Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

Clint’s lie detector was a strange contraption, and he put it to strange uses in the Thurmond Murder Case...

Chapter I A Backwater of Life

Governor Kendall blotted the signature, laid down the pen and whirled the big executive chair through a complete half circle to regard his visitor.

“Clint, do you know why I sent for you?”

The dapper individual on the other side of the desk shrugged his shoulders.

“I might guess — wrong.”

The Governor nodded. “And again you might guess right. Try.”

Clint Kale smiled, and there was a trace of mockery in that smile.

“Something to do with my work in psychology?”

“You’re asking questions. I told you to guess.”

“Some mission you want to have me undertake, and are having difficulty getting the ice broken?”

The Governor frowned.

“Hang it, Clint, it’s your coldblooded efficiency, your ever-present air of supercilious superiority that gets you into trouble!”

Clint smiled affably.

“Really?” he drawled.

“Yes, really! You remember that talk you made at the club the other night, about the fallacies of circumstantial evidence? You claimed that circumstances could lie just as well as human witnesses.”

Clint Kale reached for a cigarette.

“Ah!” he said. Then, after an interval during which he lit the tobacco and exhaled smokily: “So you’re wondering if she’s really guilty?”

The Governor started, flushed.

“I haven’t said so.”

“You were about to.”

The executive pulled a black cigar from a desk humidor, bit the end off with a snap of his decisive jaw, regarded his visitor over the flare of a match.

“Suppose we eliminate the mind reading.”

“You asked me to, you know.”

“Yes. You’re right. Hang it, you’re always right. That’s the irritating thing about you, Clint.”

He paused for a moment, and Clint bowed.

“All right. This is confidential,” snapped the harassed executive. “Jane Thurmond, fifty-two, convicted of first degree murder, sentenced to death, and the papers are urging me to sit tight and let the sentence be carried out.”

Clint nodded.

“Circumstantial evidence,” he said.

“Yes, and no. Partially circumstantial evidence. Partially direct testimony. But here’s the rub. If the woman had any sex appeal the newspapers would be singing another tune. If she’d had any looks the jury would never have convicted her. You can’t imagine an adventuress of twenty-five or six with pretty ankles and a baby stare, having been convicted of anything on that sort of evidence.

“It was because this woman was a coarse-skinned product of half a century of work that the jury rushed in and made short work of it. They weren’t out two hours!”

Clint nodded.

The Governor reached in a drawer, slammed out two bound volumes of typewritten transcript.

“There’s the record in the case.”

Clint stared at it for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.

“If you doubt her guilt, why don’t you commute the sentence?”

The Governor puffed reflectively on his cigar.

“Hang it, Clint, I don’t know how I feel. I don’t doubt her guilt, and yet — well, I’d dismissed the matter from my mind until the other night when you broke loose with that psychological patter about circumstantial evidence. You made me think, and now I don’t know just how I do feel about the case.”

Clint shook his head after the manner of a teacher chiding a disobedient child.

“I must learn to keep my mouth shut,” he said. “It’s hard to realize one is talking to the highest executive in the State when one is at a card game—”

“Oh, forget it, Clint. Be serious. Cut the comedy. I have half an idea you deliberately started all that talk about criminal justice in order to raise a doubt in my mind!”

Clint raised one eyebrow.

“Really?” he drawled.

“Yes, really. Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. But here’s what I’m up against. Unless I sign a pardon or a commutation of sentence that woman is going to die within two weeks. She’s a mother, two grown children. She has one grandchild.”

Clint nodded, that amused nod of superiority which the executive found so irritating.

The Governor waved his cigar toward the typewritten transcript.

“This case came up from a backwater of the State, a regular cow-county. The people in that county all know each other. The district attorney could have called every one on the jury by his first name. Jane Thurmond’s son engaged a city lawyer to go down and defend her.

“He was a good lawyer in the city. But he went up against a local combine. The district attorney had been in partnership with the trial judge. The people all figured it was a chance to show everybody how good their district attorney was. He licked the ‘slick city feller.’ That jury really didn’t vote on the woman’s guilt. They voted that a home town lawyer was just as good as the slick city lawyers.”

Clint Kale yawned, patted his lips in a deprecatory gesture.

“The evidence?” he asked.

The Governor flushed.

“All right, if I’m wearying you, I’ll be brief. The evidence is this. The woman had a place. It was mortgaged. She was desperately in need of funds. Old Sam Pixley was the town miser. He was murdered. Whoever committed that murder knew where he kept his money. It was in a strong box under his bed, in a little cubby-hole cunningly built into the floor.

“The woman had acted as Pixley’s housekeeper. She went to his house once every week and straightened up. The rest of the time Pixley did his own cooking and cleaning.

“He was found dead in his bed. He had been hit over the head with a club, several times.

“Then the murderer had moved the bed, opened the trap door in the floor, pried the lid off the box, and taken what money there was. Just how much there was no one knows. There were some bonds, a few diamonds set in old-fashioned jewelry and some money. The bonds were Hanover Irrigation District bonds, perhaps some others.

“The murderer cleaned up on the bonds and jewelry. The only things that weren’t taken were some stocks that were valueless, some promissory notes, and a packet of letters.”

Clint leaned forward, flipped his cigarette into the cuspidor, took a pencil from his pocket, opened a leather bound notebook.

“The valueless stocks?” he asked.

The Governor thumbed through the pages of the transcript.

“American Carbonator, Incorporated,” he said. “They were old stocks. A clever promoter had organized the company fifteen years before and victimized several of the town’s prominent men. Sam Pixley knew the stocks weren’t any good, but he’d paid money for them, so he kept them in with his valued possessions.

“The body was found the next morning. That afternoon Jane Thurmond paid off her mortgage in cash. The cashier at the bank identified one fifty-dollar note that had been torn and pasted with adhesive tissue. He had paid that note to Pixley in cashing a check for him less than a week before the murder.

“Remember, Clint, this is a small community we’re talking about. Everybody knows everybody else. Everybody’s business is everybody’s business.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Clint, “Sam Pixley put the torn bank note into circulation.”

The Governor shook his head.

“Pixley never put money into circulation. He took it out of circulation, and kept it out. He’d lost money in a bank failure once. After that he cashed his checks and hid the cash.”

Clint nodded.

“That all the evidence?” he asked.

“Good Lord, no! Jane Thurmond was interrogated. She admitted she’d not earned the money. Finally she said she found it, all wrapped up in a bundle and dropped on her doorstep. The mortgage was eleven hundred and fifty dollars. She said there was exactly eleven hundred and fifty dollars in the package that was dropped on her doorstep. Not a very likely story.”

Clint regarded the executive through half closed eyes.

“Go on,” he said.

“That started an investigation. Jane Thurmond was taken to the scene of the crime, accused of murder. She denied her guilt, but was somewhat rambling as to her statements of where she’d been the night of the crime. One thing she was certain of, she hadn’t been near Pixley’s place.

“That was proved to be false. Two witnesses had seen her, one going, one coming. But she had left before the crime was committed. That’s one point in her favor. Pixley must have been killed shortly after midnight. Jane Thurmond was seen leaving the place about ten thirty. It’s the theory of the prosecution that she returned and committed the crime.

“There’s a witness by the name of Ezra Hickory who says he saw Jane Thurmond leave her house shortly before midnight. He doesn’t know where she went or what she did, but he swears she was carrying a club, something that looked like an ax handle.

“Subsequently they found the bloodstained ax handle. It was hidden in the barn on Sam Pixley’s property. It fitted an ax head that was found in Jane Thurmond’s woodshed.”

Clint held his pencil poised over his notebook.

“Didn’t Mrs. Thurmond finally admit she’d been to Sam Pixley’s house?”

“Yes. She eventually admitted it. She said some one had telephoned her that Sam Pixley had said he’d be willing to take over the mortgage. She went over to see. Sam said nothing doing. The woman left. That’s her story.”

“Any finger-prints?” asked Clint.

“Not a finger-print, not on the ax handle, not on the box, nowhere in the place. There were some old fingerprints on the ax handle. They belonged to Mrs. Thurmond. That’s settled. It’s her ax handle. She finally admitted that, but claims she doesn’t know how it got there.”

“That all?”

“That’s all.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

“Clint, I want you to go down there, Middlevale, Middlevale County, and get the real inside facts on that crime. You can do it. If that woman dies I want to feel certain she’s guilty.”

Clint’s half closed eyes held something of a mocking glitter.

“There’s enough evidence there to convict a dozen defendants. You shouldn’t feel any doubt in your mind.”

The Governor groaned.

“I didn’t, not until you gave that little dissertation on circumstantial evidence, and how facts lied. Then I began to feel uneasy. You were so cocksure, so coldly final, and you’re nearly always right.”

Clint smiled enigmatically.

“If I do this, I shall want two things,” he said.

“Name them.”

“I shall want to go to the State’s prison and pick out a good burglar. I shall pick one who is eligible for parole. I’ll want him to be paroled in my charge. In addition to that I shall want a tube of radium from the State hospital. With those two things I’ll undertake the job.”

The Governor regarded him with closely knitted brows.

“You seem to want peculiar things, and you don’t seem to hesitate any in thinking what they are.”

“Those are my terms,” Clint said.

“Oh, take ’em!” exclaimed the Governor, irritably. “My secretary will fix you up with the necessary papers. I’ll sign ’em. Hang it, I’m almost beginning to believe you started that talk about circumstantial evidence just to make me feel uneasy about this case.”

Clint Kale reached for his gloves, drew them on with an air of quiet finality.

“I did,” he smiled.

“You did! I wondered. What was the big idea?”

“I doubt if the woman’s guilty. There are too many facts, and they’re too conclusive. Circumstantial evidence is really mighty poor evidence. The facts don’t lie, but our interpretation of those facts may be wrong. Ever since the beginning of time man has misinterpreted facts. He thought the thunder was the voice of a god. He thought the sun rose in the morning and set at night. The facts were there. Man simply didn’t have enough knowledge to interpret them correctly.

“Now in this present case there are two facts that the jury considered as pointing to the guilt of Jane Thurmond which I consider point to her innocence.”

“Those facts?” rasped the Governor.

“Will be explained later. They’re as evident to you as they are to me. There’s one thing I want understood, though. I’ve got to use my own methods here. You can’t control those.”

“How do you mean, Clint?”

“Well, I’m going into a backwater of life and civilization. I’ve got to use weapons that those people aren’t familiar with. They’ll all team against me right at the jump. I’ll be like that city lawyer that went in there and got massacred in front of a local jury.

“Therefore I’ve got to hit ’em with something they’re not accustomed to. I’ve got to use weapons they don’t understand.”

“Such as?” asked the Governor.

“Such as humor, for one thing, and applied physics and psychology for another. You see, this Jane Thurmond had only lived in the town for eight years. They all regarded her as being a rank outsider.”

The Governor shrugged his shoulder.

“Don’t do anything that’ll connect you with me in any way. Keep this entirely confidential.”

Clint nodded.

“That,” he observed as he edged toward the door, “was one of the wisest remarks you’ve made in a long time. If those chaps put me in the insane asylum, pardon me out.”

And he was gone.

Chapter II The Scientific Detective

The bewildered secretary fixed Clint Kale up with the necessary documents which entitled him to one quarter-inch tube of radium, valued at some five thousand dollars. Also with a letter to the prison board which enabled Clint to check over the records of some half dozen eligible burglars of unquestioned skill.

“I want,” he told the warden, at length, “a man who never smiles. I want a man who looks like an undertaker on duty with indigestion and a toothache. I want a man who can open anything except his mouth.”

The warden nodded.

“You want Boston Blackie,” he said, and pressed a button.

Boston Blackie arrived. He was short, solidly built. His head was covered with a shock of black hair. His ebony eyes glared out from beneath shaggy black brows. His face was covered with black stubble. His mouth was twisted to one side until it seemed to grow entirely out of one cheek.

In his bearing was the surly defiance of one who has found all the resources of existence pitted against him in the battle of life. Permanent pessimism was stamped upon his features.

“Blackie,” said the warden, not unkindly, “this is Mr. Clint Kale, at one time a professor of psychology, a friend of the Governor. He wants a man to do certain things and I have recommended you.”

Boston Blackie favored Clint Kale with a dour appraisal.

“My experiments,” said Kale, “will require that the subject come with me as a servant. The duties will be light. There will be fresh air, sunshine, good food, pleasant work.”

“Ugh huh,” moaned Blackie, “you ain’t lookin’ for me.”

“Why not?”

“No luck ever came my way. It’s all a mistake.”

“On the contrary, I think you’ll do. You will be paroled to my charge, and will, of course, be under my supervision.”

“You mean you’re takin’ me?”

“Yes.”

“It won’t do no good. You’ll get run over by an automobile, or get shot or somethin’. I’ll be back here inside of a week.”

The warden turned to a clerk.

“Arrange to have this prisoner paroled to the custody of Mr. Clint Kale.”

Boston Blackie studied Kale gloomily. His face did not change expression as he heard the words which secured him his liberty.

“We’re drivin’ away from here?” he asked.

“In my car,” Kale assured him.

“Drive careful,” husked Boston Blackie.

The town of Middlevale seethed with hissing whispers of gossip.

A detective had arrived, was staying at the Palace Hotel. The detective was investigating something, some said one thing, some another. Some said he was an income tax detective, come to check over Ezra Hickory’s return for the preceding year. Some said he was working on a new angle of the Sam Pixley murder.

Clint Kale registered at ten thirty in the morning.

By noon he was known by sight to every man, woman and child who was able to walk past the lobby of the hotel.

At twelve thirty a motor truck drew up to the hotel and Kale went out to greet the driver. After a hurried conference the porter was summoned, two loafers were pressed into willing service, and great packages began to slide to the sidewalk, where Clint Kale himself supervised unpacking them.

It took three and one half minutes for the news to reach from one end of Main Street to the other, another two minutes for the crowd to gather.

They goggled open-mouthed at the assortment of machinery.

Clint Kale had secured this machinery by the simple expedient of calling upon certain manufacturers of laboratory and dental equipment, picking up the obsolete models they had traded in on newer equipment. Then he had done the same thing with the manufacturers of dictating machines, had also called at the salvage department of the railroad companies, picking up shipments of various paraphernalia which had been damaged in shipping, refused by the consignee and salvaged by the railroad.

There were obsolete dictating machines in which the motive power was furnished by a tread. There were dental drills which had long ago given up their last vestige of nickel plate. There were X-ray machines whose weak bulbs gave forth weird lighting effects and sputtered hissing sounds of static throughout the surrounding atmosphere. There were obsolete radio sets incapable of tuning in any single station, now that the air was crowded with programs. There were cameras on tripods, old studio cameras, obsolete equipment of all kind.

And, last to be unloaded, was a casket.

Under the direction of Clint Kale, Boston Blackie opened this casket upon the sidewalk. Within was another casket, slightly smaller. That casket was locked.

Clint Kale unlocked that casket, opened it. Boston Blackie disclosed another casket, opened that. Within was a box. There were three padlocks on the box, each requiring a different key.

Clint unlocked them with something of a flourish.

A small lead box came to view.

Clint opened the lead box. Within, carefully resting in an asbestos nest was a very small tube, something like a quarter of an inch in length.

Kale took some forceps from his pocket and lifted the capsule with tender reverence. Then he nodded and smiled at Boston Blackie.

“The radium’s there,” he said.

Boston Blackie frowned at the circle of eager faces which kept narrowing as outer pressure thrust the craning necks into a smaller area.

“Well, it won’t be long,” he prophesied.

Clint Kale turned to his audience, a compact ring of pushing, struggling, seething townspeople.

“That, gentlemen, is a tube of genuine radium, worth exactly ninety-three thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixteen cents — gold!”

And then he proceeded to cover the lead box, to snap the padlocks one at a time, to restore box to casket, casket to casket. When he had finished the task, he turned to the porters.

“Take it all up to my room. Blackie and I will handle the radium.”

There followed a shuffling of steps, the eager hum of voices, and the packing case wreckage was slid to the gutter, eager hands furnished motive power, and the variegated assortment of machinery was carried across the hotel lobby, up one flight of steps, and installed in Kale’s suite.

In the process the two assistants were swelled in number until some thirty volunteers were carrying equipment, all for the reward of one glance at the interior of the mysterious rooms where all this paraphernalia was to be used.

When it had all been finally adjusted to his liking, when X-ray machine was hooked up to obsolete radio. When the loud speaker thundered forth static which was duly recorded upon the wax cylinder of an old time dictating machine, Clint Kale announced himself as satisfied, thanked those who had assisted him, and announced a desire to be left alone that he might “get to work.”

The men shuffled down the stairs, out through the lobby. But they did not leave the vicinity. They milled into little groups, knots of men who talked in low voices. Not since the murder of Sam Pixley had there been quite so much excitement in the little town, and the loafers proposed to see that nothing escaped their observation.

Precisely fifteen minutes after the equipment had been adjusted, there came an imperative knock at the door.

At a word from Kale, Boston Blackie threw it open.

On the threshold stood a pasty-faced chap, an ancient collar around his neck, eager eyes peering from behind thick-rimmed spectacles. In his hand was a notebook.

“I’m Carl Rosamond from the Courier,” he said.

Clint Kale met him with grave courtesy.

“It is a pleasure, Mr. Rosamond. I am not like those detectives who shrink from the press and seek to carry on their work in mystery and seclusion. I am fully aware of the power of the press. I know that they can ferret out any secret, that nothing is obscure to them. Therefore, I have adopted the policy of confiding to the press in the fullest detail. I give them my most confidential plans, my secret findings, my every thought.

“And I only ask of them to treat my confidences with respect. Such as I wish to have published, I release for publication. Such as I wish to remain a secret, I intrust to the honor of the high class gentlemen who comprise the fourth estate.

“Do come in and sit down, my dear chap.”

Carl Rosamond blinked.

“You have questions?” asked Kale.

The reporter pulled out pencil and notebook.

“This stuff?” he asked, waving a soiled hand at the pile of equipment.

“Ah yes,” purred Clint Kale. “I am a detective. There’s no use concealing the fact from your keen eyes, my dear Mr. Rosamond. But I am no mere blundering detective. I am a scientific detective who supplements the fallibility of human judgment by the unerring accuracy of mechanical investigations.”

Boston Blackie coughed.

Carl Rosamond gulped.

“This thing?” he asked, and waved toward the X-ray machine.

“Ah!” exclaimed Clint Kale, and began to talk with the rapidity of a machine gun. “As you are doubtless aware the metaphysicians have long claimed that the human body is encased in a subtle emanation of the life force which has been referred to as the ’aura.’

“For many years their claims were ridiculed by science. But, of more recent years, it has been determined that science was in error. By the use of a certain coal tar product the aura can be seen, even photographed.

“Now, to diverge, for the moment. We originally considered the atom to be the smallest unit of mass. In recent years the atom has been resolved into electrons. We have, therefore, all matter reduced to a series of disembodied negative electrical impulses grouped about a positive, central electrical nucleus of vibratory composition.

“It has even been said that all matter is electrical, vibrational, intangible. It is, in short, but a light whorl, a vortex of vibration in a sea of vibrations.

“And you may well ask how all this is connected with my work. Simply thus. I place a witness before this machine which amplifies the aura. I send that amplification through two stages of radio audition. I record the resulting sound vibration upon a wax cylinder which, in turn, is synchronized with certain questions. At the same time the amplified aura of the witness is subject to the photographic recordation of the ultra violet emanations. The result, my dear Rosamond, is infallible.

“You have my permission to publish that.”

The reporter gulped, asked more questions.

Those questions were answered in a pattern of scientific jargon which contained the nucleus of thought, clothed in an almost impenetrable covering of scientific terminology.

When he had finished, the reporter had the flattering feeling of having been taken into the confidence of a great man. His brain reeled with the stuff he was permitted to publish. His notebook was crammed with misspelled words which he could never afterward decipher, and which wouldn’t have made sense if he could have done so.

He sprinted from the room in time to make the afternoon paper with a brief note of his interview. That interview found headlines across the entire front of the Middlevale Courier. “Scientific detective reduces crime detection to certainty,” read the headlines. There followed much about guilt detectors, lie arrestors, aura, static, vibration, electrons, radium, photography, aura amplification, light vortexes and kindred matters.

Clint Kale read the account and nodded his head with pleasure.

In the meantime the occupants of the hotel had heard the roar of the stuttering sparks, resounding through a loud speaker, the whir of electric motors. The scientific detective was at work. The question was, what was he detecting?

The Courier had been on the streets less than half an hour when important steps thudded their way down the corridor, paused before the door of Kale’s room. There sounded an imperative hammering on the door panels.

Clint Kale signed to Boston Blackie. That individual, through the pessimistic habit of long years in the underworld, stood well to one side as he flung open the door.

The man who blocked the opening was built somewhat the shape of a huge barrel. His great torso, resting on huge hips, was as broad as it was thick. The shoulders were slightly rounded. The neck was a great pillar of fat-incased muscle. A long, walrus mustache swept down from either side of the upper lip. The forehead was low. The eves were a glitter of malevolent concentration.

“What’s comin’ off here?” he demanded.

Clint Kale regarded him with casual indifference. He remained seated in one of the hotel’s uncomfortable chairs, his slippered feet resting on the bed.

“Who the hell wants to know?” he asked, his voice the patronizing drawl with which one addresses a child.

“I do!” shouted the man, and barged across the threshold.

“You would,” agreed Clint Kale, still keeping his posture of relaxed inattention. “And who, may I ask, are you?”

It was Boston Blackie who blurted an answer.

“For God’s sake, boss,” he warned, “can’t you spot ’em?”

The heavy set man turned a glowering glance in the direction of Boston Blackie, then swept his glittering eyes back to Clint Kale.

“I’m Ellery Hatcher, the chief of police in this here town.”

Clint Kale reached for a cigarette.

“Ah, yes, you would be. Pardon me, Mr. Hatcher. But I never work with the local police. I am only called into a community to solve that which has hitherto been unsolved. That means that I am seeking to cover the inefficiency of the local authorities.

“Under the circumstances, I prefer to have no business dealings with them whatever.”

The chief of police took a threatening step forward. Boston Blackie’s hand strayed toward the handle of a hammer which had been used in uncrating the machinery.

“Well, by heck, I got something to say about that!” bellowed the officer. “You can’t come bustin’ into my territory with all these fool contraptions and then try to ignore me. I won’t stand for it.”

Clint Kale slowly removed his slippered feet from the bed, dropped the four legs of the chair to the floor with a thump, and regarded his visitor quizzically.

“Chief,” he said, “are there any speakeasies in town, any places where illegal beverages are dispensed?”

The officer snorted.

“So, you’re a revenue agent, eh?”

“Not at all. I had a purpose in asking the question.”

“The answer is no!” growled Hatcher.

“Ah, yes,” said Kale. “Not being any speakeasies, of course, it follows as a necessary corollary, that you are not receiving any hush money, graft, percentage, rake-off or knock down from such nefarious enterprises.”

The chief sneered.

“So that’s it?”

“Not at all, chief. Not at all. I merely asked the question, because I am now about to demonstrate to you the facility with which my lie detector operates.”

And Clint Kale pressed a button.

The electric lights dimmed. There was a whir of a motor, the sputter of an arc. The ancient X-ray machine sent out a flickering light from the old bulb which had long since ceased to function properly. The radio took up the song and thundered the static from its loud speaker.

Clint Kale took a seat before the dictating machine, worked the treads with his feet, and spoke loudly into the mouthpiece.

“Operator, this is a test of the veracity of Ellery Hatcher, the chief of police of Middlevale. He has just testified that there are no speakeasies in town and that he collects no graft from them.”

Kale gestured with his hand.

“If you’ll just sit in that chair, facing the radio machine, and with your profile to the camera, chief, I shall demonstrate the unfailing accuracy of my equipment.”

But Chief Hatcher refused the proffered chair.

“What the hell’s the idea? I ain’t on no witness stand. I came up here to see what your doin’, an’ I want a report. You an’ me ain’t goin’ to have no fight unless you want to start one. But you gotta cut me in on this, particularly on the publicity.”

“Oh, yes,” observed Clint Kale, “the publicity. I’d forgotten that. Boston Blackie, please see if you can get that reporter chap on the telephone. Young Rosamond, Carl Rosamond. Call the Courier, and if you can’t get him there...”

Chief Hatcher interrupted.

“Don’t call that number. It’s six fifteen. He gets off work about five thirty and eats at the Green Star lunch counter. After that he drops in at the drug store. He’s a little sweet on Betty Gilvray. Tell you what, call Gilvray’s drug store. You don’t need the number, just tell central you want Gilvray’s drug store.”

Boston Blackie put through the call, asked for Carl Rosamond.

“Here he is.”

“Ah, yes, exactly,” remarked Clint Kale as he sauntered to the telephone, took the receiver and drawled a lazy “hello.”

“Good evening, Mr. Rosamond. That was a very nice write-up, ably handled. I have some more publicity for you. Yes, this is Mr. Kale, the detective. Yes. Got your pencil? Good. Get this.

“Chief Hatcher — er, what were the initials again, Mr. Hatcher? — Oh, yes, Chief Ellery Hatcher, of the local police force, denied emphatically that there were any speakeasies in the city, or that he received any graft from the operators of the same. When asked to take the chair in front of the lie detector and repeat that statement he refused...”

There was the sound of swift motion, the pad of heavy feet behind Kale, and that individual hastily slipped the receiver back on the hook, turned to face the irate, rage-distorted features of the chief of police.

“What the devil’s the idea? You poor sap! What do you think you’re trying to do? You try that stuff on me and I’ll break your damned neck. You’re trying to ruin me in my home town. All right, wait and see what happens to you.”

“You wanted publicity,” murmured Clint Kale. “This would make dandy publicity. The metropolitan newspapers would probably copy it...”

With an inarticulate roar, the chief flung past him out of the door.

“I’ll have to kill that copy,” he snorted, “and then I’ll be back! I’ll be back!”

The door banged.

Chapter III Insult Intentional

“He’ll be back,” croaked Boston Blackie lugubriously.

“Think so, really?” asked Clint Kale.

“Think so. I know it. Ever know anything about a rubber hose, boss?”

“They use it to sprinkle gardens with, don’t they?”

“Yeah. And guys like him can work wonders with about a three-foot length of it. He’ll be back. You’ll learn somethin’ about police officers.”

“That’ll be fine. I wonder who our next visitor will be.”

“Maybe the local undertaker. He might get an inside tip, an’—”

He broke off as steps sounded in the hall once more.

These steps contained something of a swaggering strut to their rhythm. They paused before the door. A well-timed knock rat-a-tatted on the panels.

Boston Blackie, in response to a gesture from Kale, eased himself to one side and opened the door.

The man who stood on the threshold had carefully dressed for the part he was to play. There was about him an appreciation of the dramatic, a pose of haughty learning, of contained dignity. He was a man who had carefully planned each step as he went through life, devoting his attention to impressing his fellow men.

He was tall, thin, hatchet-faced. His gray hair had been swept back from the high forehead. The frock coat was an impressive black, emphasizing the high whiteness of the collar, the flowing black tie.

As he stood there at rigid attention he thrust one hand within his vest and spoke in a voice which reverberated through the room in studied eloquence.

“Mr. Clint Kale, the detective?”

Clint bowed.

“And I have the honor of addressing?”

“Thomas Jefferson Train, sir, the district attorney of this county.”

Clint sank back in his chair as though disappointed.

“Oh, shucks!” he exclaimed audibly. “Well, come on in.”

The lawyer stalked with stately dignity into the room, his pale eyes sweeping over the miscellaneous assortment of equipment.

“I read of your advent in the paper, Mr. Kale, and you will appreciate my natural curiosity as to the particular matter which you may have under investigation. It is only natural that I should enjoy your confidence, your complete confidence, your utter confidence, your implicit confidence.”

And the district attorney stalked to a chair, executed a right turn, paused, flipped the tails of his frock coat to either side, and jackknifed himself into a sitting position.

Clint Kale leaned forward.

“You take the Middlevale Courier, may I ask?”

“Certainly, sir. As one in a public position, I deem it my duty to subscribe to each and every paper printed within the confines of my county. The Middlevale Courier is one of the most reliable of the sheets. It has always supported my candidacy for public office.”

“I see. Well, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Train, if you’ll read the columns of the Courier from time to time you’ll enjoy as much of my confidence as I care to make public.”

The lawyer flushed, then thrust a hand within the breast of his coat, assuming an oratorical posture.

“Your attitude, sir, is scarcely that of one who desires to enforce the existing laws and statutes upon our books. I may assure you that nothing more than such an arbitrary, rude and unusual statement is needed to arouse my suspicions. I am to believe, then, that you are in league with the criminal element, anxious to obstruct rather than to expedite, anxious to avoid rather than to enforce law and justice.

“I had even heard a rumor, sir, that you were employed at the behest of that foul murderess, that bloodthirsty Jezebel, Jane Thurmond. I understand that you were trying to upset a just conviction in a court of justice, a conviction that has been affirmed by the highest appellate tribunal in this State.”

Clint Kale put his head in his hands.

“Don’t make me appreciate the depths of my own infamy,” he begged. “Your accusation makes my activities seem illegal.”

Thomas Jefferson Train nodded gravely.

“They are.”

“But suppose the conviction was unjust?”

“She was tried by a jury of her peers.”

“But the two witnesses who swore they saw her at Sam Pixley’s house. Suppose they were lying? Couldn’t I place them upon that chair, in front of my lie detector? Couldn’t I subject them to a scientific test to determine their credibility?”

The district attorney’s long neck pivoted inside his high collar as he gravely shook his head in dignified negation.

“No. That would be reopening a case which I have pronounced closed. I came to advise you of that.”

“And this man, this Ezra Hickory. How of him?”

“A most valuable witness. A client of mine, by the way.”

“A client! I thought you were the peoples’ attorney?”

“I am. But the emoluments of this office in a small county are not sufficient to furnish a satisfactory remuneration for the highest legal talent. It has, therefore, been the policy of the Legislature to allow a district attorney in counties such as these to accept certain outside employment.”

“I see. But suppose one of your clients should commit a crime. Would you feel free to prosecute them?”

“My clients would not commit crimes, sir.”

“Then it would only be necessary for a man to pay you a retainer to secure virtual immunity from prosecution during your term of office?”

“Very emphatically not! I merely remarked that I am careful in choosing my clients. They are not of the criminal class.”

“I see. How about Ezra Hickory?”

“How about him, indeed?”

“That’s all I wanted to know. Do you suppose the fact that you were his private counsel may have influenced his testimony in the murder case? Do you suppose, knowing you were desperately in need of a witness who had seen the defendant near the home of the deceased at around midnight he stretched his imagination a point—”

Thomas Jefferson Train unjack-knifed his tall figure, stood with telescopic rigidity while he frowned portentously.

“Sir! You are insulting me!”

Clint Kale turned to Boston Blackie with a gleeful smile.

“He’s got it, Blackie. He’s got the idea, at last!”

The lawyer covered the distance from chair to door in three long strides.

“You shall suffer for this,” he declaimed, and then he, too, banged the door.

“Oh, Gawd,” moaned Boston Blackie, “they’ll frame a murder rap on us now. Why did I ever get into this mess? I was so happy in my cell compared with what I’nt goin’ to get into! Le’me go back. Tell the warden I violated parole.”

Clint Kale shook his head.

“No, Blackie, I need you. I need your cheerful optimism of character. But I was going to give you a telegram to send. I wouldn’t send it from Middlevale. The town gets gossip around a little too speedily. You’d better hire a car and drive across the county line. Send it from Center City.”

Boston Blackie took the telegram, mournfully put on his hat and coat.

“I’ll probably find you in jail. Maybe they’ll frame something on you that’ll get you lynched. I ain’t got no relatives. But you’d better make a list of your relatives, an’ the address of where you want the body sent. Mail it to your friends and send a copy to the hospital an’ the undertaker.”

And he closed the door with the firm determination of a martyr marching grimly to his doom.

He would, perhaps, have been even more mournful had he known the contents of the message he carried. It was addressed to the warden of the State prison and was as follows:

But Boston Blackie handed the sealed envelope to the telegraph operator in the neighboring city, handed over the bill Kale had given him, received his change, contemplated the advisability of breaking his parole, finally decided against it, and returned to Middlevale.

He found his employer peacefully snoring.

Boston Blackie locked all doors, barricaded the windows, and then sought his own bed. Long into the night he could be heard restlessly tossing and turning.

Morning dawned and found Carl Rosamond, pencil and notebook in hand, waiting in the corridor. As soon as Clint Kale left the room for breakfast the reporter attached himself like a bur.

“You’re in bad,” he cautioned.

Clint Kale nodded.

“Awful bad,” he agreed.

“And then some,” added Rosamond.

“Yes,” groaned Kale, “I’ve lost my radium.”

“What’s that?”

“Yes. My radium. It’s gone. It was worth exactly ninety-three thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixteen cents — gold.”

The reporter stared goggle-eyed.

“I want to put a want ad in your lost and found department, offering one thousand dollars for the return of that tube of radium and no questions asked.”

The reporter’s pencil was busy.

“Good Lord! That won’t be necessary. You’ll get all the space you want. A want ad wouldn’t amount to anything. I’ll smear the story all over the front page. Robbed, you think?”

The gloom upon Clint Kale’s countenance deepened.

“Robbed, I’m afraid,” he said. “It was done so cleverly I didn’t have any idea of it, not until this morning.”

“Gee!” breathed the reporter, his news sense causing him to forget his audience, “what a story! Scientific detective, coming to this city to investigate obscure crime, is robbed first rattle out of the box of a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of radium used in connection with his lie detector! Gee, that’s a wow! I’ll telephone that in to the city newspapers. Gosh, what a story!”

Clint Kale scowled.

“That wouldn’t be very good advertisement for me, would it?”

The reporter shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s news, an’ we gotta print the news.”

“Of course.”

“Have you any theories?”

“No. Only I shall recover the radium. The reward will do it. It’s of no commercial value. Only hospitals and lie detectors, scientific laboratories and certain limited manufacturers are in the market for radium. It will be returned. I’ll be out the reward. That’s all.”

The reporter nodded.

“I think I’ll get off an extra,” he said.

“Yes, yes, do so. My scientific apparatus is greatly curtailed in efficiency as long as the radium is missing. Be sure to state that I think it is merely lost, or that, if it was stolen, it will be thrown away by the thief in order to escape detection. Discount the theory of theft.”

The reporter hesitated a moment.

“I shall report the facts,” he said, and walked away.

Clint Kale sidled up to the lunch counter in the gloomy restaurant. The odor of stale grease was a rancid insult to the nostrils. The place was blue with the by-products of cooking.

The tired-eyed girl smeared a bare arm over a perspiring forehead.

“We got ham an’ eggs or steak. Which’ll you have?”

Clint Kale picked ham and eggs.

A shadow fell over the counter. He looked back and up. Ellery Hatcher, the chief of police, was grinning down at him, and the grin was triumphant.

“Hear you lost somethin’.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you won’t be so highhat now.”

“I fail to follow your reasoning.”

“Haw, haw, haw, the big detective! Comes to town to show us guys up, an’ what happens? Gets held up and a million dollars of radium stolen. Haw, haw, haw.”

Clint looked around apprehensively.

“Not so loud.”

Chief Hatcher raised his voice.

“And it takes the local police to come to the rescue. You got a crook workin’ for you, an’ we have to tell you that. He’s Boston Blackie, a parole, and the big house wants the dope on him. I wired in a report this mornin’. They’ll likely wire me back to pick him up.”

Clint straightened, dropped knife and fork clattering to the lunch counter.

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I knew ’m the minute I clapped eyes on him. But I sent in a wire to find out if they still wanted him. They sent me his picture and finger-print classifications, and told me to report in detail. Haw, haw, haw!”

“But,” protested Clint, “how could you know?”

“Oh, we know,” boasted Chief Hatcher, swinging his triumphant glance to include the circle of gawking faces which had assembled as by magic. “Us country police ain’t boobs. We know our way about — even if we don’t donate no million dollars’ worth of radium to crooks. Haw, haw, haw!”

Clint Kale seemed to have lost his appetite. He paid for his check, clapped his hat on his head and sprinted for the hotel. Nor did he emerge from his room the entire day.

Chapter IV “What About the Reward?”

At night Boston Blackie, carefully coached in the part he was to play, moaning dire calamity to come, slipped from the back entrance and made his way to the home of Ezra Hickory. He was the unwilling custodian of the radium.

“I want your help,” he husked.

Ezra Hickory, a wrinkled specimen of hardened manhood, fastened cold eyes upon the man.

“You’re a convict,” he rasped. Boston Blackie started.

“You know that?”

“Sure.”

Boston Blackie groaned.

“That’s the tough part of it. I am. And the boss lost a tube of radium. It spilled out. I happened to find it. There’s a reward offered for it. But, if I should say I found it they’d bring up my criminal record and I not only wouldn’t get no reward, I’d get put back in the big house with another sentence hung on me.

“Now I was figuring that you’re an old-established citizen here, and you’re a client of the district attorney. Maybe if you was to find this here radium there wouldn’t be nothing said. You’d collect the reward and then we could go fifty-fifty.”

Ezra Hickory glanced up and down the dark lane which led to his secluded dwelling. Frogs were booming in various cadences. A whippoorwill whistled his mournful note. An owl hooted from the telephone post at the corner of the driveway. Everywhere were evidences of isolation.

“Come in here where there’s light,” he invited.

Boston Blackie entered the hallway, produced a golden capsule from his pocket.

“How much is she worth?” asked Ezra.

“Pretty near a hundred thousand dollars, even money.”

“How much is the reward?”

“The boss offered a thousand. He’d pay ten if he had to.”

Ezra wrinkled his brow shrewdly.

“Any way of identifying this here bit of radium as belonging to Clint Kale?”

“None whatever.”

“Humph,” murmured Ezra.

“You an’ me, fifty-fifty on the reward,” said Boston Blackie.

Ezra extended his hand.

“Give it to me,” he said.

Boston Blackie passed it over.

“You gotta put it some place. You can’t carry it for no length of time. It’ll burn the skin. That’s what they use it for, burnin’ out cancer and such stuff.”

Ezra Hickory regarded the small capsule, then his face stiffened in decision.

“You wait right here,” he said. “Don’t move.”

And he glided out of the hallway, into the house, as furtively as a shadow.

Ten minutes later he was back.

“The chief o’ police is lookin’ for you. He’s got authorization from the penitentiary to pick you up as a parole violator. And the district attorney is aiming to frame a crime on you because your boss was highhat to him. You better do somethin’.”

Boston Blackie collapsed on the stoop.

“Oh, my God!” he moaned. “As bad as that!”

“Worse,” croaked Ezra Hickory.

“Gee, what’ll I do?”

“I’m goin’ to help you. I’ll put you in my machine an’ you can get to the State line. We’ll get there in a couple of hours. I’ll give you money to get away with. You better keep movin’.”

“How about my half of the reward?” asked Boston Blackie.

“What reward?”

“For the radium I gave you, of course.”

“You didn’t give me no radium,” said Ezra Hickory.

“The hell I didn’t!”

“The hell you didn’t. Do you want a lift to the State line and money to get away on, or do you want me to call the chief an’ tell him I found you prowlin’ around the house?”

And Ezra Hickory produced a big revolver, levelled it at the whimpering figure of Boston Blackie.

“I want a lift to the State line,” said Boston Blackie. “How much get-away money do I get?”

“Enough. I don’t want to have ’em catch you.”

“You won’t get into no trouble?” asked Boston Blackie.

“Heh, heh, heh,” chuckled Ezra Hickory, “the district attorney’s my private, personal lawyer. Heh, heh, heh!”

They went to the garage. The light flivver roared into activity and jolted away into the darkness.

Minutes passed. The frogs failed to resume their chorus. The owl had ceased to hoot. The whippoorwill had faded into the night.

A furtive shadow glided along the driveway, inserted a skeleton key in the front door, and entered the house. The shadow became a figure of a man carrying a heavy bag. The bag was opened, a flash light taken out, also a glass jar.

The light of the flash disclosed the features of Clint Kale.

He took the glass jar, a curious contrivance which contained an insulated rod. On the top of the rod was a button. At the lower end of the rod, safely incased in the glass, were bits of gold leaf, hanging limply.

Clint Kale took an ebonite rod, rubbed it briskly, waved it over the metal button. After an interval he touched the button with his finger, withdrew the rod.

The bits of gold leaf, attached to the end of the insulated rod flew apart, remained rigidly erect, each repelling the other.

Clint Kale had created an electroscope. The bits of gold leaf, each being charged with a similar kind of static electricity, repelled each other. Yet let them come in contact with a field of electrical energy, the charges would be dispelled and the leaf would collapse.

Holding the electroscope in his left hand, nestled in a specially constructed holder, Clint Kale moved about the house, holding the electroscope near the walls, sliding it over the floor, pushing it up to within a short distance of the ceiling.

Room by room he went through the place.

In the cellar he slid the electroscope past a section of what appeared to be solid concrete. Of a sudden the leaves of the instrument collapsed.

Clint marked the place. Then he again separated the gold leaf and began a series of experiments. When he had finished, he had a certain section of wall carefully marked.

He gave that section careful attention.

Its secret was disclosed only after microscopic examination. The section of wall had been so cunningly fitted that it was almost impossible to notice the lines which marked the junction of the removable section and the rest of the wall.

Clint Kale removed the section.

There was disclosed a hidden recess. In that recess was the tube of radium, also certain other papers and documents, a great pile of currency.

Clint went back upstairs, got out a camera and tripod from the bag he had brought to the house with him and got to work.

He made a double exposure on the plate. One exposure was of the opened recess with its papers, its currency, its radium. The other exposure was from the same place, but with the section of wall back in place.

The plate, when developed, would give the X-ray effect of a solid wall behind which would be visible the documents, the money, the radium capsule.

Clint exposed another plate in the same manner.

Then he carefully packed up all his belongings and left the house as furtively as he had entered.

Chapter V Trick Photography

It was well toward noon when the thump of many steps sounded in the corridor of the Palace Hotel. Heavy knuckles sounded imperatively upon the wooden panel.

Clint Kale opened the door.

The solemn-faced delegation greeted him with elaborate formality. There was Chief Ellery Hatcher. There was Carl Rosamond, the reporter of the Courier. There was Thomas Jefferson Train, and there was the wizened form of the astute Ezra Hickory.

“Mr. Kale,” said the chief, “this here is Ezra Hickory.”

Clint Kale bowed.

“A client of mine,” hastily interposed the district attorney, “and I’ll do the talking — all of it, for my client, of course.”

“You are now speaking in your private capacity?” asked Clint Kale.

“Certainly,” snapped the district attorney.

“Where’s Boston Blackie?” smirked the chief.

Clint Kale spread his hands, palms out, in a deprecatory gesture.

“Gone.”

“Skipped,” said the chief.

Clint shrugged.

Thomas Jefferson Train cleared his throat.

“You lost a capsule of radium?”

“Yes.”

“That is very valuable?”

“Very.”

“You advertised, offering a reward and no questions asked?”

“Not exactly. I wanted to, but Rosamond advised against it. Therefore no formal offer of reward was ever made.”

The district attorney’s face twitched.

“You can’t get around it by no such technicality,” he said. “My client found that radium, or some radium.”

He gestured to Ezra Hickory. That individual took from his pocket a package. The package was undone. A gold capsule fell to the table.

“That’s it!” yelled Clint, and swooped toward the capsule.

Chief Hatcher’s hairy paw snapped down upon his wrist.

“No, ye don’t,” said the chief.

“You’ll have to identify it as yours first,” said the district attorney.

“But of course it’s mine. How else would any radium get to this community? Why not have your client tell how he got it?”

“That,” said Train, with dignity, “will come later. For the present we are inquiring into your title. The thing that makes me more suspicious than anything else is the small amount of the reward offered. According to your own declaration this radium is worth approximately one hundred thousand dollars. Yet the reward you offer is but a paltry thousand. That, in itself, is enough to indicate that it is not the same radium.

“As district attorney I could not allow this radium to be turned over to you until the circumstances convinced me it was the same radium.”

“Speaking officially?” asked Clint.

“Speaking officially!” rasped the district attorney.

“If the reward were increased it would convince you?”

“Yes.”

“Speaking officially?”

“Speaking officially!”

“Your client would get that reward?”

“Naturally.”

“And you would collect a percentage?”

“Of course.”

“Officially?”

“No, sir, speaking privately now, in my capacity of private attorney.”

Clint Kale rubbed a hand over the angle of his jaw.

“You seem to have me sort of sewed up!”

The lawyer said nothing.

Ezra Hickory’s features softened into a half smile.

The chief of police snickered audibly.

“What reward would you suggest?”

“As district attorney I should say a reward of ten thousand dollars would prove that you really felt the radium was yours.”

“Speaking officially?”

“Yes!”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“My client would be willing to accept it in full as a reward.”

“Speaking privately now, Mr. Train, I take it.”

“Speaking privately, sir.”

Clint sighed.

“Guess I’m hooked,” he admitted. “But first I’ll have to make certain scientific tests to determine that this is really the radium.”

“You have my permission.”

“Officially?”

“Both official and private. The chief will keep an eye on you and see there’s no funny business.”

Clint picked the capsule up with a pair of forceps, weighed it carefully, noted the weight.

“I shall require a bit of blued steel to rub it over,” he said.

“Blued steel?”

“Yes.”

The chief of police tugged at his holster, produced a six-shooter.

“Ah! Thank you, chief. Set it down there, right by Mr. Hickory, if you will. That’s fine. Now watch the barrel.”

He took the forceps, ran the capsule over the steel.

“Leave it there for a moment or two and see if the oxidation brings out any apparent change in the barrel. Now, one more thing. I have to tell where this radium was stored while it was absent from me. If radium is stored for any length of time in an electrical field it tends to lose its energy.

“However, fortunately, radium is sufficiently active to impress a photographic plate with its environment. Let me place the capsule between two plate holders. Fine. Now we’ll put them in this developing box, put on the top, pour developer in the opening. Now there’s nothing else to do while we wait for the plates to develop.

“Tell me, since we’re all here, gentlemen, how about that Sam Pixley case?”

“That what you came down here to investigate?” asked Chief Hatcher.

“Yes. I might as well admit it. It is.”

“The case is closed,” said the district attorney.

Ezra Hickory said nothing.

“I always felt,” said Clint Kale, speaking in a reflective monotone, “that the woman wasn’t guilty. Her testimony is too utterly incredible to have been fabricated, the telephone call to go see Pixley, the finding of the package of currency in the exact amount required to pay off the mortgage. Only a fool would have told such a story if it were the truth. Not even a fool would have made up such a yarn as a lie.

“But there were no finger-prints on the job. That indicates mental shrewdness. But, most convincing of all, the shares of stock in a worthless company were left untouched. But only a few of the older inhabitants knew that this stock was worthless. Mrs. Thurmond had only lived here eight years. The history of that stock goes back farther than that.”

Clint ceased speaking, smiled around him.

“I think the plates have developed. We will now pour off the developer and put in the hypo to fix them.”

He walked to the wash bowl, poured off liquid, washed the plates, poured off the washing water, poured hypo through the light-proof opening that was placed in the top of the developing box.

Then he returned to his chair.

“I have carefully examined the transcript,” he said. “It seems to me that the testimony of Ezra Hickory was the determining factor in the conviction.”

Ezra Hickory squirmed in his chair.

“I have long wanted to talk with Mr. Hickory, to get him to face my lie detector.”

Thomas Jefferson Train cleared his throat with a metallic rattle.

“You’ll settle this matter of the reward first,” he rasped.

“Betcha life,” growled Chief Hatcher.

“I’ll tell my story anywhere!” snapped Ezra Hickory, glancing around him with some visible apprehension as he took in the various equipment of the place.

“Fine,” agreed Clint, and took the top off the developing box. “We can now inspect the plates.”

They were perfect exposures.

“Look here,” said Clint, draining one and holding it to the light. “You can see where this radium was stored the last few hours. There’s a wall. But the radio rays go right through the wall and give a perfect photograph of the interior. There are some stocks, and some currency. Look! You can even see the names on the stocks, the numbers of the shares— Let’s see. There’s a name. There’s a number. There’s a date. Stock in the — no, it’s bonds — bonds in the Hanover Irrigation District. And here are some diamonds — most interesting. One has only to seek such a wall—”

There was a flourish of motion.

Ezra Hickory had snatched the blued steel six-shooter from the desk.

“Hands up!” he yelled.

His hearers stared at him with wide eyes.

The little man, brandishing the weapon, scuttled for the bathroom, went through it to the communicating room, opened the hall doorway.

A State officer was posted at the end of the corridor.

Ezra Hickory didn’t hesitate. He raised the weapon to his temple.

There was the roar of an explosion, the sound of a limp body thudding to the floor.

He was dying as they reached him.

He rattled out a confession as they took him to the ambulance. He died as he reached the hospital.

Chapter VI He Got His Reward

Governor Kendall frowned over the desk at the dapper figure that lounged in the chair across from him. On the desk was the signed pardon which liberated Jane Thurmond. Also on the desk were copies of the Middlevale Courier.

The Governor indicated those copies with a wave of his hand.

“I don’t like your methods,” he said.

“What’s wrong with them? I told you I’d have to be more or less unconventional. That paraphernalia was just a stage setting.”

“Oh, it isn’t that. It’s the casual manner in which you made it possible for Ezra Hickory to shoot himself. In fact, you fixed it so he couldn’t do much else.”

“Oh, that,” remarked Clint Kale, with a shrug. “It was, after all, only a matter of reward. Ezra wanted his just reward. He came with his attorney to collect it. He got it.”

“Humph,” shrugged the executive. “How long had you known he was guilty?”

“Some time. The newspaper reports showed he must be. The woman didn’t have enough mentality to guard against finger-prints, not if she was as foolish about the rest of the facts as she seemed. And, in any event, she wouldn’t have known the worthless nature of the American Carbonator stock.”

The Governor sighed.

“And you staged that elaborate third degree with the idea Ezra Hickory would save the State the expense of his trial.”

Clint shrugged.

“It would have embarrassed the district attorney to have had to prosecute Ezra. He might have been half-hearted about it. And Ezra would have been shrewd enough to get a local lawyer.

“No. He was there to collect his reward. He got it.”

The Governor slammed the blotter down upon the signed pardon.

“Get out of here,” he said, “and let me think just what I’m going to tell the newspaper reporters.”