Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol.69, No. 5, August 13, 1932

O’Hara things he has his man at last — and then a woman’s scream tells him the killer has struck once more.

Cynthia Simpson, desk clerk in the Sippiconsett House, Siasconset, Nantucket Island, falls in a bad fog close to a house in which a “John Smith” is supposed to be hiding. She is helped by a young man whom she does not see.

That night “John Smith” is murdered, and his face so beaten that he is unrecognizable.

His three servants have completely vanished.

Next day Cynthia is astounded when a young man registers at the hotel, signs himself John Smith — and she recognizes him from his voice as the man she had met in the fog near the murdered man’s house.

Dan O’Hara, a state detective, is on the case. He is called at night to the house of a Mrs. Conlin, whose husband has disappeared.

O’Hara thinks the murdered man may be Conlin. The dead man’s three servants have been found — dead also, at the bottom of a pool. The four bodies have been taken to an undertaking establishment. O’Hara goes to check up his guess that the murdered “Smith” is Conlin — and finds the body gone.

Mrs. Conlin comes to the Sippiconsett House and meets the “John Smith” registered there — really Jack Billings, former football star, tried and acquitted for a murder in Chicago several years before. It was Mrs. Conlin’s former husband whom Billings was accused of murdering. Billings charges Mrs. Conlin with that murder, in collaboration with her present husband, Conlin.

Chapter XII The Trail of R. J. Conlin

Arriving in New Bedford shortly after noon, state officer O’Hara went first to police headquarters, where he was well and favorably known, and sat down with Chief of Police Flynn. He told him in full detail everything which had happened in Nantucket, including his theory regarding R. J. Conlin — the theory which had been blasted by the discovery that Conlin had arrived in New Bedford with a blond woman some hours after Dan had calculated that he had been murdered and mutilated. Dan admitted he still clung to the hope that it was a false Conlin who had passed Thursday night at the New Bedford Hotel.

The police chief, who was a little gray man with sharp, foxy eyes, a pointed nose and a wisp of a gray mustache, chewed reflectively upon an unlighted cigar for several minutes before he expressed an opinion.

“The Nantucket call, at six Friday morning,” he said, “was made from a drug store opposite the New Bedford Hotel. The clerk on duty remembers the woman. She was above medium height. She wore a gray coat with a collar turned up and a straw hat with a brim on it so he didn’t get a good look at her face. He thinks her hair was either blond or brown — he is sure it wasn’t black. He only remembers her because he had just opened up and was rather surprised to have a woman patron so early.

“Looks as though she might have come across from the hotel,” said Dan hopefully. “I got a photograph of Conlin. Somebody in the hotel, the clerk or one of the bellboys or a chambermaid ought to remember what the man looked like, and maybe someone got a good look at the dame. What time did they check in?”

“Between twelve and one,” replied the chief. “They gave New York as their address. Want me to stroll down there with you?”

“Don’t bother, chief,” replied O’Hara. “I can do this job myself. What do you make out of this mess?”

“Well, it’s a sure thing that the face was smashed in to prevent identification of the victim. It was hoped he would pass for John Smith. They fell down in not showing a John Smith in ’Sconset who would be the same coloring and height and weight as the man they intended to murder. If they had done that, you’d have made a few inquiries, you’d have got no line on the past and associations of this Smith and it would have gone into history as an unsolved mystery. Another mistake was killing the servants and leaving the bodies where they could be found. If he had a plane and they were going to escape in it, he could have killed them when over the ocean and dropped them overboard.

“Then it would be assumed that Smith was killed and robbed by the servants. Of course it would take a big plane able to carry four of five passengers and crew, and such planes are hard to get.

“Crooks can get hold of a two-seater easy enough, but a bigger plane could be traced. Probably kidded the servants that he would carry them away by air and, not being able to make good, this murderer bumped them off. Cold blooded cuss.”

“And he came back and carried off the dead body. Don’t forget that.”

“Yeah. Wonder if he knew you might think the corpse was Conlin?”

Dan shook his head. “Pretty far fetched. I never thought it myself until I had left the Conlin house. In half an hour after that I was at the undertaking rooms.”

“It sure is a puzzle,” said Chief Flynn. “Look here, a man who had a wife on Nantucket and faked an excuse to go to New York so he could meet another woman, wouldn’t be fool enough to go to a hotel right at the end of the Nantucket boat line and sign his own name on a hotel register. Of course it’s a crime in this state to sign a fake name, but nobody pays any attention to the law, and a big business man like Conlin would be the last to bother about that.”

Dan nodded. “That’s why I came over,” he stated.

“They want to establish as a fact that Conlin left Nantucket,” said Flynn excitedly. “He certainly went on the bus to the boat landing, unless this bus driver is lying.”

“No. He don’t know enough to lie.”

“But it doesn’t follow that he took the boat. He could have been nabbed before he went on board the steamer and taken back to ’Sconset. A fake message from his wife might do it.”

“And I thought of that,” declared Dan.

“So, in case of inquiry, they registered at the hotel here. It’s going to be damned hard to prove that he didn’t leave Nantucket, Dan.”

“Unless his wife swears the signature on the register is a forgery and unless the hotel people testify that the R. J. Conlin who registered there doesn’t look like the photograph.”

“If this is a frame, they would have a fellow who bears a general resemblance to Conlin and they would be familiar with his signature and make a fair forgery.”

“They made a couple of mistakes,” replied O’Hara. “Maybe they made another at the hotel here.”

“If they didn’t, you can’t ever prove that Conlin was murdered in ’Sconset. There is apparently conclusive evidence that he was in New Bedford many hours after the killing of Smith. Since the corpse has disappeared, you can’t possibly establish his identity with that of Conlin. That notion that there is a slight protuberance of the ears of both Conlin and Smith doesn’t go far enough.”

“And suppose Conlin is never heard of again?”

“Well, you have got a plausible theory, which isn’t evidence. You know that.”

Dan nodded. “O.K.,” he said. “There wasn’t any Smith, so it must have been Conlin that was killed.”

A sergeant knocked at the chief’s door and entered.

“A New York telegram for Mr. O’Hara, relayed from Nantucket,” he said. “Here you are, Mr. O’Hara.”

Dan tore it open with thick fingers, ran his eye over the contents and grinned wryly.

“Either I’m a sucker or they’re smarter than I gave ’em credit for,” he said. “It’s from New York police headquarters. ‘Man named R. J. Conlin put up Friday night at the Hotel Pennsylvania,’ he read. ‘Signature card has been shown to Miss Duncan, Conlin’s secretary, who says it looks like his writing. He was unaccompanied.’ ”

“Heigh ho,” said Flynn. “Dan, you better go back to Nantucket and find somebody else that has disappeared.”

O’Hara looked stubborn.

“No,” he said. “It all fits too nice. He’s got a house in New York and a regular hotel where he always stays and where he is known. I forgot to ask his wife which it is because it didn’t seem important at the time. Instead he goes to one of the largest hotels in the world, where everything runs almost by machinery. No clerk or bellboy will remember what he looks like. Conlin is a common name so the hotel people wouldn’t take interest in him because he was a big banker. And it would be a swell hide-out if he had a jane with him, but he was alone. So I just don’t believe it.”

“Unless you can prove different it means that Conlin will be assumed to have been alive twenty-four hours after the killing in ’Sconset. And his disappearance, if he has disappeared, begins when he left the Pennsylvania.”

“You’re so damn right I’d like to sock you,” said O’Hara, grinning. “I’m going up to the New Bedford Hotel and then I’ll hop a train for New York.”

“You say yourself you can’t check up anything at the Hotel Pennsylvania.”

“I’m going to try and then I’m going to go into one of them newspaper morgues over there and find out everything that was published about R. J. Conlin.”

“Meantime whoever stole that body is roaming round Nantucket Island.”

“Can’t help it. Either that’s the body of R. J. Conlin or—”

“Yeah?”

“Or there was a Smith, and R. J. Conlin killed him and laid out this swell alibi for himself.”

The chief laughed heartily. “Never can tell by appearances,” he declared. “Why, Dan, you got a great imagination. You ought to be one of these detective fiction writers.”

“Them? They ain’t got no imagination,” replied O’Hara, unperturbed. “See you sometime, chief. Dig me up this Mrs. Conlin of the New Bedford Hotel while I’m gone, will you?”

“We’ll try to trace her. I forgot to tell you that the pair checked out of the hotel at eight Friday morning and went off in a sedan. Nobody noticed the license number.”

“Much obliged. So long, chief.”

Chapter XIII O’Hara Learns Things

Conlin and Company was a firm of investment brokers on lower Broadway. It had been a conservative house which had come successfully through the panic and preserved an appearance of prosperity through the three years of sagging security markets. It still occupied large and ornate offices, and only one familiar with the appearance of these offices in boom days would realize that there were only one third as many employees about the place.

On Monday morning after the Thursday night when R. J. Conlin left his home in ’Sconset there was a conference in the directors’ room of Conlin and Company, was presided over by William H. Good, junior partner, and attended by two young men who were, in theory, partners, though their interest in the profits were negligible. There was present the first auditor and a high official of the Stock Exchange.

“I wired Conlin on Thursday that the Republic of Paragonia had repudiated its bonds,” stated Mr. Good, “and that we would go under unless he could find a way to prevent it. He failed to put in an appearance on Friday. On Saturday, as you know, the papers carried the story of his disappearance, which they elaborated on Sunday.

“In times like these a scandal is fatal. I knew by the demands from clients up to closing time Saturday that we would be swamped by this morning. I am afraid that Conlin, who handled our Paragonian interests exclusively, was aware of the situation a week ago and laid his plans. I regret, gentlemen, to state that this firm appears to be insolvent and we shall have to make an assignment.

“I have been connected with the firm for twenty years. I am losing my personal fortune in the crash.” He stopped because his voice had broken, and he blew his nose in order to cover his emotion with a display of white linen handkerchief.

“How much did Conlin steal?” asked one of the very junior partners angrily.

“So far as I am able to discover his accounts are in good shape,” replied the auditor. “Our error was in underwriting the issue of Paragonian bonds. We might have scratched through their repudiation had the head of the firm been on the job, but his disappearance alarmed all our clients. There is no doubt that Conlin and Co. must go into a receiver’s hands.”

“You can bet he feathered his own nest,” said the second very junior partner.

“It is possible that our chief has met with foul play,” protested the acting head of the firm.

“Boloney,” commented the first very junior partner.

“He either flew the coop or committed suicide,” declared his colleague.

“In any event, sir,” stated Mr. Good to the official of the Stock Exchange, “I am filing a voluntary petition in bankruptcy.”

The Stock Exchange man nodded sympathetically. “We might have helped you out as we have helped out so many good houses in this trying period,” he said, “but the scandal of Conlin’s disappearance makes it impossible. He has a wife in Nantucket, but he turned up in New Bedford with a woman whom he registered as his wife. He slipped into New York and went to the Pennsylvania Hotel without communicating with this office, though he knew the seriousness of the situation. We can’t do anything for Conlin and Company, Mr. Good.”

“I didn’t suppose you could,” answered Mr. Good with a sigh. “That is all, gentlemen.”

The meeting broke up just as a solidly built, granite-faced, slovenly dressed man entered the outer office and asked for one of the partners.

“Please state your business,” said the smart information clerk superciliously.

The visitor produced a slightly greasy card which stated that its bearer was Daniel O’Hara of the Massachusetts State Police.

“In connection with the disappearance of Mr. Conlin,” he added.

“I’ll find out if Mr. Good will see you,” she replied.

A moment later she conducted Dan O’Hara into a perfectly appointed office where a gray-haired man with a clean shaven, pink face and faultless attire was seated.

“What can I do for you, Mr. O’Hara?” asked the junior partner of Conlin and Company politely but without much interest.

“I’d like to get a line on Mr. Conlin, sir,” replied the detective. “I’m trying to find out if he had any enemies that might have put him on the spot.”

“You think he has been killed?”

“Well, I’ve got kind of a hunch that he has, sir.”

“I disagree with you. In my opinion his disappearance is voluntary. This firm has gone into a receiver’s hands, Mr. O’Hara.”

“Oh, ho! He swiped the assets, eh?”

“I have no reason to suppose so, but knowing our financial condition, I think he lacked courage to face the music.”

Dan scratched his head in perplexity. Having accepted the general impression that Conlin was a man of great wealth, it had not occurred to him that the banker’s disappearance might be due to money trouble.

“It is possible that he committed suicide,” added Good.

Dan shook his head. “He has either been murdered or he is still alive,” he replied. “If he left Nantucket Island at all he came to New York and was at the Pennsylvania on Friday night.”

“But we know he left Nantucket. The Saturday papers traced him to the Hotel Pennsylvania.”

“There was a name on a register,” replied Dan. He dug an envelope from his pocket and produced a tracing.

“Is this his signature?” he demanded.

Good looked at the slip of tissue. “It seems to be,” he replied. “It is a little more legibly written than his usual signature, but I supposed he wanted them to get his name right in case of phone calls.”

Dan looked disappointed. “Just the same I’d like to find out about him.”

“I can refer you to the volume entitled ‘Men Who Have Made New York,’ ” replied Good. “You may go into our library and read the article about Mr. Conlin.”

Dan grinned. “That won’t help me much. I want to find out who he done dirt to that might have scragged him.”

Good stiffened. “Mr. Conlin was a just, fair man who never injured anybody,” he replied haughtily.

“That’s what the preacher would say at the funeral services. I want the low down.”

“Well,” replied Good. “I am not feeling very well, sir, and this conversation affects me disagreeably. I’ll refer you to his secretary, Miss June Duncan, who knows more about his private affairs than I.”

A moment later Dan was in the presence of a reasonably good looking young woman who wore glasses and a prim expression. His efforts to become confidential with her were received glacially. Evidently she respected her employer highly and proposed to divulge no secrets. He learned that Mr. Conlin was a man of impeccable life who belonged to all the best clubs and who was most happily married.

“What was his wife’s name before she was married?” he inquired.

“I’m sorry. I never heard it. I have only been with Mr. Conlin two years.”

Shaking the dust, figuratively speaking, of Conlin and Company from his shoes, Dan took a taxi to the editorial rooms of a sensational afternoon newspaper. His card admitted him at once to the presence of the city editor, a nervous, bespectacled, old young man who gazed at him hopefully.

“What can we do for the Massachusetts State Police?” he demanded.

“I’d like to look through your obituary envelope about this R. J. Conlin,” he said.

“Ah!” exclaimed the city editor. “The absconding broker!”

“I ain’t heard he absconded. He disappeared from Nantucket Island and his wife suspected foul play. I come over to get a line on him.”

“Didn’t you read our paper on Sunday? He vamoosed with a blonde. I’d be much obliged if you would give me the name and picture of the blonde, Mr. O’Hara.”

Dan chuckled. “I could use that blonde myself. How about a look-see at the envelope, eh?”

“I’ll send for it and you can look it over right here. And if you find anything we have overlooked — did you read our story yesterday?”

“I’m a Republican and I don’t very often read Democratic papers,” stated O’Hara.

The city editor sent a boy for a Sunday paper, opened it and showed Dan a story on the third page which was headed by a picture of Conlin and of Mrs. Conlin. As the shaky condition of Conlin and Co. was not known to the newspapers on Saturday when the story was concocted out of an item from the police headquarters reporter, it was cautiously written and only intimated that, while Mrs. Conlin, in Nantucket, was broadcasting her fear of foul play, the gay broker was traveling with another woman.

“What’s this Mrs. Conlin’s maiden name?” asked the detective.

“Stella Crane,” replied the city editor. “A widow when she married him, I believe.”

“Got an envelope on her?”

“No. We don’t bother much about the wives of business men.”

“Well, this lady was on the stage before she was married. She told me she was in one of those Ziegfeld Follies.”

“Wow!” exclaimed the city editor. “I’ll slay that rewrite man.”

“What’s eating you?”

The city editor laughed. “We can usually get a swell story on an ex-Follies girl. Of course Crane wasn’t her stage name; that was the name of her first husband. Hey, Jones, run into the dramatic editor’s room and drag him out, will you? Stick around, Mister Detective, you’re a positive inspiration.”

In a few minutes there appeared a bald-headed man with nose glasses which were connected to his right ear by a broad band of black ribbon.

“Take a look at this gal,” requested the city editor, “and tell me who she used to be.”

The dramatic editor looked at the newspaper picture and grinned. “What’s the matter with your own eyes?” he demanded. “That’s Stella Starr who was mixed up in a breach of promise suit against somebody big ten years ago. You’re a hell of a city editor.”

“You see, her name when she married Conlin was Crane. That’s why we didn’t identify her.”

“Crane. Now what does that remind me of! Good Lord, she married James Crane of Chicago. He was murdered by some fellow who got all heated up because he gave Stella a black eye — a big football star did it and Stella went on the witness stand and wept an acquittal out of the jury.”

“Wow!” repeated the city editor. “Dickson, you’re my darling! I remember, and the big football star was… was—”

“Guy by the name of Jack Billings,” supplied Dan O’Hara.

The city editor emitted a howl like a wolf who was very hungry. The outcry did not attract the slightest attention in the busy city room, whose occupants seemed to be accustomed to outbursts of temperament by the city editor.

The dramatic editor turned to the detective and grinned sardonically.

“Trouble with this rag,” he said, “is that they take ignorant reporters and make them city editors and they fire them before they’ve been on the job long enough to learn anything. An old-time city editor could have told the history of that vampire by one look at her picture. Can I be of further service?”

“Sure,” replied the city editor unaggrieved. “Go through your files and dig out all the photos you’ve got of her. The less clothes she has on the more our readers will enjoy seeing her. Much obliged, O’Hara.”

“Don’t mention it,” answered Dan. “Now, how would you be having this murder case filed away?”

“Under the name of the defendant,” said the editor. “I’ll dig it right out. Jones, see what they have in the morgue files concerning John or Jack Billings.”

A very fat envelope was produced in a couple of minutes and Olsen dragged out the contents and strewed them over his desk, making funny little moans which, with him, indicated the acme of mental enjoyment.

“Boy, what a follow-up on the Conlin story!” he declared. “And no other rag in town has an idea that this broker’s wife was the woman in the Billings murder case. Oh, me, oh, my, I can’t understand why it didn’t break when Conlin married her. I guess the old boy covered everything up neatly. There was only a paragraph about his marriage in his envelope, and not a word about who the dame was.”

As soon as the city editor had run his eye over a clipping, Dan took it and read it slowly and methodically.

By the time Dan had gone through the clippings, the city editor had finished dictating a long and lurid story to two rewrite men and was poring over five or six gorgeous pictures of Stella Starr as she had been in her early twenties, sent in by the dramatic editor.

Unlike Olsen, Dan had read every word of the clippings in the envelope and it had taken him an hour and a half. What perplexed him was that the name of R. J. Conlin did not occur once in the mass of material dealing with the Billings case.

When he rose to depart, Olsen shook him gratefully by the hand, assured him of his everlasting esteem and invited him to come in any time. If he had known the story which Dan O’Hara was concealing, he would have slain him, for Olsen, as befitted the city editor of a very sensational paper, was not entirely sane.

Chapter XIV Too Many Trails

Dan went across to City Hall Park and seated himself on a bench.

He had things to think about.

It began to look to Dan very much as though Jack Billings, a couple of whose Corona Corona cigars the detective had not yet smoked, had slain R. J. Conlin. He was far from being able to prove it. He couldn’t produce the body and there was evidence that he could not yet controvert that Conlin had been in New York on Friday night, while Dan happened to know that Billings was on Nantucket Island on Friday night. The collapse of Conlin and Company, coinciding with the disappearance of Conlin and the signatures on two hotel registers made it very evident that the banker had skipped, like so many captains of industry who couldn’t stand the gaff.

Dan pulled out his dudeen, filled it and lighted it. If it wasn’t for the hotel registers and the failure of Conlin’s firm he could make out a fair case against Jack Billings. The exfootball star had murdered one of Stella Starr’s husbands and he might have murdered the other. Dan had the police complex of believing that innocent persons are never brought to trial and the acquittal of an accused individual is usually a miscarriage of justice.

Jack Billings was in Nantucket. He claimed to have arrived the day after the murder, but he might be lying. He called himself John Smith. He might have been the John Smith who rented the Rapidan-Sears house. He had assumed that he was safe after he had destroyed the features of R. J. Conlin, but when he was recognized by Dan O’Hara, he was probably terrified and had decided that the dead body might be identified after all, so he had stolen it from the undertaker’s shop and gotten rid of it.

It would take a man of great force of character to carry off the corpse of somebody he had murdered and mutilated, but Dan had seen Billings on the football field, and he knew he had been tried for the murder of one of Stella Starr’s husbands, so it seemed he was capable of it. Dan hesitated to convict Jack in his mind, of slaying the three servants. He rather liked Billings, wished him well, certainly had no wish to accuse him unjustly. However, any man who has slain one person might kill by wholesale if he thought his safety demanded it.

What did Billings have against Conlin? Well, a man who is in love with another man’s wife doesn’t have to have a special enmity to her husband. The fact that he keeps the lovers apart is sufficient reason to kill him.

The point was that here was a very deep mystery. By following up a wild theory Dan had not only identified the murdered person, but had found an individual who was on the ground, who had a strong motive for murder, who had already killed the first husband of the wife of R. J. Conlin, who could easily have stolen the dead body from the undertaking rooms in Nantucket town, and the mystery was almost solved.

On the other hand, the presumption was that the corpse was that of John Smith, since it had been found lying on the bed in his home. Jack Billings claimed to have landed in Nantucket upon the day following the murder. If he were the killer he would have made sure that his presence on steamship and bus on Friday were noted.

There was a bus driver to swear that Conlin had been landed at the steamship pier on Friday night. There was the evidence of the register at the New Bedford Hotel which indicated that Conlin had arrived there with a blond woman. And Dan had questioned the hotel people and displayed Conlin’s photo and found nobody willing to declare that its original had not been the companion of the blond woman. Of course Mrs. Conlin was in with Billings — she was always sympathetic to her husbands’ murderers and she, probably, would insist that the signature upon the New Bedford and the New York registers were those of her husband.

There was no longer a chance of identifying the murdered man as Conlin, since the body had vanished. And there was a failure of Conlin and Company to supply the motive for the disappearance of the head of the firm.

Dan knew too much to suppose he could arrest Jack Billings for the murder of R. J. Conlin. He knew that he couldn’t get a grand jury indictment. He even found it difficult to believe that a person like Billings could commit four such atrocious murders as had taken place on Nantucket. He jumped to the conclusion that the Conlin woman and Billings were still lovers, an assumption that the reader is aware is false. He didn’t see what he could do except go back to Nantucket and keep his eyes open.

He went over to the Western Union office and wrote a telegram to Chief Plympton of Nantucket.

“Make sure that Mrs. Conlin does not leave the island and if necessary arrest John Smith at the Sippiconsett House if he tries to leave before I get there.”

Police Headquarters in New York had some information for the Massachusetts officer after he had smoked his pipe in the park and dropped in upon his Gotham colleagues.

It appeared that the servants had been engaged from the Universal Agency by a woman who gave the name of Mrs. John Smith and whose address was the Biltmore Hotel.

She had personally selected all three from a host of applicants. The Negro was George Washington Cook, who had a wife and four children in the Lenox Avenue district, and who had excellent recommendations. The Englishman, Robert Dover by name, had served as a butler for several Park Avenue families and had excellent recommendations, and the maid was a Roumanian who spoke almost no English but who understood German and French.

The manager of the agency insisted that the three were not acquainted with one another so far as he knew; that each had worked for good people in New York and was well spoken of. The police had investigated the references and found them all authentic. There had been a swarm of applicants for employment at the agency upon the day the three unfortunate servants were engaged and the woman who had hired them had picked them out of a score or more.

The police had a fair description of the alleged Mrs. Smith. She was about thirty or thirty-five, tall, solidly built, rather good looking, very pale and with straight features. She had worn a blue knitted dress and a blue turban. She spoke with a refined accent and appeared to be a lady. They had a copy of her signature in the agency book, a tracing of which the police presented to O’Hara.

The Negro’s family wanted his body. The other two servants had no relatives so far as was known.

From police headquarters O’Hara went to Grand Central Station and bought a through ticket to Nantucket.

The New York authorities would do their best to locate the blond woman who passed as Mrs. Smith and who answered in a general way the description of the woman who had spent the night at New Bedford with R. J. Conlin.

If Jack Billings had killed Conlin, it was evident that the plan had been made long in advance and he had had the assistance of this blond woman, and that worried Dan O’Hara.

A man with murder in his mind does not pick up a woman accomplice very easily. If the blonde had worked with Billings, it ought to be because she was in love with him, and if she and he were lovers where did Mrs. Conlin come in? If Dan’s theory that Billings had killed Conlin because he was insanely in love with Mrs. Conlin were correct, would Mrs. Conlin have stood for the other woman?

And the fact that the servants were reputable people, strangers to one another, and highly recommended made it hard to believe that they had entered a conspiracy to murder anyone. But, if they were innocent, it made the task of the killer very much more difficult. First he must have killed Smith or Conlin, then rounded up the servants, forced them into the car at the point of a gun, taken them out on the moors and shot them down.

All the way along the New England shore Dan pondered over the refusal of the various pieces of this jig saw puzzle to get into the right places.

In despair he went back to the alternative theory he had suggested to the chief of police of New Bedford, that Conlin might have killed the mysterious John Smith. Suppose he had had an intrigue with Mrs. Smith; suppose he and Mrs. Smith did the killing and fled together. That would account for the blond woman in New Bedford who had phoned to the Nantucket police the news of the murder.

But that presupposed that there actually had been a John Smith living in that house on the bluff, and all the circumstances united to make it exceedingly doubtful.

In the end Dan decided that he would have to do what many a criminal investigator has to do, lay aside his pet theory and watch and wait and poke about until he stumbled on something which would put him back on the trail again.

Chapter XV Big Tim Moriaty

When the Nantucket steamer bearing the sorely perplexed Dan O’Hara moved across Nantucket Harbor the following forenoon she passed close to a motor yacht. It was a long, low, knife-bowed craft built with a streamline effect which was not broken by the rake of her two short masts and the broad, squat funnel amidships. She flew the flag of the New York Yacht Club and the pennant that indicated that her owner was on board. So perfectly proportioned was she that she gave the impression of being small and dainty despite the fact that she was a hundred and twenty feet on her waterline, had a beam of twenty feet and could cruise all over the seven seas as safely as a twenty-thousand ton ocean liner.

Nor would the average observer dream that this lovely craft could travel through the water with the speed of the fastest torpedo destroyer in any navy in the world. Her twin Diesel engines could drive her at thirty-five knots an hour and occasionally had been called upon to do so.

The name of this vessel was the Huelva and her owner was listed as J. Parsons Peabody, son of General Elisha Peabody, who at one time owned a large part of the public utilities of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. As the Peabody fortune had dwindled to almost nothing during the depression New York society often wondered how J. Parsons was able to buy fuel for his million dollar speedster. There was a guest on board in Nantucket Harbor who could have explained all this, though it was his habit to explain nothing.

The guest was lounging in a huge chair under an awning at the stern sipping mineral water. J. Parsons was sleeping off a drunk in his cabin. Several of the young lady guests were also dead to the world this beautiful morning, and the young woman who was sitting at the stern with the drinker of mineral water didn’t feel so good.

As he never drank anything but mineral water, the guest was in fine shape. He wore a costume of white drill with gold buttons, a white yachting cap with a lot of gold braid on it, and on his feet were white shoes so large that he had to have them made to order. If Dan O’Hara, who gazed at the yacht lying at anchor a hundred yards from the course of the steamer, had been near enough to get a look at the face of the person in yachting costume he would have recognized him as Public Enemy number two, who had been promoted to Public Enemy number one since Al Capone was languishing in a Federal jail. And he would have understood why the gentleman was in Nantucket Harbor. Big Tim Moriaty was making a tour of inspection.

Fifteen years ago, Tim Moriaty had been a brawny young New York Irishman who earned a living on the docks of the North River by tossing bales of cotton and boxes of machinery around. He stood six feet two in his socks, he had a forty-eight inch chest and a forty inch waist; his biceps were bigger than those of Jack Dempsey, and he could carry a hogshead weighing three hundred pounds on his back. He earned an honest living by the sweat of his brow and he made about sixty or seventy dollars a week. Tim Moriaty had promised his old mother that he would never drink strong liquor, which had caused his father to die in his prime, and he had faithfully kept that promise. Unfortunately it had not occurred to his mother to make him promise not to rob, fight or kill because, being a good Christian woman, it never occurred to her that her big boy would be tempted to commit crimes.

In those days there were plenty of squabbles on the water front and Tim being barred from the harmless pleasure which comes from drinking beer and whiskey, got his fun in fighting. He was such a magnificent scrapper that he had an opportunity to join a little organization formed by two or three strong-armed and clear-headed stevedores who afterwards broke into fame as Public Enemies, the purpose of which was to protect shippers and slop shop men from — waterfront crooks, drunken mobs, strikes and that sort of thing. And along about that time prohibition came into being.

If it hadn’t been for prohibition, Tim Moriaty might have been a great heavyweight pugilist, but prohibition gave the Protective Association its great opportunity. During the next ten years Tim Moriaty and three or four of his fellow members of the Waterfront Protective Association gained fame and fortune. Thanks to them, New York was saved from going dry during the early and serious efforts to enforce prohibition.

From the small business of carrying bottles off the ocean liners to saloon keepers on the waterfront, Tim and his friends rose to cooperation with huge fleets of rum ships, and when the three-mile limit was extended by treaty with England to twelve miles, they chartered their own fleets of rum ships, met them with swift motor boats and sent huge caravans of trucks rumbling through the night from Long Island and New Jersey beaches.

Probably because Tim was a teetotaler and his associates drank too much of their own poison, he gradually won the leadership, and because he was by nature a monopolist, he realized that the retailers made a greater profit with less effort than the runners and wholesalers. So, he began opening night clubs where liquor which cost him seventy-five cents a quart at the ship was sold for eight and ten dollars a quart to society folks, and thus he secured the wholesalers, the jobbers, and the retailers’ profits.

By and by he had a string of night clubs where cover charges ranged as high as five dollars per person. He prided himself upon selling good liquor and he waged war upon those who sold poison and reduced the consuming population. Guns barked. Men were killed. Gangsters warred. The reign of terror was on.

Big Tim came through it all triumphant. He had millions in safe deposit vaults. Tribute came from a hundred quarters. His former associates were either his lieutenants or they were dead. He sat in his office and studied charts of the Atlantic coast and gave orders which moved rum ships here, there and everywhere. The whole Coast Guard was employed to interfere with Big Tim’s business and hardly a night went by when machine guns were not popping and men were dying. And yet Tim loved children and cats and was very good to little girls who worked in night clubs. And his word was his bond. He never double crossed anybody. He was a jolly, generous host and a big contributor to charity. As for his personal enemies, he never sent his gunmen after them. He put on his own gun and shot them himself. He had twice been tried for murder during his career and each time had been released because there was insufficient evidence.

His age was thirty-five. He had a big, broad, heavy face, a slow, rather agreeable grin and a natural sense of humor. He had learned to talk English without relapsing into “dese, dem and dose” and he could wear a dinner jacket, a boiled shirt and a high starched collar without causing too much suffering to his thick red neck.

J. Parsons Peabody was working for him. The fast yacht Huelva was his property, though it was still listed in the name of the ex-millionaire. Occasionally he combined business with pleasure and made a cruise in her.

The girl who was lying on a divan lifted her head. She was an exceedingly pretty girl with great masses of chestnut hair, glowing brown eyes, a round, doll like face and a figure so sumptuous that even the loose sailor’s costume she wore could not conceal the fact.

“When’s he coming?” she demanded. “I’m crazy about that guy, Tim.”

“He’ll be along pretty soon if he knows what’s good for him,” said Mr. Moriaty grimly.

“You ain’t going to do anything to him, are you, Tim?”

Mr. Moriaty bent heavy brows. “You stuck on this mug?” he demanded.

“Course I ain’t. You’re my man, Tim.”

“Yeah. These college goofs always make a hit with you dolls. Damned if I know why. I could kill any one of them I ever met with my bare hands.”

“He’s a swell boy and he got a raw deal.”

“What he’s had ain’t nothing to what he’s going to get if he don’t do what I tell him. There’s a launch coming out. Wait a minute.”

He picked up a pair of binoculars and turned them on the approaching launch.

“It’s him,” he said.

The girl rolled off the divan and toddled toward the cabin entrance.

“Where you going?” he demanded in his rumbling bass.

“I’ll be back presently. I’m going to put on something good looking,” she replied.

Tim laughed ironically. “Take off, you mean,” he jeered. “I’m talking private to this egg. You keep away until I send for you.”

She laughed cheerfully. “O.K., Tim.”

When the launch ran alongside a few minutes later, sailors appeared at the accommodation ladder.

“Who do you want to see?” one of them demanded of the young man who presented himself.

“All right,” shouted Moriaty. “Let him aboard.”

Tim lighted a cigar at least nine inches long. Especially made for him in Havana, they cost him a dollar apiece.

“Hello, Billings,” he said hoarsely, “Give an account of yourself and make it snappy.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Mr. Moriaty,” replied the man whom Cynthia knew as John Smith.

“How did it happen? Who done it?”

“I don’t know how it happened and I don’t know who killed him.”

“He had twenty grand in his clothes. Who got it?”

“I don’t know anything about it, Tim.”

Moriaty looked at the young man balefully. “Nobody ever double crossed me and lived long,” he declared. “I’m giving you a chance to come clean.”

Billings seated himself. He was pale and worried “I’ll tell you what I know and all I know,” he said. “I landed the plane on the moor with Haywood according to orders. We waited until it got a little darker and the fog came rolling in and then we walked across the fields and came up behind what I thought was the Sears house. In the fog I came out on the bluff about a hundred feet beyond it and I walked down the path with Haywood. Just in front of the house I heard a woman scream — it sounded as though she had fallen over the cliff.

“I had a flashlight in my pocket and, on impulse, I slid over the edge and down to the bottom. Haywood came along with me. I found a girl, who had been knocked unconscious, and I told Haywood to meet me in front of the house. I helped her to her feet when she came to after a minute and got her up a long staircase to the path again and sent her on her way.”

“And she got a look at you, of course,” said Moriaty contemptuously.

“No. The fog was too thick. She didn’t see me. I was careful of that. Then I went back to the Rapidan-Sears place, found Haywood, took him into the house and introduced him as Mr. Smith to the butler. We said good night. I went back and boarded the plane and landed in New Bedford. That’s all I know about it.”

“Go on,” said Moriaty scornfully.

“I heard about the murder in New Bedford and realized that there were things to be done so I returned to Nantucket on the morning boat.”

“Listen,” said Moriaty in cold, menacing tones. “Harry Haywood isn’t in that house more than an hour or two when he is murdered. These servants had nothing against him. They didn’t know him. You’re the only one on this island that knew that Haywood was in that house. Now, if you didn’t kill him, who did?”

“I didn’t kill him,” replied Billings stoutly. “I had one or two theories. Want to hear them?”

“You bet your life I do.”

“John Smith was an island mystery. He was supposed to be a man of wealth. He was a recluse. There are plenty of bad characters on the island. A lot of those Portuguese squatters are untrustworthy and there are tough eggs working in your mob. They might have picked that night to break in and kill the tenant of that house. That’s one theory. The other is that he was killed by somebody who did know that it was Harry Haywood who would be in the house that night, who had good reason for wanting him out of the way, and who destroyed his features so that he could not be recognized and the killing traced back to its instigator.”

“You mean me,” said Moriaty. “Why should I bump him off after all the trouble I had fixing a break for him out of Atlanta penitentiary?”

“I thought of that,” said Billings, meeting the big man’s eye without hesitation. “Haywood took the rap for you. He has enough on you to make a lot of trouble for you. In stir he might have decided to squeal, so you had to get him out. And you might have decided he knew too much to be at large.”

Moriaty frowned but did not explode as Billings had expected.

“I ain’t that kind of a guy,” he said slowly. “It ain’t a bad theory, Billings, and I know fellers that would have done just as you say. But I happen to like Harry. I’m not afraid of him. He took the rap on the income tax business because I promised to get him out in a few weeks. I put you and Daisy to work to rig up this Smith business to have a safe hideaway for him. You see, if he was living in Nantucket for six weeks before the break at Atlanta, they couldn’t very well suspect this Mr. Smith of being Harry Haywood. I don’t have to make any explanations to you, but I’m doing it. That theory of yours is screwy.”

Billings smiled and looked greatly relieved.

“I believe you,” he said. “Frankly, Tim, I can’t be a party to murder. I’ve done a few things I’m ashamed of. I was ashamed to have to help in the escape of a notorious gangster like Haywood. I only did it because you said that you’d let me quit the game after this job.”

“With your record you talk like that,” said Moriaty contemptuously. “Now my theory was that you scragged him for the twenty grand I slipped him in New York, but I believe you when you say you didn’t do it. I’ll believe you till I get proof to the contrary.”

“Haywood spent a couple of nights in New York,” said Billings. “Whom did he see and talk to. There are plenty who have it in for him.”

“That’s an idea. I’ll find out. What I can’t understand is how a two fisted guy like Haywood would lie in bed and let somebody bash in his face with a club.”

“And who stole his body from the undertaking rooms in Nantucket?”

“Yeah.”

“And who was the woman who telephoned to the Nantucket police from New Bedford next morning?” demanded Billings.

“That’s right. I forgot there was a dame in it.”

“And somebody got away with the twenty grand. No money was found in his clothes or in the house.”

Moriaty bit savagely at his cigar. “There’s a Massachusetts state dick that sent me an impudent message,” he declared. “If I don’t dig up this murderer, he’ll blame it on the bootleggers. His name is O’Hara. Know him?”

“I had a chat with him the other night.”

“I’d do something about him,” Tim observed, “except that nobody can kill a friend of mine and get away with it, and it’s bad for business to have Nantucket in all the newspapers. I was using this island to land the best champagnes. I’ve passed the word along in New York to listen in everywhere and I may get some dope that way.”

“I apologize to you for my suspicions,” said Billings. “By the way, who made the arrangements in New York to hire the house down here and who engaged the servants?”

“The feller who told about ’Sconset as a hide-away,” said Tim. “This broker, R. J. Conlin. He had a dame make all the arrangements so that they couldn’t be traced to me, see.”

“Conlin?” exclaimed Billings. “You know he has disappeared, don’t you?”

“No. When?”

“He left Nantucket the night of the murder and his wife hasn’t heard from him since. The newspapers traced him to New York and lost him.”

“I ain’t seen a paper for a few days. What name are you using on the island?”

“John Smith,” replied Billings.

Moriaty emitted a snort.

“You damn fool!” he exclaimed. “That’s the name Haywood was supposed to have; we rented the house under that name.”

“It’s the commonest name in the world,” replied Billings. Now the fact was that Billings had entered the Sippiconsett House with quite another alias in his mind, and the sight of the lovely face of Cynthia Simpson had driven it and everything else away. And when Cynthia opened the register and handed him the pen, the only name that occurred to him was the name she had mentioned to him on the beach the previous night which he had scribbled before he recovered his equanimity. But he couldn’t tell that to Tim Moriaty.

“I s’pose so,” said Tim. “Supposing this dame who met you on the beach in front of this Sears house did get a squint at you. That plants you in Nantucket about the time the crime was committed. And, being as you was tried for murder once before, you’ll be in a hell of a hole, Mr. Smith.”

“But she didn’t,” insisted Jack Billings untruthfully.

“Well, you better stick round and see what you can find out. That’s all. I’ll be in the harbor for a day or two. This is as good a place to loaf as any.”

“Mr. Moriaty,” said Billings firmly. “I want to quit the game. I’ve saved some money. I’m not cut out for this sort of thing.”

Moriaty nodded. “O.K.,” he said. “You dig up this killer and you and me will shake hands and say good-by.”

“I’ll find him,” said Jack grimly.

A beautiful young woman in a vivid sport costume which consisted of an orange sweater and a green pleated skirt and a coquettish little green cap came out of the cabin and bore down upon the two-business men.

“If it isn’t Jack Billings!” she exclaimed in great surprise.

Moriaty laughed good naturedly. “She seen you coming and ran below to doll up,” he declared. “Jack’s on his way, Vera.”

“Oh, make him stay to lunch,” she pleaded. “Come on, Jack. I invite you.”

“Sorry, Vera,” replied the young man. “I’ve just got my orders.”

“Hardly worth while to put on the glad rags, eh, Vera?” jeered Tim Moriaty.

“You’re just hateful,” she said resentfully. Her accent was strongly southern. According to her own statement Miss Vera Lee had come from a grand old Virginia home to dance in New York night clubs. As a result of strict attention to business she now owned several diamond bracelets and she was hostess upon one of the finest yachts which flew the flag of the N.Y. Yacht Club. Billings had met her in one of Tim’s gay resorts, danced with her and forgotten her.

He shook her hand heartily, nodded to Moriaty and went over the side into his launch.

Chapter XVI The Man on the Bluff

For the first time since the murders Cynthia Simpson walked up the bluff path after she had turned over the desk at the Sippiconsett House to the night clerk at five o’clock. It was a gorgeous ’Sconset evening, peaceful and serene.

Being a New Englander with a long line of New England ancestors, Cynthia had a New England conscience and she had suffered for several days from a sense of duty undone. By great ingenuity she had avoided tête-à-têtes with John Smith since the morning that Mrs. Conlin had arrived at the Sippiconsett House. Smith, who had sublime impudence, had taken advantage of every opportunity to exchange a few words with her while she was on duty, and the burden of his remarks was his need for a walk and a private talk with her.

While Cynthia resented his impudence she was a woman, so she liked it. It was obvious that Smith was interested in her, despite his intimacy with the very beautiful Mrs. Conlin.

And the horrid thought that Smith and Mrs. Conlin might have made away with R. J. Conlin, which had been inspired by jealous fury the day of the woman’s arrival, had been driven away by the news that Mr. Conlin had been traced to New York.

Mrs. Conlin had assured her that the only reason she was remaining in ’Sconset instead of hastening to New York to help in the hunt for her husband was a police summons for fast driving, which was an outrage, as she had never driven fast and had never been arrested. That didn’t fool Cynthia. She was certain that the woman was at the hotel to be near John Smith but she wasn’t so sure, now, that Smith wanted to be near Mrs. Conlin.

Smith was such a likeable person that Cynthia could not possibly believe that he was a criminal, yet the fact remained that he was close to the scene of the murder somewhere near the time that the murder had occurred, and that he claimed not to have reached Nantucket until the day after. As the police were hunting high and low for persons who were in that vicinity, was she doing her duty in withholding this information? While, actually, wild horses would not have dragged the information from her, Cynthia’s conscience was raising hob about it.

She walked swiftly along the bluff path and noted absently how many of the recently tenanted cottages were vacant. She neared the lighthouse as shadows gathered, waved her hand to the light keeper, who was an old acquaintance of hers, and turned to retrace her steps. She had walked about an eighth of a mile and was approaching a hedge which marked the boundary of the house occupied by the Folsoms of Boston, who had left in a hurry two days after the murder, when a man, who was lying on the grass close to the hedge and whom she had not observed up to that second, sat up and said:

“Good evening, miss.”

Cynthia glanced at him nervously. He was a big man, dark complected and his countenance was rather unpleasant.

“Good evening,” she replied, and quickened her steps.

“I say,” he called after her with a pronounced English accent, “what’s your hurry, miss?”

Cynthia did not answer. In a second she heard footfalls behind her. She glanced nervously along the path and to the right. Nobody was in sight. Cynthia’s heart began to thump. Never in her life had she been accosted on the bluff path before. The man was alongside her and made to take her arm. She pulled it away.

“How dare you!” she exclaimed in a voice that was loud but shaky.

“Can’t you pass the time of day with a chap?” he demanded. “There ayn’t no ’arm in me.”

“No, I can’t,” she replied desperately. “Let me go. Let me go, I tell you!”

He had her fast by the right arm. He was grinning and there was a terrifying expression in his pale blue eyes.

“Yell your head off,” he sneered. “No one can hear you. Let’s you and me sit down and have a little chat.”

Cynthia struggled, but he forced her down upon the grass beside him and held her by the waist.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, you are. What’s your name?” he demanded.

Cynthia tried to drive her clenched right fist into his face, but he caught her wrist.

“I’ll have a kiss for that,” he declared. His vicious mouth approached hers. The girl emitted a piercing shriek and the response was a blow in the face which hurt her but did not prevent her screaming even more loudly. The man shifted his hands to her throat and hesitated, for a male voice was lifted in answer to the scream and somebody could be discerned in the gathering darkness, running up the path.

With an oath, the fellow dropped Cynthia, thrust his hand into his back pocket, pulled out a gun and fired a shot at the approaching figure. It took effect, for the man staggered, stepped off the path and vanished. And at the same instant Cynthia Simpson rolled over and fearlessly precipitated herself over the edge.

There was no pursuit. The assailant peered fearsomely over the cliff into the shadows below, swore forcefully and vanished toward the back road.

Cynthia rolled for a second, righted herself and slid down the steep incline accompanied by a load of sand. This time she did not strike her head on a rock and she arrived at the bottom without the slightest injury. Immediately she rose and started in search of the person who had come to her rescue and who had drawn a bullet.

She was not aware of his proximity until she stumbled over him, pitched headlong and caused him to sit up.

“What the deuce?” said the voice of John Smith.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It’s you. Are you hurt, Mr. Smith?”

“I don’t quite know,” he answered. “There’s blood on the top of my head where that scoundrel creased me. I guess the fall didn’t hurt me much. Was it you who screamed?”

“Yes,” she said. “Let me see.”

Soft fingers touched the top of his head and she drew in her breath sharply.

“You have been shot!” she exclaimed. “We must get a doctor.”

“Nothing serious. I sort of figured it was you who was in trouble.”

“How did you come to be away out here?” she asked quickly.

He chuckled. “I followed you, Miss Simpson. I’m going to keep following you. What happened up there?”

He could not see Cynthia blush. He was contented to lie flat on the sand and have her kneeling beside him, solicituous for his well-being.

“A perfectly horrible man was lying on the grass of the Folsom place,” she said rapidly. “He grabbed me. He had a revolver. I never dreamed that there could be such terrible people.”

“Some bootlegger taking a few hours off,” replied Smith. “This looks like a peaceful community, Miss Simpson, but there are hard characters abroad after dark.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Cynthia. “This was an Englishman. I think — it sounded like — he had a voice like that Englishman who was with you the night of the murder.”

“Impossible,” replied Smith sharply.

“Then it was the butler. You were with Mr. Smith’s butler that night.”

“Miss Simpson,” he said. “Will you believe me when I assure you that I did not commit the quadruple crime the other night and I don’t know who did? Are you sure this was the voice of the man who was with me that night?”

“Well, I’m not sure, of course. But he was an Englishman.”

“A lot of Cockneys off the rum boats get into the shore gangs,” he said thoughtfully. “May I get up now?”

“Do you think you can?”

He laughed and scrambled to his feet. “I have only a scratch on the top of my head,” he said. “I was so astonished to have a man firing at me that I lost my footing. The situation of the other night seems to be reversed. How did you manage to get away from him?”

She chuckled. “I rolled over the edge. It’s rather fun, though it looks very dangerous. Mr. Smith, I’m rather glad you followed me. I shall never dare walk along the bluff path again.”

“You’d better not without an escort. May I be your escort?”

“Do you want to?” she asked coyly.

“Do I?”

He placed his right hand under her elbow and they trudged along through the sand until they came to one of the occasional staircases. They mounted together and took their time about it.

“You and Mrs. Conlin are very good friends, aren’t you?” she remarked when they reached the top.

“We are not,” he said savagely. Cynthia’s heart leaped.

“But you seemed — that first day—”

“I used to know her,” he said slowly. “I had a crush on her. She married somebody else.”

“Even that doesn’t prevent a man from loving a girl,” she stated.

He growled in his throat. “There were unusually rotten circumstances in this case,” he told her. “I don’t care if I never set eyes on Stella again in this life or the next.”

“She is very beautiful—” Cynthia said wistfully.

“I prefer blondes,” he replied. “Miss Simpson, will you please go down the path? I’ll stand here until you’ve gone quite a distance. I want to catch that Cockney.”

The girl grasped his arm. “No, no,” she cried. “You mustn’t. I’m afraid. I want you to walk back to the hotel with me.”

“Please. The brute laid hands on you. He is a menace—”

“He didn’t hurt me. He has a gun. He’ll kill you. You are wounded, anyway.”

“It’s nothing but a scratch.”

“But you’re unarmed.”

He drew a revolver from his hip pocket. “Not exactly. Please go along.”

“I forbid you.”

He laughed. “Sorry. I’m going after him.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“You’re certainly a brave girl. Every second we talk he is getting away further.”

“I hope so. There are police on this island.”

“Yes, but I don’t think much of them. Come on now. Step along.”

“Go,” she said sullenly. “But I stay right here.”

“All right. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He left her and moved cautiously back toward the place where he and Cynthia had gone over the cliff. He didn’t think her assailant could possibly be Haywood. He had more reason than the police to think he knew the identity of the faceless corpse, and if it were Haywood, and somebody else had been slain in the Rapidan-Sears house, he had to run him down and ask him pertinent questions.

He came presently to the place where Cynthia had been struggling with the unknown. He went back and inspected the doors and windows of the empty house at that location and then, fearful of another attack upon the girl, he hastened back.

“Oh, I’m glad to see you!” she exclaimed. “Of course he got away.”

“Vanished like smoke,” he said regretfully.

Jack Billings felt ten years roll off his shoulders as they walked like lovers down the path towards ’Sconset. It was as though the turgid period since leaving college had been wiped out of his existence. He forgot that, even now, he was a lieutenant of a law violator and one to be despised by Cynthia Simpson if she knew all the facts about him.

Realities began to come back to him when the lights of the village came in sight and he fell from his seventh heaven with the sickening speed of Lucifer when he left Cynthia in the hotel lobby and ascended to his room, pushed open the door and found Dan O’Hara sitting by the window contentedly smoking one of Jack’s Corona Coronas.

“You have a hell of a gall,” Billings said indignantly. “What do you want?”

O’Hara rose and gazed at him solemnly.

“Want to arrest you for the murder of R. J. Conlin,” he said sternly.

Chapter XVII The Federals Shake a Leg

In Washington, D. C., there is a building which houses the Department of Justice, and in one section of this building is located the Prohibition Unit. The head of the prohibition department was in conference with the director of enforcement in New York and with the commander of the coast guard.

While the business of this unit is to see that the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution as interpreted by the Volstead Act is enforced impartially from Alaska’s icy shores to Florida’s sunny strands and at all way stations between, its officers are practical men or they would not hold down political jobs.

Being perfectly aware that the task set them is impossible and would be impossible if they had twenty times as large an enforcement appropriation and fifty times as many persons on the payroll, they endeavor to give the presumptive dry majority a run for its money by concentrating their efforts and striking at points where their energies will be reported spectacularly in the newspapers.

Reading of the activities of the prohibition unit as exploited in the papers, the conscientious prohibitionist is lulled into thinking that the law is being enforced and it won’t be long before the country will be all dried up.

So now let us listen in on the conference.

“Tim Moriaty is on board Peabody’s yacht, the Huelva, in Nantucket Harbor,” said the director in New York. “That means that something big is about to happen on Nantucket or Cape Cod and we have a chance to nab the Huelva and Moriaty red-handed.”

“I’d like to get Moriaty,” said the prohibition head. “He would look well in stripes at the next bench in Atlanta to Al Capone.”

He turned to the commander of the coast guard. “How much stuff is run in at Nantucket?” he asked.

“Plenty. You see the waters around Nantucket are very dangerous. There are any number of shoals and reefs, fogs are frequent, transatlantic liners are continually passing and God help the coast guard boat running without lights if she crosses the path of one of them. We do the best we can, of course.”

“But conditions must be just as unfavorable for the rum runners.”

“They take the same chances, of course, but fog always helps a fugitive more than a pursuer. Besides the island contains scores of inlets which are unguarded and we never know which has been chosen to land the stuff. Once ashore it’s up to the prohibition officers, and there aren’t enough of them.”

“We can hardly assign a big crew to an island with about 2,500 inhabitants.”

“Very well. They ship the stuff to the main land practically unmolested. And since Massachusetts repealed her dry law we get no help from state or local police. The game there hasn’t been worth the candle.”

“That’s true,” admitted the New York director eagerly, “but at this moment, because of the atrocious murders, Nantucket is very much in the public eye. A Nantucket development will make the front page of any newspaper. Of course these killings were done by bootleggers; anyway the public thinks they were. The time is ripe for a big demonstration at Nantucket. If we can get the goods on Moriaty, so much the better. Now, I’ll be glad to Ioan half my force. I’ll accompany my men in person—”

The coast guard commander smiled. “I believe there are not fifty thousand speakeasies in New York — only twenty-two thousand by your recent chart.”

“It would take a million men to dry up New York. Fifty men will pull this coup on Nantucket,” replied the New Yorker, unperturbed.

“The presence of Moriaty on his yacht there indicates something very big,” said the Head, thoughtfully. “Admiral, suppose you concentrate the biggest fleet you can collect off the coast of Cape Cod. Strip other stations temporarily. I’ll have a band of agents ashore in Nantucket to give you every cooperation. If this yacht Huelva should be discovered in a compromising situation, she ought to be sunk and if Moriaty went down with her, it would be the best thing that could happen to the country. While we can’t touch the fellow, he has a criminal career which is a standing reflection upon American police methods.”

“I’ll send code orders right away.”

“I’m afraid they know our code,” replied the Head. “Make the mobilization for a couple of days off and send sealed orders to commanders whom you know you can trust. And keep off the radio. They intercept and translate more of our code messages than we do of theirs.”

“Very good, sir.”

Within the next twenty-four hours more than a score of the swiftest and best armed coast guard cutters and motor craft put to sea with sealed orders, and after opening them turned their prows toward Nantucket and Cape Cod. And the boat from New Bedford and Woods Hole began to land young men in flannels and golf clothes who scattered around to the various hotels in Nantucket and ’Sconset and caused a flutter in those caravansaries where the young women outnumbered the young men from four to ten to one.

Even when the girls saw some of the new arrivals eating with their knives, they were not completely disillusioned. Many a husband has been taught how to eat properly after he was married.

Chapter XVIII The Killer Strikes Again

“You must be crazy,” said Jack Billings when O’Hara had announced his intention of arresting him for murder.

“No, sir,” replied O’Hara. “You had the opportunity and the motive, and that trial of yours in Chicago isn’t going to do you any good. You killed R. J. Conlin and you might as well confess it.”

Billings laughed angrily and seated himself on the bed.

“You’re bluffing, O’Hara,” he said. “And you haven’t a scrap of evidence. In the first place Conlin isn’t dead. I read the story in the New York papers about the failure of his firm and how he vanished Saturday morning from the Pennsylvania Hotel. As I have been on the island since Friday, it’s obvious that I didn’t kill Mr. Conlin.”

“You was on the island Thursday,” said O’Hara.

“Friday. I came over on the boat from Woods Hole which arrived at noon.”

“You came over Thursday in an airplane and you went back to the mainland on that plane after you killed Conlin and the three servants,” replied Dan.

“You’ll have a fine time proving that,” retorted Billings contemptuously. “Have you been drinking, O’Hara?”

“I’ve had a drink, Jack,” he replied. “I know where you got the airplane and where it is now. You came here secretly Thursday night.”

Billings shrugged his shoulders. “If I did,” he answered, “what has that to do with the murder of Conlin — if he has been murdered, which I don’t believe.”

O’Hara rose and turned on the light. “Don’t want you to murder me in the dark,” he replied. “Now Jack, Conlin never went to the mainland. He was lured to the Rapidan-Sears house and killed and then his face was smashed to avoid recognition. This woman who was in it with you, and some stooge signed Conlin’s name to the register in New Bedford and you got some pal to sign his name to the register at the Pennsylvania the next night. I got a line on the dame. She’ll be locked up within twenty-four hours.”

“You interest me strangely,” said Billings. “Proceed, Philo Vance.”

“Where you was up against it,” continued O’Hara, “was when Mrs. Conlin got scared on account of the murders and wired New York to tell her husband she was coming home. You didn’t expect her to find out he was missing until the body was buried. So you had to swipe the body out of the undertaking shop in Nantucket.”

Billings laughed. “I particularly dislike stealing dead bodies, Dan,” he said. “What else have you against me?”

“That’s plenty. You killed this woman’s first husband and you love her so much that you killed her second husband.”

“In the first place I didn’t kill her first husband. I was acquitted.”

“Sure. She cried you loose.”

“And far from killing her second husband, I didn’t know she was married to Conlin. I never saw the man and don’t know what he looks like. And I don’t love Mrs. Conlin. I hate the woman. Dan, she used me as a cat’s-paw in Chicago. She was having an affair with Conlin all the time she was going around with me. I believe that Conlin killed Jim Crane. I left Chicago right after the trial and she married Conlin.”

“That’s a better motive for killing him than the one I thought of,” said O’Hara enthusiastically. “You killed him because he let you stand the gaff for a crime he committed in Chicago. That motive is good enough to send you to the chair, my boy.”

“Well,” said Billings slowly. “You can’t identify the body as Conlin’s because the body has disappeared. And you can’t prove that Conlin didn’t spend the night in New Bedford and New York. Conlin is alive and in hiding somewhere. So I don’t think you’re going to arrest me for killing him. Furthermore, you’re a shrewd old Mick and it’s not like you to tip off a suspect that you have the goods on him, even when you haven’t. Exactly what is your purpose in handing me this line, Dan?”

“I want to show you where you stand,” replied O’Hara. “You’re in a bad spot, feller. You’ve that case in Chicago against you. Men have been convicted on less evidence than I’ve mentioned, and it isn’t absolutely necessary to produce the dead body. It was seen by the proper officials—”

“But not identified as Conlin.”

“When we get the confession of the woman who was supposed to have been with him in New Bedford, we can dispense with that identification. The presumption will be that it was Conlin.”

“You couldn’t get an indictment against me as things stand,” said Billings.

“Maybe not, but I can throw you in jail as a material witness until I get the evidence and I’m going to do that unless you come clean.”

“In what respect?”

“Either this was Conlin who was killed or it was somebody else. If it was somebody else, you know who it was. There were two men in your plane when you took off from Plymouth and only one when you landed in New Bedford. The other man was John Smith. And it was John Smith who was killed, if it wasn’t Conlin.”

“You’ve got me as murdering somebody whichever way the cat jumps.”

“Well now, Jack,” said Dan frankly. “You don’t impress me as a killer, but I don’t set much store on impressions. When I have the goods on a guy, I don’t care if he looks as meek as Moses. You got information that the government needs. And you stand an elegant chance of being fried in the chair if you don’t explain what you were doing in Nantucket around the time that murder was committed and make it a convincing explanation.”

“I do not admit coming here on Thursday by plane or leaving the same night. I doubt that you can prove I did so. I can prove by reliable witnesses exactly where I spent Thursday night.”

“Tim Moriaty’s witnesses,” sneered O’Hara.

“Their testimony will be acceptable to a court.”

“Don’t you want to help me clear this case up?” asked O’Hara.

Billings laughed. “At one minute you accuse me of murder. At the next you want me to help you. You’re not in the least convinced of my guilt, Dan.”

“Well,” said the detective with a grin, “I’m not sure you did it, but I’ll bet my life that it was R. J. Conlin who was killed in that house.”

Billings was silent for a moment. “O’Hara,” he said, finally. “You want to get this killer. This noon I had a talk with Tim Moriaty on his yacht. He told me that one of his men passed on a request from you for help from him in running down the murderer. He has his own reasons for wanting the murderer caught and he ordered me to do everything I can to get the goods on the killer.”

“Did he now? I told George Lake that if he didn’t hop to it, I’d pin it on the bootleggers.”

“Well, he has passed the word along in New York to turn up any information possible. Moriaty had nothing whatever to do with this crime. I’m still in his employ so that ought to let me out.”

“You had it in for Conlin,” began O’Hara.

“That’s an obsession with you,” said Jack impatiently. “Look here, O’Hara. I’m going to tell you something in strictest confidence. If you ever use it I’ll call you a liar. We have nobody listening-in to corroborate your statement. And it’s a Federal matter which has nothing to do with you.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“I’m confiding in you to convince you that the dead man was not Conlin.”

“Shoot. Have you got any more of them cigars?”

Jack produced his box of cigars and both men lit up.

“For a couple of years,” said Billings, “the Internal Revenue people have been trying to get Tim on concealed income as they did Capone. Six months ago they arrested Harry Haywood, a close friend of Tim’s and proved that Haywood had millions of assets which he had not declared in his income tax statement. They sent him to Atlanta for five years and he began serving his sentence less than two months ago.”

“It’s news to me, and I don’t see what it had to do with this case.”

“You will. Haywood, of course, was concealing Tim’s money and took the rap for him. Tim promised to have him out in six weeks and he kept his word.”

Dan nodded. “I remember now. This fellow escaped from Atlanta a week ago or so.”

“Six weeks ago the Rapidan-Sears house was hired, servants engaged and a man named John Smith was supposed to have arrived and to be living there. Actually nobody was living there. On last Thursday I met Haywood in Plymouth and took off with him in a plane — I have a pilot’s license — landed him on the moor and walked with him to the Rapidan-Sears house. I introduced him to the servants, went back to my plane and landed in New Bedford. So Mr. Smith was at home Thursday night.”

“Now you’re talking!” said Dan excitedly.

“While government officers would be searching everywhere for the escaped convict, they would not suspect John Smith who had been living in ’Sconset for six weeks before Haywood escaped from Atlanta.”

“Damn clever. Then the servants killed Haywood. But who killed the servants?”

“Haywood had twenty thousand in cash in his possession.” continued Billings. “Robbery might have been the motive for killing him.”

Dan scratched his head. “Let me get this straight,” he pleaded. “Haywood was killed within an hour or two after he moved into the house.”

“So it seems.”

“And it was Haywood, not Conlin?”

“That is my opinion.”

“Then why was his face bashed in?”

“I don’t know.”

“So he couldn’t be identified as Haywood, of course.”

“That seems likely.”

“Then Conlin did leave Nantucket; he did go to New York and he vanished because his firm was busted, and I’ve been wasting my time.”

“It looks like it,” said Billings, grinning at O’Hara’s discomfiture.

“Some gangsters in New York that didn’t like Haywood polished him off.”

“He was kept under cover. I don’t think anybody knew where he was going to hide except myself and Moriaty — by George—”

“What?”

“R. J. Conlin knew it!” exclaimed Billings. “He had secret relations with Big Tim. It was Conlin who arranged the leasing of this house. He told Tim that ’Sconset was an ideal hideaway, which means that Tim must have told him he wanted to hide Haywood when he succeeded in getting Harry out of Atlanta. And according to the papers, Conlin’s firm was broke, which means that he had very little money himself.”

“Whoa! You trying to tell me that Conlin murdered Haywood? That’s ridiculous!”

“Why? Suppose he had to have cash and knew Haywood had twenty thousand on his person.”

“But Conlin was a big business man. He wouldn’t commit a murder.”

Billings laughed harshly. “Wouldn’t he? Dan, I honestly believe that Conlin killed the man for whose murder I stood trial. Stella Crane was having an affair with Conlin and used me as a cloak. And Conlin married her.”

Dan sat silent and stunned. “It’s as good a theory as that it was Conlin who was killed,” he said at length. “But it’s got a lot of holes in it. Let’s see. I figured it out that the murderer laid that trail of Conlin’s to New York so we would not think it was Conlin that was killed, but he could have done it himself. There was a woman in it — the one who telephoned from New Bedford. And if he and the dame had left the island, who stole the body?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Conlin certainly knew — what’s that?”

“That” was a blood curdling scream — the voice of a woman lifted in mortal terror, and it came from a room not far from the chamber in which the two men were sitting.

As Dan threw open the door it was repeated, and ended in a piercing shriek which broke off abruptly.

Doors flew open. Two women and a man rushed into the hall and stood there turning their heads in alarm and bewilderment.

“Down at the end of the corridor,” cried O’Hara. “Come on, Jack.”

The two men ran twenty or thirty feet and Dan began to open doors. It was the dinner hour at the hotel and most of the guests were in the dining room. And, as was the custom in this primitive hostelry, most of the doors were unlocked. The fourth door which the detective tried was locked. He laid his head against the panel but heard nothing.

“Try the other doors,” he commanded of Billings, who proceeded to glance into the remaining rooms on the corridor. They were all empty.

“It must be in here,” said Dan. “I’m going to break down the door.”

Meanwhile a dozen persons rushed up from below, among them Cynthia Simpson.

“Whose room is this?” demanded the detective of the hotel clerk.

“It is Mrs. Conlin’s,” Cynthia replied with an affrighted glance at Jack Billings. “Wait, I’ll send for a key.”

“Can’t wait,” replied the detective. He drew back, lunged with his shoulder against the ancient door and immediately the lock gave way and it flew open. The room was dark. Dan fumbled for and found the light switch and turned it on.

Lying on the bed, partially dressed, was the beautiful Mrs. Conlin. Upon her face was an expression of mortal agony, and there was a huge gash across her throat from which blood was pouring.

“Stand back,” bellowed O’Hara. “Billings, don’t let anybody in here.”

He had observed that the window was open and he rushed to it and looked out. Two feet below the windowsill was the piazza roof. From the roof of the porch to the ground was a drop of only fifteen feet. And as he listened he heard the whir of an electric starter and a motor car at the back of the hotel drove away. O’Hara went through the window and off the edge of the porch roof like a flash. Billings approached the bed and gazed with horror at the horrid spectacle. The wound was wide and deep and the young woman was already dead, though the blood still gushed forcibly from her throat.

“Get a doctor, one of you, quick,” he cried. “Out of the room everybody. There may be something here which will help catch the murderer.”

He pushed the gaping spectators who had crowded into the room out into the corridor and pulled the broken door to. Immediately the guests rushed downstairs to be in on the pursuit and Cynthia and Jack Billings were alone in the corridor.

“You… you loved her once, didn’t you?” the girl said softly and sympathetically. Tears were rolling down the young man’s cheeks.

“I thought I hated her,” he said, “but this — she didn’t deserve this. Nobody could.”

“I’ll make sure they send for a doctor,” she said, turning away, her face working with emotion.

“She is dead already,” he said.

“Who could have done it? Who—”

“The same fiend who killed the others, I suppose,” he said slowly. Billings was ill and shaking and having great difficulty in preserving his composure. “Go, please,” he pleaded.

Understandingly she nodded and hastened downstairs. Billings went into his own room and fell on the bed and lay there for a few moments.

Five minutes later Dr. Blake, who happened to be calling at a house a few rods down the beach, arrived and entered the death chamber. Fifteen minutes later Dan O’Hara returned and joined the doctor.

Shortly afterwards he came into Billings’ room and threw himself with a grunt into a chair.

“I wasted a lot of time finding a car that was unlocked,” he said. “By the time I got started he was through the village and out on the highroad to Nantucket. I sent the constable after him in the car I had requisitioned and I phoned over to Nantucket to have the police nab him if he drove into town, but there are half a dozen side roads and he probably took one of those. Most likely he will abandon the car and hit across the moors to his hideaway.”

“It was the most awful thing I ever heard of,” said Jack in a low tone. “We were sitting right here when he was killing her.”

“You’ve a perfect alibi on this one,” Dan replied with a sigh. “This has something to do with the other killings, of course. The same man killed ’em all.”

“Any evidence in the room?”

“He came in through the window, pushed in the screen, caught her as she was sitting in front of the bureau fixing her face, threw her on the bed and cut her throat. He carried off the weapon with him. A razor, judging by the gash. It muddles everything up just as we were getting somewhere.”

“Poor Stella.”

“What’s it all about?” demanded the bewildered detective.

“By God I’m going to find out! O’Hara, I forgot — the way you greeted me when I came in drove it from my mind. I was fired upon tonight by a man who was assaulting Miss Simpson, the hotel clerk, on the bluff path. She can give you a description of him because she was struggling in his arms when I came running up. We both went over the bluff and the brute got away.”

“Come on, we’ll find her. Billings, this is the man who stole the body. He’s still on the island. Let me get his description and I’ll nab him.”

“All right,” said Billings with a wan smile. “I feel pretty groggy.”

“You got nothing on me, but we can’t waste a minute. Come on!”

Chapter XIX O’Hara Finds the Faceless Man

They found Cynthia behind her counter and she described her assailant on the bluff as well as she could. O’Hara drew the photograph of Conlin from his pocket and showed it to her.

“Does it look anything like this feller?” he demanded.

“No,” she replied. “This man had a horrid face. He is quite different.”

“Then it wasn’t Conlin,” declared the detective

“How could it be?” asked Billings. “We know he wouldn’t be loitering on this island.”

“The woman upstairs. More women are killed by their husbands than by men they’re not married to. Does it sound like Haywood?”

“No. Haywood is an Englishman by birth and Miss Simpson says this scoundrel had an English accent, but Harry’s face is rather round and chubby.”

“Nothing to do here,” said Dan impatiently. “I’m going to get a car and go after this murderer myself. Want to come with me, Billings?”

Billings nodded. “You bet.”

Cynthia looked frightened. “Don’t go, Mr. Smith,” she said and then she turned crimson and dropped her eyes.

Jack gazed at her tenderly, and O’Hara, who saw everything, grinned appreciatively.

“It’s my duty to help the officer catch this fiend, Miss Simpson,” Jack said in a low tone.

“Of course it is,” she responded. “I didn’t think.”

O’Hara and the man whom so recently he had accused of being the author of a quadruple murder found a hotel guest about to climb into his Ford and immediately deputized him, to his alarm and indignation. A minute’s drive brought them into the village, which was teeming with excitement.

A minute later the Ford, whose owner had gladly loaned it to the state detective in exchange for his own release from service, started down the state road.

“Old Amos Plympton and his cops will be blocking the end of this road, and Bide Parker, the constable, is on his tail,” said O’Hara. “Ten to one he took a side road, and that’s what we’ll do.”

“There is a road opening off to the left which leads to Tom Nevers Head,” Jack informed him.

“What’s over there?”

“Nothing much. A small inn and a few cottages and some isolated shacks on the moors.”

“This will probably be an all night job. We’ll stop at every house and when we’ve exhausted that possibility we’ll come back here and try another by-road.”

“I’m just as eager to catch him as you are.”

“Now, let’s see,” commented the detective. “Things are dovetailing on this case. It was Conlin who told Moriaty about ’Sconset and who secured the Rapidan-Sears house as a hideaway for Haywood. Conlin disappeared the night Haywood was murdered. Conlin’s firm went broke, which means that he was broke. Haywood had twenty thousand dollars. Aside from you and Moriaty, Conlin was the only person who knew that Haywood would be there Thursday night. And it was Mrs. Conlin who has had her throat cut.”

“But Conlin left the island in company with another woman.”

“Yeah? Who had any reason for killing Mrs. Conlin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t this woman have a lot of jewels?”

“Yes. She was wearing three or four diamond bracelets the morning she moved into the hotel.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Dan O’Hara. “Well, her jewel case was empty and she didn’t have a ring on her finger tonight.”

“She was wearing a huge diamond solitaire and several other valuable rings when I saw her early this afternoon.”

O’Hara braked the car suddenly, turned around and started back for ’Sconset.

“What’s the idea?” demanded Billings.

“If what I think is right,” replied O’Hara, “this killer didn’t go to Tom Nevers Head. He went to Sankaty.”

“But he started toward Nantucket Town.”

“He could have turned off.”

“Why Sankaty?”

“Because that’s where Conlin lives. Jack, it might have been Conlin that killed his wife. If it was, he would make for his house. It’s closed up and a perfect hideway.”

“Conlin went to New York.”

“He could have come back.”

“Why should he rob his own wife?”

“Jack, that guy was broke. If he killed Haywood for twenty grand, he might have killed his wife for forty or fifty thousands worth of jewels.”

“But she would have given them to him if he was in trouble.”

“I only met that dame once, but she don’t look like the kind that would give up anything.”

Jack nodded. “From what I have seen of Stella, I am inclined to agree with you.”

“He had another woman, remember that. Twenty thousand dollars wouldn’t last a high flier like Conlin long. This feller knew his firm was going broke. Probably he was half crazy. He might have asked his wife for her jewelry and she wouldn’t give up. He knew Haywood, didn’t he?”

“I can’t tell you that. I didn’t know that Conlin was friendly with Moriaty. I only learned that today.”

“He could have dropped in on Haywood and Haywood wouldn’t have been suspicious.”

“You’ve gone over to my theory bag and baggage,” commented Billings.

“I look facts in the face. He left ’Sconset on the bus. He didn’t take the boat but he sneaked away from the steamship pier, swiped a car or a motor boat and came back to ’Sconset. He killed Haywood, drove the servants into the car, took them out on the moor and shot them and chucked them in the pool. After that he went to New Bedford by motor boat, met the woman there and spent the night with her in the New Bedford House. That established his alibi.

“On Friday they went on to New York, and then decided to come back and get Mrs. Conlin’s jewels. He expected to find her at her cottage, but she had closed it up and come to the hotel. That made it harder and he had to hang around waiting for a chance to get at her. If we have luck we’ll find him at the Conlin House.”

“I have no reason to like the man, but I can’t believe all that.”

Dan chuckled. “Don’t know as I do, but it’s something to work on.”

They had already driven through the village and now swung left upon the road to Sankaty. The fog had come in and their progress had to be slow, but they encountered no cars on the road and in ten or twelve minutes they rumbled over the wooden bridge which Dan had crossed upon his first visit to the Conlin domicile.

After proceeding a short distance along the shore of the inlet, Dan stopped the car.

“We’ll walk the rest of the way,” he said.

They trudged in silence along the dirt road until they came to the gate posts, and then they climbed the steep driveway to Conlin’s. The house, of course, was dark, but it hadn’t yet been boarded up. O’Hara led his companion around to the rear, produced a diamond glass cutter and proceeded to cut out a pane of glass from one of the windows of the side. He laid it carefully upon the grass, thrust his arm through the opening and slipped the catch upon the sash.

“Give me a boost,” he requested. Billings complied and he crawled through the window. He then extended his hands to Billings, who clambered up, and in a few seconds both men were standing in the dining room. O’Hara produced a flash light and guided by it the pair made a careful survey of the ground floor. No effort had been made to cover and pile up the furniture or to protect the rugs for a long period of unoccupancy. Mrs. Conlin, apparently, had walked out the front door and slammed it behind her.

Nor was there any indication that the house had been occupied since. Dan, finally, began to mount the stairs and grunted as he saw an object upon one of the steps.

He picked it up and turned the flash full upon it. It was a small suede glove, a woman’s, and it was incredibly dirty. The detective put it in his pocket and continued up the stairs.

Jack sniffed. “Something wrong with the drainage,” he commented. “A curious odor.”

“Noticed it,” said O’Hara.

He led the way into a front bedroom, which was empty.

“Wrong hunch,” he said in a low tone. “I’ve had lots of them.”

He pushed open the door of a chamber on the opposite side of the house. The smell, which both had noticed, was almost overpowering and came from that chamber. O’Hara moved his flash around until it rested upon the bed.

“Glory be to God!” he exclaimed.

Lying in the bed was a body without a face, the sheets drawn up to the neck. And it was this body which had been giving off the odor of putrefaction.

“Haywood!” exclaimed Billings. “In Heaven’s name, how did he get here?”

O’Hara turned his flash and located the light switch. “See if the lights are still on,” he said hoarsely.

Jack turned the switch and the tights flashed on.

“I can’t stand this!” exclaimed the young man.

“I got to,” replied O’Hara. “You can go downstairs if you like.”

Billings went down the staircase at top speed and threw wide the front door and breathed deeply of pure air. Five or six minutes elapsed and the heavy tread of Dan O’Hara was heard on the stairs.

“See if you can get Amos Plympton on the phone,” he said harshly. “I’m all in. That body has been dead for a week.”

“Why should whoever stole it bring it here?” asked Billings, who moved toward the phone which stood on a table in the hallway.

“Because this is where it belongs,” said O’Hara.

“Poor Haywood, they won’t even let him rest in peace,” commented Jack as he tried the instrument to discover if it were still connected. It clicked. It was alive.

“Billings,” said O’Hara, “that isn’t Haywood.”

“Then who the devil is it?”

“We came here to find Conlin and we found him. That’s R. J. Conlin, Mr. Billings.”

“It isn’t. It can’t be.”

“Conlin had peculiar ears. So has this corpse. It is the same height, breadth and complexion. It’s R. J. Conlin. He was murdered Thursday night in the Rapidan-Sears house and the body was stolen from the undertaker’s the next night. Conlin never went to New Bedford and New York. And the reason he was brought here was because it was known that this house had been closed and they didn’t expect it would be found for months, or maybe a year.”

“Give me the office of Chief Plympton, please,” said Billings into the telephone.

“I’ll talk to him,” declared O’Hara. “And you keep away from that shotgun. I’ve got you covered.”

He laid his revolver on the table in front of him as he took Billings’ place at the phone.

“Are you crazy?” asked the astonished young man.

“Kind of. You’re under suspicion again, Billings.”

Jack laughed harshly.

“You are out of your mind,” he asserted. “If that is Conlin upstairs, what has become of Haywood?”

“That’s all a cock and bull story. You made it up.”

“Well, if this is Conlin, who killed Mrs. Conlin?”

“Oh, my hat!” exclaimed Dan. “How in hell do I know?”

“And who killed the servants?” O’Hara lifted a pleading, protesting hand.

“Plympton,” he said. “O’Hara speaking. You catch that killer? I didn’t think you would. Listen. Send a couple of men over to R. J. Conlin’s house to watch the place. Right away. The stolen body is here. Yes. And I’ll take my Bible oath it’s R. J. Conlin. I can’t help what you read in the newspapers. I’ve identified it by the ears. All right. Come yourself, and comb the countryside for the man in the Ford who killed Mrs. Conlin.”

He hung up. “And, Mr. John Billings—” he began. “Hey, stick ’em up!”

Through the open door came a swarm of men; two, four, seven of them. Two of them precipitated themselves upon Jack Billings, who had laid aside the shotgun and had only fists to present to the armed marauders. But Jack could use his fists and he floored two men before he was firmly held by two others.

“Drop that gun,” bellowed a burly blond man at O’Hara. “Surrender in the name of the law.”

O’Hara laughed impatiently. “I represent the law myself,” he retorted. “Who in hell are you?”

“Prohibition enforcement officers,” replied the blond man. “What are you doing in this unoccupied house?”

“With all my troubles I got to answer questions from a lot of Federal snoopers,” said Dan in deep disgust. “I’m Dan O’Hara, of the Massachusetts State Police. I’m hunting a murderer and I don’t want to be annoyed by you rum sniffers.”

“And who is this fellow?” demanded the leader of the revenue squad.

“My deputy,” replied O’Hara. “You guys would have saved yourselves a couple of black eyes if you told the boy who you were.”

“Credentials,” demanded the Federal man.

Dan flashed his badge and produced his card of identification.

“Glad to know you, Mr. O’Hara,” said the revenue officer. “We’re laying in wait for a rum shipment in the cove below and when the light went on up here we figured you were signaling the bootleggers. We knew this house was untenanted. What’s the funny smell?”

“There’s a man upstairs who is very dead,” replied O’Hara. “Want to have a look at him? He’s the person who was killed in a house on the bluff a week ago. The body was stolen and we’ve just located it.”

“It’s not in our line,” said the revenue man promptly. “Sorry to have butted in, Mr. O’Hara. And we’ll appreciate any assistance you can give us in enforcing the law.”

“Listen, sleuth,” said Dan contemptuously. “There have been five brutal murders on this island in a week and I haven’t any time to bother about stimulant purveyors. Just this minute I could use a swift shot of Scotch myself.”

The revenue man produced a flask.

“You come to the right shop,” he said. “It’s cold lying out on the sands all evening.”

O’Hara helped himself to a drink, but Billings refused it. After a minute the rum hunters retrieved their flask and returned to their posts, leaving the original intruders into the Conlin home to themselves.

“Jack,” said O’Hara, “I don’t like those guys. Now I’m going outside for a minute. Being as you are working for Moriaty, maybe you’d like to call up George Lake across the way and tell him that ‘Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight.’ Being an officer of the law, I can’t do it myself.”

Jack grinned. “Think it safe to leave a desperate criminal?”

“Aw hell,” replied Dan, “I don’t think these are the kind of murders that you would be interested in.”

Billings regained the phone and supplied Mr. Lake with some interesting information, after which he joined O’Hara on the porch and they sat down to wait until the local officers relieved them.

“Go see Moriaty tomorrow if he is still on the yacht,” said Billings. “Under the circumstances Tim will be as frank with you as I have been. Haywood positively was in that house on Thursday night.”

“You think he killed Conlin?”

“In self defense perhaps. It may be that Conlin attacked him.”

“But Haywood didn’t need money. No call for him to kill Mrs. Conlin. And he wouldn’t dare show himself in New Bedford or New York, even using Conlin’s name.”

“The mystery is getting deeper every minute,” said Billings. “I have been convinced all along that it was Haywood who was murdered and that the motive was the twenty thousand in cash which he carried.”

“Mrs. Conlin certainly was robbed,” declared Dan. “I’m only a cop, Billings. I got a good two cylinder brain. We need Sherlock Holmes on this job.”

“You’re sure that thing upstairs is Conlin?”

“I have his photograph,” Dan said. “His ears bulge in a funny place. So do this corpse’s. The body is the same complexion, same weight, about, and same proportions. It’s Conlin all right.”

“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to establish the fact that Conlin left Nantucket. Mrs. Conlin, who could identify him positively, has been slain. You’ve nothing to go on except the bulge in the ears. Not enough, O’Hara.”

“Don’t forget they stole the body and hid it in Conlin’s deserted house.”

“And the person who killed Mrs. Conlin a few hours ago is still on the island.”

“Yep. Now, Billings, you could have killed Haywood for the twenty thousand dollars and chucked him out of the airplane over the ocean. You had plenty of reason to hate Conlin. You could have lured him to the Rapidan-Sears house and murdered him. You were in Nantucket the night the body was stolen. You knew the house was deserted and you could have parked him here.”

“But I couldn’t have impersonated him in New York, and I didn’t kill Mrs. Conlin. You know that.”

“Yes,” admitted O’Hara reluctantly. “But you could have had confederates.”

Billings laughed.

“You’ve got blond hair and it’s long in front. You could have combed your hair in the Smith house and left those hairs on the comb.”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” said Billings, smiling. “After introducing Haywood to the servants, I did comb my hair in that bedroom. I went over the bluff without a hat and my hair was disarranged.”

“I ought to pinch you on suspicion,” said O’Hara irresolutely.

“And permit the real killer to escape, eh?”

“That’s the trouble. I can’t make myself believe you did it.”

“Thanks, old man. I didn’t.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes and then a motor car came up the drive and Chief Plympton with two officers descended.

“What’s happened here?” demanded the chief. O’Hara put him in touch with events as briefly as possible.

“This fiend killed Mrs. Conlin while you were sitting in a room only a short distance away,” commented Amos. “I don’t call that very smart.”

“Never mind what you think,” replied O’Hara gruffly. “Put a couple of men on guard here so they can’t snitch this body again. Billings and I are going after the killer.”