million bucks; and afterwards what have you got except a morning after, anyway? And maybe a dame on your hands that what’s she’s looking for except where she can knife you, and what do Dun and Bradstreet’s say about papa?

To be kind of natural is the main thing in life, any way you look at it. Nothing too much, like somebody says. That is, the bigger they are the farther they fall. And look at the big bozos in the ring. I mean, look at Fred Fulton. What a canvas-kisser he turned out to be, and what did Jack Dempsey say with words and music to Willard; or there was poor Camera, and little old Jimmy Braddock made a dummy out of Baer, or didn’t he? Of course, the good ones have the Irish in them but don’t be funny... the big guys tumble.

The same with money. You want to have enough.

All you got more than enough is extra weight and a hell of a long race. You take the bird that’s got a eye for horseflesh and twenty, thirty millions of old stuff and he wants to go to the auctions and pick up that good-looking bay and that brown mare that stands over a lot of ground. But can he buy what he wants? Hell, no! “What is the strain of that bay gelding, Mr. Smith.” “Strain? I don’t know,” says he. “You not just going around picking up trash, are you, Mr. Smith?” “I just got careless the other day,” says Smith. He goes and gets himself a swell jockey that finds the fancy ones, blood all the way back to Moses, all paprika and damn’ little ham. Smith gets a stable full of that stuff. He goes out and says: “Jeffers, have the grey saddled this morning.” “Beg pardon, sir,” said Jeffers. “You’re not forgetting that you rode the grey only yesterday, sir?” “True,” says Smith. “I’ll take Spaghetti, instead.” “Spaghetti is off in the near foreleg, sir,” says Jeffers. “I’ll give you Head Sail, sir. Shaping up very well just now, sir, and needs the work.” “I don’t feel like riding much this morning anyway,” says Smith, and goes back inside and looks at his boots and says: “Hell, what’s the use, anyway?” That’s the way with the fellows with the big capital. All I say is, the bigger you are the more sucker they play you for. You dodge the hooks for a while but finally you get the gaff where the soft is the softest, and there you are in the bag.

O’Rourke stood up from the stone bench where he had been assembling his thoughts. There was no sound in all the island except the windy rushing of the tide through the broken causeway. The moon was higher. His watch, in a patch of the white light, told him that the time was eleven-twenty, so he started back for the house.

When he came to the gate, the porter greeted him with an apologetic smile.

“That’s all right, papa,” said O’Rourke. “We all gotta have our shut-eye. Only around this dump, look out they don’t give you a whiff of poison gas while you’re snoozing.”

While he went up the stairs he kept thinking it over. The poison was the worst part. Take and slam a fellow over the head with a flat-iron and that’s not so bad. It sounds sort of homely and natural, like it might happen any place. But poison is hell.

He got into the upper hall. It was dim, at that end. One of the big lights had burned out and left the place shadowy, so that the bust in the niche stared at him with a lifelike intelligence.

Something stirred just to the left. He turned.

That was the door of the doctor’s room, the crystal knob glittering at him like an eye.

There was the stir of life again — a thin cat’s-claw of light that slid under the edge of the door!

O’Rourke stuck out his head like a bulldog and set his jaw. He walked for that door with his automatic pressed close to the fat of his right hip.

Chapter XXII Artistic Discovery

The knob, turned softly, cleared the latch; the weight of the door came softly into O’Rourke’s left hand.

Over his shoulder, as it were, he gave one thought — rather than a glance — towards Angus Campbell, a good man, damn him, in a pinch; a very good man in any sort of a fight. Because the Scotch are that way — mean, but useful on your own side.

Then O’Rourke snatched the door open and dropped to one knee on the threshold.

That way, you let the first shot go over your head, because instinct makes most men shoot breast high. The figure in the center of the room made a leap for a window.

“Stand still and stick ’em up or I’ll blow the living hell right out of you,” advised O’Rourke savagely.

The man said nothing. He stood still and put his hands up.

“Touching the ceiling, baby,” said O’Rourke. “Don’t move. I was born at night and I can see in the dark... There you are!”

He found the switch with his left hand and turned it on. It was Kearton who stood in the middle of the room with his arms well stretched above his head. He had the cuffs of his coat sleeves turned up. There was a pungent odor in the room.

Kearton’s hands were stained. A bottle of stuff stood on the table.

“Had to come back and see us, brother?” asked O’Rourke.

Kearton, as usual, said nothing. He looked tired. He lifted his weary eyes a little towards the light, blinked, and glanced back at the face of the detective.

A shadow came behind O’Rourke. He jumped back against the wall. The huge shoulders of Gene Chatham loomed in the doorway, where he had appeared with such a noiseless step.

“Same little visitor, sergeant?” he asked.

But he looked not at O’Rourke but straight at Kearton.

“Get the hell out of here!” cried O’Rourke. “Back up and shut that door — don’t try to come in here, Chatham!”

“Certainly not,” Chatham agreed, and stepped back into the hall.

“That’s all right,” said O’Rourke, aware of a quiver that was making his gun unsteady.

He went behind Kearton. “Put your hands behind your back, will you?” he commanded. “Dead slow.”

Very slowly, Kearton lowered his hands behind his back. O’Rourke tied them up in his own tidy way. He felt that handcuffs are all right, but you can’t carry a whole hardware store around with you.

He still was breathing hard when he finished that task. He began to realize what a shock it had been — the appearance of big Gene Chatham and that hard, fighting face on the threshold of the room, coming from behind.

It gave him a double grudge against Chatham — the fear that still shook him, and kept working its cold fingers deeper in his bowels in spite of the fact that the danger was gone. If Campbell had a Scotch instinct about the picture of the Granduca, O’Rourke had an Irish instinct about Gene Chatham.

“Now what?” asked O’Rourke, backing up in front of Kearton.

Expressionless eyes, as usual, silently faced his question.

“Ah, damn you!” said O’Rourke, and jerked back his arm to striking tension.

Kearton winced only a little. O’Rourke let his arm drop to his side.

“What you been up to in here?” asked O’Rourke. “It’s no go, Kearton. We know that you’ve stolen the poison out of the cabinet of Tydings, and used it. We begin to know a lot about you, fellow. No talking? Just been in here twiddlin’ your thumbs?”

Kearton rested one hip against the table and sighed with sheer fatigue. O’Rourke glanced around the room, caught his eye on one of the pictures, stepped suddenly to it — past it — moved rapidly around the room.

The lower right-hand corner of each of the doctor’s paintings had been rubbed away on a small spot hardly half an inch in diameter. The dark canvas showed through from beneath.

“Well?” demanded O’Rourke. “None of these what you wanted?... Ah, don’t be a swine, Kearton. Loosen up. Is that stuff in the bottle what you used to clean them?”

Kearton said nothing. And O’Rourke pursed his fat lips, sucked them in.

At last he said: “All right. We’ll go back to the old hangout.”

He picked up the bottle. From the floor he took some soft rags he had found there.

“You go first,” he said to Kearton.

They passed through the door and down the hall.

“Keep walking slow,” said O’Rourke, “because I’m expecting your partner, Chatham, to take a jump at me any minute. If he does, he’s gunna have stomach trouble the rest of his life. I never seen a fellow I’d like to drill more than that chum of yours, Kearton... Smooth, ain’t he? I mean, handing down the rope to give you a free trip out of that room, that day? And dropping the flatiron on the head of the doctor — that was another smooth one. What you think?”

Kearton said nothing. They got to the door of the right room, and O’Rourke opened it. He pushed Kearton in ahead of him.

“Here’s the old playmate again,” he said.

Campbell turned at the table where he sat. His sunken red-rimmed eyes blinked at Kearton. He was so tired that he was turning gray around the mouth and his lips pressed together and drew in a little, like an actor registering high emotion. That was merely keying himself against bitter fatigue.

“Nobody asked for you. Why’d you come back?” asked Campbell.

O’Rourke laughed heartily. “You got a kind of a sour damn sort of funniness about you that tickles me, Angus,” he said. “Try to get some language out of this loony if you can... The Talking Kid, is what he is. He was in the doctor’s room, cleaning the right-hand lower corner of every picture that was there. Wouldn’t that damn you?”

“Which part?”

“The right hand, lower corner.”

“The right hand, lower corner,” said Campbell, thoughtfully. He shook his head in despair.

“He was using these rags and stuff,” said O’Rourke, “and—”

“I’ll try some of it on this copy,” said Campbell.

“Yeah — always talking about pictures — you’re gonna go nutty when you get the Colored Supplement, next Sunday.”

Campbell said nothing. He shook the contents of the bottle, smelled them, made a wry face, moistened one of the rags and poised it over the right hand lower corner of the painting.

“Don’t do it!” shouted Kearton, suddenly.

“Lookat!” said O’Rourke. “You’ve touched his funny bone at last, and that’s damn queer.”

“What’s the matter with the mug?” asked Campbell, looking over his shoulder, the rag still poised.

“I tell you, don’t touch that picture!” exclaimed Kearton. “Those ignorant hands of yours may swab away—”

“Willing to use your own?” asked Campbell.

“Willing? It’s all I ask!” said Kearton.

“Let him do it,” said Campbell, although a little puzzled.

“What’s the matter with you, Angus?” asked O’Rourke. “You want me to set free the hands of this disappearing guy and have him hoist himself through the ceiling or something?”

“Do what I say,” said Campbell. “Or I’ll do it myself.”

“I’ll be damned if you do!” said O’Rourke.

“Keep back from him,” said Campbell.

“I’ll slam you one on the beak, you damned dummy,” said O’Rourke.

“Hand that man over to me!” commanded Campbell.

“Yeah. You say so, eh? I hand him over to you, do I?”

“Sergeant O’Rourke,” said Campbell, “as your senior officer, I command you to step back from this man.”

O’Rourke started to laugh. Suddenly he turned on his heel and walked to the window.

He leaned there, breathing deeply of the night.

Campbell freed the hands of Kearton.

“Stand away from the window or you’ll get a flatiron dropped on the thick of your skull,” said Campbell.

O’Rourke said nothing. A shudder ran through the fat of his back.

“Stay there and get your head smashed in,” said Campbell. “A damned good thing for the force; a damned good thing for me... I never pulled seniority on you before. I wouldn’t be that much of a rat, but if I’d known that it would shut you up, I’d of slammed you with it a long time ago... Sergeant O’Rourke, you fool, step back from that window.”

O’Rourke said, without turning his head, without violence but with a trembling intensity of voice: “To hell with you. To hell with the Inspector. To hell with the New York police force. To hell with the whole damn thing!”

Campbell stared at the fat back.

He turned suddenly on Kearton.

“Well, if you’re going to do something, do it!” he snapped.

Kearton nodded, took the wet rag, and began to scrub at the bottom of the picture. He took another small phial from his pocket and poured a few drops of it on the paint. A sick, sweet odor entered the air. Campbell blew out his breath to get rid of the smell.

O’Rourke said: “A lot of four-flushing, half-witted, fat-headed, two-timing, calf-faced twicers! To hell with them all. To hell with everything. Seniority!”

He turned around and shouted: “Seniority! Hell!”

“I’ll have you broke!” shouted Campbell in return.

“You can’t break me. I’ve broke myself!” yelled O’Rourke. “I’ve resigned from the force.”

“I’ll have you fired before you resign. I’ll have you on the black list. You’ll get no pension. You’ll draw nothing but a laugh from the whole department.”

“And I’ll break your neck before—”

“Here!” cried Kearton.

He threw his arms into the air. “Here. Here! I’ve got it. I knew it! I’ve got it here! Look! D’you see? The real Granduca!”

Chapter XXIII Vial of Arsenic

O’Rourke came back with ghostly softness of step from the window. He stood staring at the work which went on under Kearton’s eager hands. Campbell, unable to contain himself, walked up and down the room, now and then flourishing a fist above his head, now stopping to stare at Kearton’s labors, now asking a question.

“You mean it’s real? You mean it’s the real Raphael? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes, yes, yes! Damn it, of course, yes! Don’t you see with your own eyes? It’s going to come up as clean as a whistle,” answered Kearton, relief in his voice.

“There was nothing in the picture all the time, eh?” demanded Campbell of O’Rourke.

A stare of consuming hatted answered him.

“Nothing but damn Scotch foolishness,” mused Campbell. “Sure there wasn’t anything else. Nothing except one of the most famous pictures in the world. Nothing but a Raphael.”

“You never heard of him before you come here,” said O’Rourke, tormented into speech.

“Raphael,” said Campbell, “is one of the prince of painters. The funny thing about him ain’t the color that he puts into a painting, but it’s the way he fills up the canvas.”

“What d’you mean fills up the canvas?” asked O’Rourke. “What would he do, anyway? Leave some spots of it bare?”

“Sure everybody fills a canvas, but they got different ways. Anyway, that’s wood, not canvas. But the way he filled it up was the great trick.”

“What was great about it?” asked O’Rourke. “Come on and tell us, if you know so much!”

“It was the way he done it that counted,” said Campbell. “A guy like you wouldn’t be able to tell, Pat. It takes a man with taste and an eye to understand things like that.”

“Lemme tell you something. You make me sick,” said O’Rourke. “You wouldn’t know how much. It takes a man with taste and an eye to understand things like that. But where you make me sick is in the stomach.”

Kearton was saying: “The way it was done was the clever trick. D’you see how it was done?”

He went on talking, in bursts, rapidly, while his clever hands went on with the work, using a loving speed.

O’Rourke forgot Campbell. He stepped up beside Kearton and said, ingratiatingly: “How did it happen, partner?”

“Why, the devil went into the Pitti and started copying the Granduca — no one would think anything of that — the picture’s copied enough every year.”

“What’s a pity?” asked O’Rourke. “What pity?”

“The Pitti Palace,” said Campbell, with a raised voice, “is one of the greatest depositories of art treasures in the known world. They gotta lot of stuff there from all over. Don’t butt in like this and show your ignorance. Leave the man alone to talk.”

“He covers his board with a sheet of fine canvas. Nothing simpler than that,” said Kearton. “But the fact was that under the canvas there was an excellent copy of the Granduca. An old one. Painted centuries ago and by a good workman. That was where the idea came into the brain of the doctor — or of Tydings, or whoever was behind it — to find that excellent old copy in the shop of the dealer. And so Dr. Hamblin skins a fine canvas over that old board and takes it into the Pitti Palace to copy the Granduca. The guard grows used to him in that room. Now and then, naturally, he walks up to the picture and examines it carefully. Why not? Any painter may want to see how the paint is put on. Who would suspect that a fellow in the open light of day was loosening the fastenings that join the picture to the gilded frame? Day by day he prepares everything until it will take only a touch to move the picture out of the frame... Then to wait for the right opportunity. The guard in that room of the Pitti liked to pick up a tourist, here and there, and escort him off to another room to show something curious. They have that way of picking up an extra lira or so. And when it happens this time, Hamblin is ready... It must have been a strain on his nerves, but he snakes his canvas from the good copy that it covers. He runs to the Granduca hanging on the wall, jerks out the last fastening, removes it from the frame, puts the copy into the frame, secures it in one or two places, and jumps back with the real Granduca, which he puts on his own easel.”

“There’s brains!” said O’Rourke. “I wouldn’t of picked the doctor, living or dead, for brains like that!”

“But here comes the clever part. He can’t leave the Granduca exposed on his easel. There’s nowhere near time enough to stretch a new canvas over the top of it. That takes hours, perhaps. And though it’s early in the morning of a dark day, when not many tourists or other sightseers will be around, every moment counts, because the guard will be back almost at once. Now I ask you, what does he do to hide the face of the real Granduca? What does he do, Sergeant Campbell? Tell me that!”

“I’m damned if I know. All I could of done would of been to sweat,” said the sergeant. “No, I would of popped the picture into a bag that I would of had along with me, and I would of said that I’d finished making my copy, and goodby.”

Kearton laughed on a high, breaking note.

“That’s what you would have done, maybe,” he said. “But when you were to leave the gallery, your painting would have had to be inspected, of course, and the moment the inspector saw that old paint on your board, he would have stopped everything... Besides, you hadn’t the time necessary for securing that painting in its frame — the one that was to serve as the real Granduca... No, you could pop the picture into a bag and walk off with it. You simply would have been walking yourself into jail — for a fifteen year sentence. They’re thorough about such things in Italy, these days!... Can you guess what Hamblin did, O’Rourke?”

“I dunno. I been trying to think,” said O’Rourke, fascinated. “I’ll tell you — he’s got a line hitched to the picture, and he lowers away through a window to where his confederate...”

Kearton laughed again. “In broad daylight... with the guard coming back again at any moment?” he asked.

“No, my idea ain’t so bright,” agreed O’Rourke.

“Why,” said Kearton, “he already has prepared a quantity of grayish tempera, a coating that can be washed on fast, and when the guard returns, he simply finds Hamblin covering his board with great strokes. The whole thing has turned to a mass of gray under-paint. The guard thinks that the artist is dissatisfied with his work. Hamblin swears and groans and speaks of the time he has lost. The guard feels sympathy. At the moment of stealing one of the world’s most famous pictures, Hamblin, with the article there under his hand, is the earnest, innocent student — least suspected of men!”

“Smart! Damn smart!” said O’Rourke. “Too smart for Hamblin, I’d say.”

“Of course it was. But not too smart for a Tydings, who was in the background, planning everything,” said Kearton. “The cleverness doesn’t end there. Day after day, Hamblin remains there at his work, painting on his new ground of tempera his new copy of the Granduca — this copy — the one that I’m cleaning away at this moment! It took nerve to do that, too. Because at any time it might be discovered that the picture inside the frame was a copy. Perhaps no suspicion would attach to the poor, honest fellow who was working there so patiently, but in case of inquiry, it might have been very bad. There was the nature of the old board itself to attract attention. At any rate, day by day Hamblin was renewing the fastenings which held the copy in the original frame. When all was firm, he had finished his new copy, took it down, had it duly inspected and passed, and away he went... Ah, ha! Do you see? There’s the Madonna’s face, clear enough — and ah, faith — I’m tired — I’m going to sleep!”

His hands dropped to his knees.

Through the wet of Kearton’s work, O’Rourke stared with great eyes at the dim face which was growing out from under the cleansing and taking more perfect form. It was dim, but it sent a vague thrill up the spinal column of the Irishman.

Kearton stood up, stretched, groaned.

“I’ve got to sleep. I’m dead!” he said.

“Wait till you finish the job!” pleaded Campbell.

“It’s as good as finished. Any tramp could do the work that’s left. Sleep — I’ve never had enough sleep in my life.”

He staggered across the room, reached out his arms to the bed, and fell prone on it with another groan.

Campbell went over to him and pulled at his arm.

“Get up and finish that job, Kearton!” he commanded.

The arm fell limp from the hand of Campbell.

An obscure muttering was the only-answer.

“Hey,” said O’Rourke, shaking the sleeper. “What’s your business with Chatham? Why was Tydings afraid of you? Who are you?”

Alcohol never thickened a tongue more than the blurred utterance with which Kearton responded. Campbell shook his head.

“It’s no good,” he said. “You could shoot off cannons beside him, now, and he wouldn’t more’n blink an eye... He’s done his bit for us pretty good. Leave him be. There’s plenty for us to do till he wakes up... Gosh, I could use some sleep myself, and I guess I’ve got to take it.”

“I don’t give a damn what you do,” said O’Rourke, leaning over the table. “But sleep is something you won’t get.”

“Why won’t I?” demanded Campbell. “We’ve got Clifford under guard, all right. He won’t move. He don’t even know that he’s the bait in the trap and that we hope we’ll catch some big game with him.”

“You won’t sleep,” said O’Rourke. “Yeah, but maybe you will. You’re that kind of an officer. Duty don’t mean nothing to you.”

Campbell walked over to him and looked him in the eye. O’Rourke, with a swing of the head, resumed his staring at the little bottle of poisonous tonic which stood on the cluttered table.

“Come on,” said Campbell. “Even you don’t talk like so much of a damn fool as this, unless you got an idea.”

“I’ve got an idea,” said O’Rourke. “Now you see if you can get the same thing.”

He stood up, turned his back, lighted a cigarette, then walked to the window. His words drifted back over his shoulder. “You’re the senior sergeant, ain’t you? Then you oughta have the senior brains, too, shouldn’t you? Go ahead and use ’em, will you?”

Campbell looked down at the table, and particularly at the small phial of the tonic. He shook his head, bit his lip, picked up the bottle and stared down at it in vain. There was meaning for him in the tokens that seemed to have meant so much to O’Rourke.

“There’s nothing to it,” said Campbell. “Cheap Irish bluff, is all there is!”

“Oh, yeah?” said O’Rourke.

“Yeah!” said Campbell.

“Just bluff, eh?”

“I said it before. The same thing you been using to climb up in the force. Bluff — no brains — just bluff. I say it again.”

The voice of O’Rourke was exquisitely soothing.

“Why, I think you’re right, Campbell,” he said. “The way I’ve climbed up in the force is just this way — just by using the same old pair of eyes. A thick-headed dummy of a Scotch mist wouldn’t be apt to understand — but look at the bottle, you fool!”

Campbell heeded not the insult. He stared at the bottle. And suddenly the voice of O’Rourke blasted his ears.

“The stuff has sunk an eighth of an inch since we brought it in here! It ain’t been stolen at all. It’s evaporated. It’s evaporation that’s changed its strength. There ain’t any murder of Tydings at all. The thing that murdered him is simply the damn junk evaporating thicker and stronger in the bottle — and there’s nothing but talk around here and no Tydings case at all — and a dummy has been made out of Senior Sergeant Angus Campbell!”

Chapter XXIV Campbell Dreams

There was the long, steady snoring of Kearton, as he lay stretched on the bed. That and the clicking of O’Rourke’s heels as he walked up and down the floor made the accompaniment to which Campbell had to do his thinking.

He uncorked the bottle, stared at the contents, smelled of them, shook his head once more.

“Volatile... that’s what they call stuff like this,” said Campbell. “But how would it evaporate through a glass bottle with a cork in it?”

“It can’t evaporate through glass,” said O’Rourke.

“Nothing can evaporate through cork, neither,” said Campbell. “Put your knee into the ribs of Kearton and stop him snoring, will you?”

O’Rourke went to the bed and turned Kearton on his face. The snore turned into a stifled groaning.

“Nothing can evaporate through cork, neither,” insisted the Scotchman, as O’Rourke came back.

“Then the cork ain’t there,” said O’Rourke.

“What do you mean it ain’t there? Can’t I see it?”

“What can evaporate through glass or cork? Nothing!” said O’Rourke. “So I say, the cork ain’t there.”

“I always knew it,” said Campbell. “Crazy as a loon — and on full-time pay of the City of New York!”

O’Rourke, without answering, picked up the bottle from the weary band of Campbell; pulled out the cork, and began to examine it.

There was a knock at the door. Campbell went to it, and pulled it half open. Lionel Reid was there. The light gleamed on the dark red of his hair and made his eyes bluer.

“I’ve come to talk about the check, Sergeant,” he said in a low voice.

“Later on,” said Campbell, and started to close the door.

Reid put his foot against it.

“I’ve come to talk about the check you promised to me,” said young Reid.

“All right, all right,” said Campbell. “As soon as I’ve had a Chance to check up the yarn you told me. Rome wasn’t built in a day, young man.”

“It was taken and smashed in a day, though,” said Lionel Reid.

“You’re drunk,” said Campbell. “Get out and stay out.”

He slammed the door in Reid’s face and turned back into the room.

“Manners,” he heard O’Rourke saying. “That’s all they ain’t got. Manners. Take them otherwise and the Scotch ain’t a bad sort of a second-rate people.”

He had the cork in his band, turning it. He put the bottle back on the table and untwisted the wire cork-pull which was affixed in the cork.

He held up the cork in one hand, the crooked bit of wire in the other.

“I told you so,” he said. “There ain’t any cork!”

Campbell started to swear. He wound up by taking the cork out of O’Rourke’s hands and examining it for a moment. The moment was all he needed. A narrow hole had been drilled into the cork. When he held it to the light, he could lock straight through.

What O’Rourke had said was true. There was no cork. A highly volatile liquid, chiefly alcohol, would evaporate swiftly in this hot summer weather.

Campbell screwed the wire pull back into its place and reclosed the bottle.

“Neat,” he said.

“Like the swiping of the picture from the palace, over there,” said O’Rourke. “Damned neat. Too neat. There’s been nothing but brains sloshed all over this case!... Look at it now! Murder, all right. Murder by drilling a sneaking little hole through a cork. That’s all. I never heard anything like it. Murder is gonna jump at us out of keyhole or something.”

“Who did it?” muttered Campbell.

“Likely the doctor. The same sneaking sort of idea that a doctor would have, anyway,” suggested O’Rourke.

“But there’s Walden — there’s Chatham — there’s Vivian Tydings — there’s the Reids — all been near the house. All had a chance to do this trick. All had some kind of reasons for it — to say nothing of dirty dog-face Clifford.”

“Look,” said O’Rourke. “You’re tired. You go and lie down.”

“I’m not tired... You were right, Pat. I won’t sleep tonight.”

“You gotta sleep. You ain’t got much brains anyway, and you need what you got freshened up. Do what I tell you.”

“I can’t sleep.”

O’Rourke took him by the shoulder. “Go on over there and lie down beside Kearton,” he commanded.

Campbell moved, shaking his head in a feeble protest.

“I’m going to take a look around for some of the old bottles of this tonic,” he said. “There must be some more of them, somewhere. You get a bit of shut-eye, and I’ll take a slant around the place. Then I’ll come back. Take it easy, Angus. Don’t be a mug. Let everything go and take it easy.”

“Thanks, Pat,” said Campbell. “Maybe you’re right.” He stretched himself on the bed...

This unexpected kindness on the part of O’Rourke amazed him and disarmed him. He would not, of course, go to sleep, but at least he would pretend to, and the moment O’Rourke was out of the room he could be up again. Never refuse a gift or a kindness. Even if you don’t want, never refuse.

He heard the feet of O’Rourke stride across the floor. The door opened, a warm slosh of air washed through the room. The door closed again. The footfall of O’Rourke going down the hall was instantly dim, then lost.

Rich people could afford to soundproof their homes, in this fashion, far different from the sort of semi-tenement lodgings which Sergeant Campbell could afford to give to his wife and children. That hard-faced woman would be sitting up with her sewing, perhaps, even at this late hour. Silently, her lips pressed together a little. She had headaches all the time, but she never talked about them to her family. She had been married for ten years before Campbell even knew about them. Then she had said once to the doctor — Campbell had managed to overhear — “I think I’m going crazy. Hours every day I have it behind the eyes, as though somebody had driven a nail through my temples.”

There was something in the Bible about a woman driving a nail through the temples of somebody.

Well, you have to pay for class, and Campbell’s children would be the class. They looked scrawny, but they had to be the class. There was iron in them from both sides. Hammer iron enough and you make fine steel of it. Campbell’s children would be the class, all right. They’d take an edge that would cut a way for them through the world. A quick way. They wouldn’t have to climb a ladder a million steps long, the way Campbell had had to do. But the way it is in this world, hard work tells in the long run... Take the fancy detectives in the books, the ones that are the masterminds — they ain’t true. They’re only funny. You don’t meet real ones that match up with the book stuff. You wouldn’t have one of those funny guys on the force. But reading about them made you laugh, and it sort of gave you ideas. O’Rourke never stopped riding him because he read about the flossy detectives. O’Rourke never would let up.

You take a man that hasn’t got much to think about except beer and graft and things like that, he never lets up on any hold he’s got. The Irish are like that. Ignorant and fat-headed. Boors. Pigs. If you want a dean man, you take a Scotchman. Maybe kind of hard. But that’s what a man should be...

He would close his eyes, now.

Strange how the darkness, in soft, obscure waves, slipped over his body, from the feet towards the head. There seemed more darkness. The darkness was like sleep. Sleep was like an ocean, rolling ceaselessly over him.

Dying would be something like that, sinking into numb pain instead of out of pain into sleep. The man that invented sleep...

He had made a mistake, somewhere. He could not tell where. Somewhere a mistake. In the accounts. Something that had to do with money. He had lost some money.

The wife would say nothing. She would go on with her sewing, late, later than ever, to make up the money he had lost. She wouldn’t take the kids to the seashore this summer, because he had lost money.

But he never lost money. He wasn’t that sort of a fool. This time...

Half rousing out of sleep, Campbell put his hand up to the breast of his coat. It was true. It was his awn wallet out of his own pocket that he had lost, that had been stolen!

His eyes were wide open, staring, staring into darkness. And that wasn’t right because there had been an electric light shining when he went to sleep...

One hand got to the automatic in a jerking, swift movement. The other found his pocket torch. He raised on one elbow.

Over there towards the door a whisper was passing. The weight of footfalls seemed to be pressing not on the floor but on the nerves of Campbell.

So he swung suddenly from the bed to his feet. It seemed to him that in the darkness Kearton, still snoring, was reaching up a hand to drag him back. Except for the snoring of Kearton, certainly no one would have managed to put out the light without waking Sergeant Campbell, no one would have been able to put hand on the wallet inside his coat pocket.

The electric torch clicked in his hand. The light jerked foolishly high, towards the ceiling.

Then it flicked across a figure there near the door, slipping past a couple of chairs... Campbell fired. He let two bullets roar out of the throat of that big automatic.

The figure slipped out of sight behind the chairs.

Kearton was saying in a horrible whisper: “What’s happened? Ah, what’s happened?”

Campbell charged straight in behind the cone of light, his lips furling back from his teeth.

“You get up out of there. Damn you, get up out of there!” he was shouting.

Then he looked with light and gun over the backs of the chairs and saw, huddled back against the wall, which was thinly sprayed with blood, Charlotte Reid.

Chapter XXV Ready for the Payoff

She kept her eyes fixed on Campbell and began to push herself up from the floor, clumsily.

He said: “I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t know a woman — how was I to know...?”

She stood erect, touching the wall with her hand. Her blood was on the wall. It blurred under the tips of her fingers. The fingers were slender. Her hand was like the hand of a child. In the other, which hung at her side, dangled Campbell’s wallet. He snatched it away, threw it on the table.

“Where you hurt?” he asked.

“I’m all right,” she said.

She had the meaningless eyes of a sleepwalker. It was as though she still were walking through darkness, feeling her way with her hand against the wall; as though she could not see Campbell’s face, for instance. She had on a very thin blue dress that hung about her like a translucent cloud.

Campbell could not think of anything except that the dress was like a cloud and that the beauty of the girl was like a sun trying to shine through. Back in his mind he had another picture. That was of the inspector saying: “Campbell, I hear you’ve been shooting up the girls, eh?”

You didn’t shoot women. Not on the New York police force. Sometimes you ought to shoot them like dogs, but you didn’t. Take O’Rourke. Not even in the dark, not even waking out of sleep — he wouldn’t have shot a woman. An instinct would have told him.

There were footfalls coming with a rush. People were going to pour in and see what he had done.

He put the gun away.

The girl had a damned sort of childish, stunned look about her that wrung the heart. He had a crazy idea of getting her out of sight, even if he had to throw her out the window.

Hands beat on the door. He shouted something. They were pooling up, outside there in the hall. He realized that he was shouting to them to keep out.

Kearton, off there in the corner, had begun to yell out something about a gun and a crazy man.

Then the door opened.

It was O’Rourke, swollen with haste, red-faced. The others came packing in behind him. Half of them were police. One of them was the policeman who had been guarding Clifford. He had come, bringing the butler with him.

The room was full of people. Campbell could smell the stale sweat of the policemen, condensed in their uniform coats. Lionel Reid screamed out something and came leaping, dodging to get at Campbell. A big form stepped into the path. That was Chatham. All Campbell could see was the jerk of Chatham’s shoulder. What he heard was the smack of Chatham’s fist against flesh and then the slump of Reid’s body against the tiles.

The air was full of hands, asking questions, trying to do something.

Chatham was the one who picked up the girl and carried her over to the bed. Her clothes pulled up above the knee. She had sort of spindle shanks, but pretty and rounded. Campbell caught the edge of the dress and pulled it down a little.

Chatham was laying the girl on the bed.

There was Vivian Tydings’ pale, intense face, cutting into the attention of Campbell with a knife.

Campbell was saying: “Where’s there a doctor? Somebody go get a doctor.”

A hand caught him by the shoulder.

The round, swollen face of O’Rourke loomed close to him.

“Don’t be a fool,” said O’Rourke whispering. “Pull yourself together. There ain’t any doctor here. She’s all right. Even if you shot some veal, what of it?”

Campbell looked at him and took his first breath. In some ways, O’Rourke knew a lot. You take a crooked grafter like O’Rourke, he’s sure to know a lot.

Chatham dragged up the skirts of the girl on the bed. The blue cloud held tight at a point. Chatham gave it a flick and ripped it away.

You could see where the underclothes were sleeked and plastered to her thigh with red blood. The outside hole was just a dark spot. The exit hole of the bullet had torn through the thick soft of the flesh in a bigger way and that was where the blood was oozing out. Campbell looked at the way the stocking gave to the pull of the garters. She had those funny double garters that women wear. You wouldn’t think a woman could walk very easy the way she’s harnessed up underneath.

Chatham’s hands were red to the wrists. He turned his head. There was a smear of blood above one eye and down the cheek. It looked like a thin, watery, red paint.

He said: “Clear out the room, will you?”

Campbell stood up on his toes.

“Get the hell out of here, all of you!” he yelled.

They didn’t move. They stood like oxen, staring. The police began to turn their backs on the wounded girl. They started pushing the people out.

Chatham was asking for things. O’Rourke was getting them. Chatham had ripped a sheet out of the bed the way you would pull a page out of a book. He stood up and ripped the sheet into strips. He had jerked off his coat. One of his sleeves was unbuttoned at the wrist. The cloth furled up. You could see the twist and bulge of the long forearm muscles. He kept ripping the cloth as though it were paper.

The girl on the bed moaned.

Chatham cried out: “Charlotte! Charlotte!... Do you hear me? Charlotte!”

He grabbed her up. Campbell wanted to do something, but he couldn’t tell what to do. His hands were no good. He kept half moving from side to side and he watched Chatham catch up the girl. One of his big arms was under her neck. Her eyes were closed. Her face looked loose.

Campbell said: “I’ve killed her... That’s all I’ve done...”

It would go into the report: “In line of duty.”

Maybe O’Rourke was right. Maybe he was only a dog, and not a man. Maybe there was something wrong with all Scotchmen, the way O’Rourke said.

It was queer and sort of horrible the way Chatham was kissing the girl on the bed, hard, her head pressed back by the force of each kiss.

He kept saying: “Charlotte!... Ah God!... Charlotte!”

O’Rourke took him by the hair of the head and pulled.

“Listen! Chatham! She ain’t dead! She’s only fainted! Listen! She’ll be all right if you don’t let her bleed to death.”

Then Chatham dropped her back on the bed, roughly, and snatched up some of the length of linen which he had prepared. The blood was pumping out of the inside mouth of the wound. The heart pressure was fisting the blood out in jets.

Someone came dodging back into the room through the policemen. That was Vivian Tydings. Her eyes were wonderfully small and bright. Campbell caught her by one wrist and said: “What’s the matter? What do you aim to do?”

She pointed with her other arm.

“I’m going to send Gene Chatham to the electric chair!” she cried.

“That’s the stuff,” said Campbell numbly.

“The hypocrite!... Gene, do you hear me? Do you hear? I’m going to tell them everything! I’m going to see that you get the chair! I’m going to be there to see that you burn in it!”

He said, without turning his head: “Get the scrawny little fool out of here, will you?”

“Ah!” said Vivian Tydings.

“I want to talk to you,” said Campbell. “I want to hear everything.”

“Do you?” she said, with a remarkable sweetness. “I wonder if you want to hear it half as much as I want to tell? Good night, Sergeant. Good night, Sergeant O’Rourke.”

She went to the door, turned and smiled back at them, and went out.

O’Rourke said: “What a gal!”

Chatham said: “Hold the leg up.”

The girl on the bed moaned. Chatham was putting force on the bandaging, perhaps.

O’Rourke assisted him, holding up the leg.

Some of the policemen were still there by the door. One of them had a young face. He seemed to Campbell too young to be in that room, staring. Campbell said: “Go on out, all of you! Get a move on you! Shake it up.”

The policemen crowded back through the doorway.

The bed was all blood. Some of the blood was dripping off the edge and down onto the floor.

The bandaging was finished. Chatham took off the bloody silk stocking. His big hands were delicate. He slipped the stocking off and it came away like a delicate extra skin. It slumped to nothing on the floor. Chatham washed the stained leg. The flesh puffed beside the bandage. Chatham put his hand on the puff of flesh. Then he drew a soft, knitted throw over the girl’s body.

She said: “Gene!”

“I’m here,” said Chatham. He stuck his big head out over her.

“Will they hang us both?” said the girl.

“Be still!” said Chatham, with no breath in his voice.

He half rose. He kept one hand spread out on the breast and shoulder of the girl, and he turned his head and looked with the eyes of a wild beast at the two detectives.

O’Rourke said: “We didn’t hear that, Chatham.”

“Damn you!” said Chatham.

O’Rourke walked right up to the monster.

He said: “Listen to me, Chatham: We didn’t hear that. We didn’t hear anything — no more’n a priest would of heard anything.”

Chatham said nothing. His eyes digested the words, though, and changed in expression.

He dropped on his knees beside the bed. One arm he slipped in under the girl’s body. The other hand began to go over her face. Campbell had seen a blind man touch a face the way Chatham was doing, drinking it in with his fingers.

“Gene,” said the girl.

“Be still,” said Chatham.

“Did you kiss me?” she asked.

“No,” said Chatham.

“Gene,” she said.

“Well?”

“Did you kiss me?”

“Yes,” he answered.

She turned her face towards him and smiled. She put out a hand and slipped the fingers into his hair.

“Is there much pain?” said Chatham.

Her forehead clouded a little.

“No. Not much,” she said. “Iodine has a horrible smell, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Chatham.

“I wish you’d wash your face,” said the girl.

“I shall — now,” said he.

“No, don’t do it,” said the girl.

“All right,” said Chatham.

O’Rourke came to Campbell and said: “Let’s get a drink.”

O’Rourke looked sick. “All right,” said Campbell.

He picked up his wallet from the table. He pinched the soft leather between thumb and forefinger. He had felt the stealing of that wallet just as though it had been part of his flesh, and that was a funny thing.

He went behind O’Rourke out of the room.

“We oughtn’t to leave him on the loose,” said Campbell.

“Don’t be a damn fool,” answered O’Rourke.

Somehow, O’Rourke was able to speak from an elevation. He seemed to be in command.

They went down to the dining room and through to the pantry. There was white wine cooling in the icebox, there. And in the wine pantry there were all sorts of things. Rich people pour funny stuff into themselves. It would be like going to school again to learn the names of all the sorts of things they drink, and the way they mix them.

O’Rourke did not hesitate. He found some Bushmill’s, Black Label.

“That’s the finest whiskey in the world,” said O’Rourke. “Have a shot?”

“After you,” said Campbell.

“Go on and drink,” said O’Rourke.

Campbell poured some into a glass. He said: “I was just waking up. I felt somebody pulling the wallet out of my coat pocket and I was just waking up. And then I. flashed on the light and only saw...”

“Quit it, will you?” said O’Rourke.

Campbell swallowed his drink. It burned his throat and cast a smoky mist across his eyes. O’Rourke was not using a glass. He had lifted the bottle to his lips, and Campbell dimly saw bolus after bolus of the liquid gliding down his gullet.

O’Rourke lowered the bottle from his mouth and leaned forward, panting.

The sweat on his forehead looked as big as glass beads. He tilted the bottle and looked at the amount of the whiskey that was left.

“Whatcha think?” asked O’Rourke.

Campbell stared at him and began to penetrate to the mind.

“You mean about the two of them?”

“Yeah. What else would I mean?”

“I guess it’s Salt Creek,” said Campbell.

“Yeah, that’s what you’d guess,” said O’Rourke.

Campbell said: “I gotta hand it to you all the way. You guessed it was Chatham all the time.”

O’Rourke raised savage eyes, started to speak, and suddenly sat down. He rested his elbow on the edge of the table and put his hand across his face. Some of the sweat trickled from his forehead and ran over his fingers. It made Campbell think of tears. O’Rourke was thinking;

Campbell said: “I can’t help wishing, though — I mean, the way she was looking at him. You take her, she was a kind of a hard, cool girl. The kind that you could of suspected of doing anything she thought was necessary to do. But there on the bed looking at Chatham, she was like a baby, wasn’t she?”

“Shut up, will you?” said O’Rourke.

Campbell stared. There was something in that voice which he never had heard before. The hand of O’Rourke was clasped hard across his face, masking the eyes.

Campbell said: “We’ve gotta go and talk to the Tydings girl.”

O’Rourke said nothing.

“We oughta get her,” said Campbell, “while she’s still near crazy with jealousy.”

“Get the hell out of here, will you?” said O’Rourke. “I gotta think.”

Campbell gaped. Then he went out of the room.

You never can tell about an Irishman. When they get stirred up and emotional, they’re funny. That’s all they are. Funny.

Campbell went up to the room of Vivian Tydings and tapped at the door.

The more minor mysteries O’Rourke and Campbell solve, the more the major mystery grows. Who killed Henry Tydings? Who killed Dr. Hamblin? What part does the purloined Raphael play? What did Charlotte Reid mean when she asked Chatham: “Will they hang us?” What will Vivian Tydings, frantic with jealousy, reveal? The answers to these questions will be found in next week’s smashing, thrilling conclusion.