Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927

“NOT A WORD,” WARNED THE MASKED INTRUDER TO THE TWO SERVANTS, “OR I’LL BLOW YOU TO HELL AND BACK. I’VE NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, ANYWAY”

Chapter I Beneath a City

Barrow shifted uneasily in the chair he had occupied since early afternoon and watched with misgiving the dignified approach of the Mother Superior of St. Vincent’s Hospital, who was walking down the corridor toward him.

He was in the reception room on the main floor and for hours had been awaiting, hoping against hope, for an opportunity to question one of the patients.

The star investigator of the Citadel Life Insurance Company sensed impending disappointment in the slow and deliberate pace of the nun and she immediately verified his fear.

He arose as she entered the room.

“I am sorry, Mr. Barrow,” she whispered, “but Mr. Gulliver passed away without a word.”

Plainly Barrow’s face reflected the discouragement he felt at this intelligence.

“Thank you for your trouble, mother,” he acknowledged with a bow. And as he noted her sympathetic gesture he added:

“I am not one of Mr. Gulliver’s family, but I did know him quite well.”

A quiet word of consolation from the nun and he left the hospital for the Citadel’s Home Office.

“This,” he thought as he started for the subway station, “is the toughest kind of break. Wonder what Gresham will do about this?”

There was ample cause for the concern Barrow felt over the death of Dave Gulliver, leading fiction writer of his time and, more significant to the Citadel, one of that company’s most heavily covered policyholders.

There had been no hesitancy in issuing whatever insurance Gulliver had asked. He was in his early thirties, vigorous and a man of temperate habits. All this the company’s investigators had learned during the check-up of his application for insurance protection of one hundred thousand dollars.

What was of almost as equal importance, his income justified such coverage. He had plenty of money to carry the load.

The disturbing angle of this tragic end of the young writer from the viewpoint of Barrow’s chief, Andrew Gresham, was that Gresham himself had taken Gulliver’s application and had seen it through until the protection was in force.

That was a little less than a year ago, and the effort Gresham was now making to solve the mysterious death was motivated not so much by a desire to save the Citadel money as it was by a wish to vindicate his own judgment in putting the policy through.

It had all happened that morning in the subway crush at the Fourteenth Street station of the Seventh Avenue subway. Gulliver, in the midst of the surging crowd that milled about on the narrow platform, had, without warning, thrown up his hands and screamed.

Volunteers had carried him across the street to St. Vincent’s and within five minutes of his attack he was on the operating table.

Gulliver was the victim of an attempt at assassination. That was certain. Under his left shoulder blade the surgeons found a tiny wound, apparently made by an unusually slender stiletto, and it had been necessary to perform the most delicate of operations — to stitch the heart.

“Will he live?” Barrow had asked the surgeon who operated.

“Men have been known to,” the specialist had replied, “but it isn’t common. Frankly, I don’t think he will.”

But Barrow, who had hastened to the hospital when news of the attack on Gulliver reached the Citadel offices, waited around for hours in the hope that he could get a word with the wounded man. And he was not alone, for police headquarters had assigned two detectives to the same task.

The writer, however, had died without a word that could give the authorities even a slight clew to his assailant or the motive for the murder.

It was an agitated Gresham that greeted Barrow when the investigator returned to the Citadel from the hospital. He knew before his visitor spoke that there had been nothing learned.

“You heard nothing, of course?” The old chief eyed Barrow closely.

Barrow was sorry for Gresham. He knew the rugged honesty of the man and what this meant to him.

“No.” He slowly shook his head. “I’m mighty sorry about this, chief.”

“Well,” Gresham was resigned to the inevitable, “there’s nothing we can do about it, of course. There is no question, is there, about it being a clear cut case of murder?”

The investigator agreed.

“As far as we’ve gone,” he observed, “we have found nothing in the way of a clew. But it seems to me that when a man is struck down in a crowded subway station — stabbed in the back — it can be nothing else.”

Gresham pointed to the reports that had been forwarded to him from the claim department’s files and now lay on his desk.

“That means,” he said quietly, “that the Citadel pays two hundred thousand dollars to Gulliver’s beneficiary, his wife.”

Barrow whistled softly.

“Whew!” he said. “The coverage was double indemnity?”

Gresham nodded grimly.

“It was,” he said, “and in this case it will have to be paid. You know the courts have made the ruling so often it does no good to contest it.”

Barrow sought enlightenment.

“What ruling?” he asked.

“Why, that when a man meets death ‘without expectation’ it is accidental and must be so construed. Certainly no man expects to be murdered. Does he now?”

Thus the Citadel, unless proof of some collusion could be adduced, was to be a heavy loser.

“There’s just one possibility of repudiating such a claim,” Gresham reminded his investigator, “and I don’t think there’s a chance in this case. If it can be shown that the beneficiary of a policyholder was in any way connected with the conspiracy to murder, then the claim is nullified.”

“Why do you say it is not possible in this case?” Barrow demanded. “Do you know Mrs. Gulliver?”

“Well— And it will be some time before she returns home. I saw her off on the Mediterranean cruise — went down to the pier with Gulliver himself. That angle is absolutely hopeless.”

“Have you notified her?”

“Yes. The Albermarle is due at Marseilles to-day. She probably will hurry home. Be at least ten days before we see her, even if she makes decent connections.”

Barrow had definitely determined upon his course of investigation from this point and now he proposed it to his chief.

“With your consent,” he said, “I’d like to stay on this thing. Perhaps there is something about it that will let us out.” Gresham smiled at the resolute young man before him.

“This is one time, Charley my boy,” he said, “that I have no idea — however remote — that we can do anything. To me it is as obvious as anything could be. Some person who harbored a grudge against Gulliver made a daring attack on him and got away with it. Either that or—”

“Mistaken identity,” Barrow interrupted eagerly. He had thought of that.

“Exactly,” Gresham agreed. “It could logically happen that Gulliver was pointed out in a crowd to a killer who had never seen him before. That has occurred.”

A nod from Barrow.

“What I can’t understand, though,” he spoke now as though to himself, “is how the guilty man got away with the thing in such a crowd.”

Gresham chided him.

“Why,” he said, “sometimes you are almost childlike in your faith in human nature. To begin with, what assurance have you that a man did the killing?”

Barrow gasped.

“Why, you don’t mean that you think a woman—”

“I’m not saying who did it. But we don’t know that a man did. Then another thing. If you were in a milling crowd on the Fourteenth Street subway platform and a man suddenly cried out and fell, what would you think?”

Barrow saw what the chief was driving at. And Gresham was right. When Gulliver had fallen everybody near him believed he had fainted and rushed to his side. It was easy for the killer to lose himself in the confusion.

“Well,” Barrow commented, “it all at least gives us something to think about, and I believe I’ll start in the logical way — on the supposition that Gulliver did have enemies who’d like to do away with him. I have an opinion myself, but I’ll forget it for the time being, at least.”

“What’s that?” Gresham asked.

“That Gulliver has had an affair with some woman and his death may be traced directly to that,” Barrow said with finality.

“You’ll find that is decidedly incorrect,” said Gresham. “Gulliver was not of that type. But go to it, my lad. Do it your own way.”

A further exchange of theories and Barrow set forth on his search for a key to the Gulliver mystery.

Chapter II After the Conference

It was an interesting conference that Barrow interrupted at Police Headquarters a few minutes later, when he presented himself at the offices of Bill Druggan, captain of detectives. He was ushered in forthwith and there found the captain in earnest conversation with Inspector Conalan, and O’Connor, Fay and Thomas, headquarters detectives.

“We’ve been expecting you, Barrow,” Druggan greeted him. “You had Gulliver, didn’t you?”

“We did,” he offered, “for a hundred thousand, with double indemnity.”

Druggan’s eyes widened.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “What a shove that is! Two hundred thou. Gonna pay it?”

“That,” Barrow smiled, “seems to be entirely up to you.”

And he explained his own failure to find anything tangible enough even to begin a search on.

“Have you anything?” he queried.

The inspector here broke in.

“We don’t know,” he frankly acknowledged, “whether we have or not. Gulliver was identified through papers we found in his pocket. He had lost nothing, so far as we can determine. There is just one discovery that has us a little bewildered. Perhaps you can help us. Show him, Bill.” Barrow should have been flattered by this compliment to his powers of deduction. He knew, however, that Conalan, however friendly, meant no such thing. He was a policeman and was merely covering all possible angles.

Druggan produced a sheet of white paper about six inches long and four wide.

Excepting for two words written directly in its center there was no other mark. These read:

The Citadel man studied the paper carefully. It had been folded once. Finally he glanced up.

“Cryptic, to say the least, isn’t it?” he observed. “What does it mean and where did you find it?”

The police inspector looked at his headquarters associates, smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“We don’t know and wish we did,” he replied to Barrow’s, first question, and to the second he offered:

“It was found in the left hand pocket of Gulliver’s coat.”

What importance could be placed upon this scrap of paper, Barrow wondered.

“It must have been a note he had hastily made about something he intended to handle in one of his stories,” he offered. “He was a writer, you know, and I understand that they often do that.”

Druggan grinned triumphantly.

“Dead wrong, old man,” he explained. “This paper was placed in Gulliver’s pocket by the bird who stabbed him.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, there are no finger-prints on it — that is there were none.”

“But what can it mean?”

Conalan again interrupted:

“Why,” he said, “it might mean almost anything. The killer undoubtedly meant to convey the idea that—” He hesitated.

“That what?” Barrow urged.

“That... oh, how in the hell do I know?”

And there the matter rested, at least for the time.

The paper, frankly, was a complete mystery to the police. The person who had written the meaningless words had been meticulously careful to avoid leaving telltale finger-prints and, since the paper itself was the sort that can be purchased at any stationery store in small tablets, there was little upon which to proceed.

Despite this handicap, however, Captain Druggan and the inspector made every effort to check up on the source of the paper. And when Barrow returned to headquarters the following morning, Druggan was disgusted.

“I have been up against some tough ones in my time, Barrow,” he told the Citadel man, “but this has them all lashed to the mast. We haven’t learned a thing of any importance.”

Barrow noted the peculiar emphasis Druggan had placed on the three words “of any importance.”

“Have you learned anything?” he asked.

“Only this. The hall boy in the studio building were Gulliver lived says that Gulliver had a package under his arm when he left home yesterday morning. He couldn’t describe it, but we went to his laundry and found that he had left a bundle there. So that’s disposed of.”

Barrow wondered.

“That means, I suppose,” he asked his friend, “that you’ve about decided that it would be useless to proceed any further?”

“I never look at things that way, Barrow,” Druggan replied, and not without indignation. “I never give up when there’s the slightest hope. But I will say this: If I’ve ever known of a murder that offers as little in the way of clews as this one does, I can’t recall it. We have absolutely nothing to go by.”

The detective captain strummed his desk angrily.

“What gets my goat,” he said savagely, “is that it was done in the midst of a crowd, and we have to admit our helplessness. All the yellow rags in this town will be taking a shot at us now. I feel sorry for the commissioner.”

Druggan’s experience had taught him something. Even that very day newspapers were demanding, editorially, that the slayer of David Gulliver be apprehended.

“It is inconceivable,” one editorial writer put it, “that the police force would acknowledge such a crime possible. Where are the Petrosinis and Crays of yesterday, the real detectives who held their jobs because of ability and not through an alliance with politicians? Give us back our police efficiency.”

Barrow sympathized. He knew that a clever criminal had perpetrated this killing after exhaustive planning, perhaps, and that he had covered his tracks so well, apprehension would be exceedingly difficult if ever accomplished.

The Citadel man further realized that it would be impossible to muzzle the opposition press. The less Druggan said in justification of the failure of his men to bring in Gulliver’s assassin the better off he would be, so far as undesirable publicity was concerned.

“I’d let it go at that,” he advised the captain. “Any man with half a grain of sense knows you are doing your best. Why worry about the others?”

Druggan seemed pleased at this confidence.

“What does this mean to your company?” he asked the investigator.

“Nothing much,” was Barrow’s frank acknowledgement. “I’m satisfied that Gulliver was murdered and that this is strictly a police affair. When his wife returns we shall pay her the two hundred thousand dollars rightfully coming to her and write the policy off the books as just another unanticipated death. We have them right along, you know.”

Druggan nodded.

“Of course,” he said absently. He leaned forward toward Barrow.

“You don’t suspect that Mrs. Gulliver had anything to do with it?” he asked.

Barrow explained Gresham’s acquaintance with the Gullivers and how the Citadel claims chief had seen the writer’s wife off as she started on her Mediterranean trip.

Slowly Druggan nodded his head.

“That,” he observed quietly, “seems to settle any such idea. Well, if anything turns up, I’ll let you know.”

Barrow arose and started for the door.

“Of course,” Druggan said, “you won’t concern yourself with this case again, will you?”

The investigator shook his head.

“No,” he replied. “Not unless you find the guilty man. Then I may want to talk with him a bit.”

He smiled. “Good luck,” he waved, and was gone.

Chapter III Number Two

The days passed without a let-up in the caustic newspaper attacks. Gulliver’s aged mother and father had arrived in New York from their Vermont home, and much was made of their grief over the untimely end of a devoted son.

The commissioner, Inspector Conalan and Captain Druggan were excoriated for what was termed their “indifference.” The papers gave little consideration to the earnest desire of these men to avenge the writer’s death and their long hours of personal investigation. They were not satisfied. Such is the other side of justice.

The flood gates of pathos were opened when the handsome young widow arrived from Europe. Interviewers besieged her aboard ship and columns were written of the pathetic picture she made as she greeted her parents-in-law.

Druggan sat in his office awaiting the arrival of Mrs. Gulliver, whom he had asked to visit headquarters. He was reading the accounts of her arrival and winced at the attacks on the police that held a prominent place in all the stories.

In the midst of these disturbing thoughts the widow was announced and he arose from his chair to greet her. She was bitterly resentful of his failure to snare the culprit.

“Would there be objection,” she demanded after they had exchanged greetings, “to my employing some real detectives on this case?”

Druggan was courteous.

“None whatever,” he assured her, “but I wish you would believe that we have done everything in our power to see that justice is done.”

Her reply hurt him.

“I’m convinced of that,” she said, “and that is why I wish to try it myself.”

Briefly he told her of the sparse clews upon which his men had been working, and cleverly he strove to learn something from her which would give him something more definite upon which to proceed. She could tell him nothing helpful.

Gulliver, she told him in verification of what his men had already learned, was a man of better than average habits. He spent most of his time with her, when she was at home, and so far as she knew he had never made an enemy.

“Of course,” she said, “I can’t answer for his conduct while I was away. You should know something of that.”

The detective captain nodded.

“I do,” he agreed. “We have, of course, inquired very thoroughly about his habits and while our findings should be gratifying to you they are not in the least helpful in solving this mystery. His conduct has been exemplary since you left America.”

This appeared to please Mrs. Gulliver and she was just about to speak when the door of Druggan’s office opened. A uniformed attendant entered quietly and spoke softly to the captain.

“What!” Druggan leaped to his feet. “Send him in here.”

When the attendant withdrew, Druggan turned to his visitor and said quickly.

“This will interest you, Mrs. Gulliver.”

Again the door opened and a huge man stepped through it. Druggan greeted him tersely and presented him to Mrs. Gulliver.

“May I present Detective Thomas?” he introduced. “One of my staff and one of the men who has been working on the death of Mr. Gulliver.”

Thomas bowed.

“This has nothing to do with Gulliver,” he said as he turned to Druggan, “although in one way it has.”

“Go ahead,” Druggan replied. “Mrs. Gulliver may hear it.”

Thomas proceeded:

“It’s just this, chief,” he said. “Fred Tasney, editorial writer of the Morning Sphere, was found dead in his office this morning, when the cleaners went in to straighten up.”

Druggan knew what was coming.

“He had been stabbed to death,” Thomas resumed, “with a long, slender stiletto.”

“In the heart?” the captain prompted.

“In the heart,” Thomas nodded, “from behind. The knife was stuck in under his left shoulder blade.”

“Any clews?”

The big detective wiped a perspiring forehead.

“Only one,” he returned. “They found a piece of paper on the editor’s desk. It was the same kind of paper we found on Gulliver, and had the same thing written on it.”

Mrs. Gulliver gasped. Druggan was impressed.

“What did it say?” he whispered, as he raised his face to his man.

“Two words, that’s all,” Thomas repeated in that aimless way characteristic of one whose mind is fixed on something else. “All it said was ‘There is.’ ”

The speaker shifted on his feet.

“Hell, chief,” he blurted, “I can’t make it out.”

Druggan shook his head dolefully.

“Neither can I,” he conceded, “but I do know that one thing’s certain. Either we’re dealing with the cleverest criminal we’ve had to handle in my experience or with a raving maniac. Which is it?”

Thomas shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know, either,” he said, and he turned to Mrs. Gulliver.

“You see, madam,” he observed, “the police business is not all brass buttons and blue coats. I hope you are convinced that we are trying to do our best.”

Druggan dismissed Thomas, and after a short talk with the widow was convinced that she could do little to enlighten him.

“I wonder,” he mused as he sat at his desk considering this new offense by the “There is” murderer, “whether Barrow’s company had Tasney as a risk.”

Barrow himself answered this question within the quarter hour when he again walked in on Druggan and Conalan.

“Hell,” was the inspector’s greeting, “did you have Tasney, too?”

Barrow nodded.

“We certainly did,” he affirmed, “but it’s not such a blow this time. Twenty-five thousand.”

Druggan smiled, in spite of the disturbed state of his mind.

“This thing has to be stopped,” he observed dryly, “if for no reason other than to keep the Citadel in business.”

Once again Conalan wondered why Barrow should be so interested in a murder.

“You pay claims to the beneficiaries of murdered people, don’t you?” he asked.

“We always do,” Barrow agreed, “when there is no collusion on the part of the beneficiary.”

“Do you think there has been in these two cases?”

“I certainly do not think so,” was the reply, “but I’m in the same boat you are in. I don’t know. I’m looking for information.”

Conalan was a trifle pettish.

“Maybe you can give us some,” he sneered.

“Perhaps,” Barrow assented. “I’ve never heard that inspectors of police are infallible. Are they?”

The Citadel’s investigator smiled as he sent this thrust home, and Conalan thawed in spite of himself.

“Don’t mind me, Barrow,” he returned. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

Earnestly the three discussed the Tasney slaying. The editor had been one of the most active in the denunciation of the police for failing to find the Gulliver murderer.

He had discussed possible clews, all of them manufactured and having no basis in fact, and had insisted from the beginning that competent investigation would bring the offender to justice.

“There is no such thing as a perfect crime,” he had written. “Detectives who know their business will tell you that no major criminal ever planned one whose commission was faultless.”

Police knew better, of course. How else could the long list of unsolved mysteries be explained? But Tasney, goaded possibly by a fraternal attitude toward a fellow writer, had made his demands. Now he lay lifeless, victim himself of an attack similar to that of which he was so bitterly critical.

“What I can’t understand,” Barrow observed, “is how the killer got Tasney alone in his office. He must have been seen going in.”

Druggan knew the facts. In the interval following Mrs. Gulliver’s visit and Barrow’s appearance he had received them from his men. Briefly they were the following:

It was a habit with Tasney to remain in his office after the others on the staff of the Morning Sphere had left for the night. He had been at work on a book — a political history of the city — and found the quiet of — the early morning hours ideal for writing this.

When last seen by Perry Daniels, a reporter who had been on late duty the preceding night, he was busily engaged at his typewriter — so busy that he failed to respond to Daniels’s “Good night.”

The reporter had switched off all the lights in the city room, so that Tasney’s alone remained lighted on that floor.

Two hours later the cleaners reported for duty and found all the lights out. Tasney’s body was discovered by a charwoman who had entered to straighten up his office. A careful search by detectives had failed to reveal a single clew, and, as with the paper found in Gulliver’s pocket, there was not a finger-print in evidence.

It was maddening to Conalan and Druggan.

“What,” Barrow asked them, “do you make of it, if anything?”

Conalan looked carefully at his questioner.

“Just this,” he said with an emphatic shake of a finger. “This has ceased being a case of an ordinary killer. This one is a bird with a homicidal mania, and unless he is caught, and caught quick, there’s no telling what he’ll do next.”

Chapter IV “There Is”

When Barrow returned to the Citadel office he found Gresham eagerly awaiting news of this killing. The old chief of claims listened carefully to Barrow’s recital.

“It looks as though we had better pay the Tasney claim without delay, doesn’t it?” he asked when Barrow had finished.

“Of course,” was the investigator’s ready response. “It seems a tough break that we had to be on both these risks, but it just happened that way. I certainly hope this ‘There Is’ fellow experiences a change of heart.”

Gresham rose from his chair and walked around the desk to Barrow.

“Charley,” he observed, “there is just one way a mind of that type can be suppressed. That’s to corner it and put it where it belongs. Unless they do, you’ll find that we haven’t heard the last from this fellow yet.”

As usual, in matters of this kind, Gresham’s judgment was vindicated. It was exactly ten days later that Barrow was summoned to the office of the chief of claims.

“Seen the afternoon paper yet?” the chief asked.

Barrow had not. Gresham handed it to him, pointing to the glaring headline that ran across the top of the entire first page:

“No killing?” Barrow asked, frankly surprised.

“No,” Gresham answered, “not this time.”

Barrow read the story with interest.

The Parberrys, wealthy New Yorkers, had returned from dinner to their suite in the Bensonia, exclusive Fifth Avenue hotel, to find their butler and maid securely trussed up and gagged. The suite, had been ransacked, but nothing but jewels had been taken.

The story told by the two servants was related by each alone and found to check up perfectly. They had been seated in the butler’s pantry talking when the door leading into the servants’ hall opened without warning and both found themselves looking into the muzzle of an automatic. The man who held the pistol was completely masked.

“Not a word,” he had warned them, “or I’ll blow you to hell and back. I’ve nothing to live for anyway.”

Then he compelled the butler to bind and gag the maid, following which he similarly rendered the man helpless.

Then, at leisure, he looted the suite of all its gems. He had departed the same way he came in. An unoccupied building adjoining offered an ideal place for climbing to one of the Bensonia’s windows. The rest had been easy.

But there were no finger-prints, nor anything to identify the marauder save a sheet of paper placed carefully under a silver salver on one of the sitting room tables. It bore the two fateful words:

Barrow looked at Gresham.

“When and where will it all end?”

“No one knows where,” said Gresham, “but as for when, it will be when they get him.”

And he added with a wry smile:

“It looks as though that moment were far, far away.”

Druggan and his associates in the detective bureau found some consolation in the apparent reformation of the phantom outlaw. At least he had not killed the butler and maid when he well might have.

However, this abandonment of the murder urge was not without its complications.

“It’s this way,” Druggan explained to Barrow when the Citadel man visited the bureau a couple of days following the Parberry robbery. “We were convinced that we had a homicidal maniac with whom to deal. Now we discover that killing is not his only line — that he is a thief as well. In other words, he is not a nut, but a plain bad man.”

“And,” Barrow interjected, “clever with it all.”

Druggan readily assented.

“Is there any doubt of it?” he asked.

“We went over the Parberry’s suite at the Bensonia with a fine toothed comb and found nothing. We know that he entered through a forced window looking out over the roof of a building next door, but no one saw him jimmy it, and no one saw him on the roof. He got away the same way.

“Everything he handled or could have handled has been put under the glass with the same result, only a smudge.”

“Rubber gloves?” Barrow asked.

Druggan nodded.

“I think so,” he said. “We can’t tell, of course, but it looked that way.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Druggan was the first to break it as he rose to his feet and thumped his desk heavily with a clenched hand.

“It’s getting on my nerves, I tell you, Barrow,” he cried, and his large frame shook as he spoke. “It’s the first time a thing like this has happened to me, and I can’t dope it out. What am I going to do about it?”

“I wish I knew,” the Citadel man replied sympathetically. “All I can suggest is that at some time or other he’ll tip his mitt and the best we can do is wait for him to do it.”

He remembered Gresham’s comment.

“I am inclined,” he said, “to string along with poor Tasney. He said there was no such thing as a perfect crime, you know. Eventually they all get caught, and so will this fellow.”

Druggan snorted.

“Yeh, sure,” he fumed, “and in the meantime the most perfect detective force in the world is supposed to sit and twiddle its thumbs waiting for the break. Is that it?”

Barrow smiled.

“Not at all,” he offered. “I can’t visualize you sitting and twiddling your thumbs, Bill.”

He felt sorry for the captain.

“Let’s be sensible,” he urged. “We know that a vicious character is at large in the largest city in the world, a stamping ground that offers him limitless opportunity to carry on his activity.

“Every effort must, of course, be made to trap him, but the fact that he has been so damned clever should not convince any one that he can’t make a mistake. It will happen to him.”

“Perhaps,” Druggan scowled, “but I’ll be damned if we’re going to let him get away with—”

The captain’s telephone sounded an interruption and he reached for it eagerly.

“What is it?” he demanded. A pause.

“What?” he fairly screeched into the transmitter. “I’ll be right over.”

He slammed the receiver back on the hook and stared blankly at Barrow.

“God!” he exclaimed. “My God, Barrow.”

Barrow knew.

“ ‘There Is,’ ” he breathed.

Dully Druggan answered in the affirmative.

“Yes.”

“What is it this time? Murder?”

“No,” said Druggan. “A stick-up.”

He took his hat from a clothes tree and beckoned to the Citadel man.

“Going over to the inspector’s quarters,” he invited; “come along.”

Inspector Conalan was pacing the floor of his room when they entered. He stared at them in silence for a moment or two, then came the explosion.

“I won’t have it, Druggan. I won’t, I tell you. It’s up to you to get this fellow.”

Druggan had not won his spurs without reason. Now, as always, he was as cold as death itself under barrage.

“Any suggestions, inspector?” he smiled maliciously.

“Ye Gods,” Conalan sputtered, and dangled his hands before Barrow. “There’s a pretty spectacle for you. The captain of detectives asking his inspector for suggestions.”

He spun on Druggan.

“What the hell kind of a police officer are you?” he demanded. “Shut up—”

This last as Druggan opened his mouth to answer.

“I’m doing the talking now,” Conalan went on, “and you’re doing the listening, see? And if you know where your apple pie’s pantried, you’re doing some wholesale arresting. Why, damn it all, you haven’t even shown me a suspect since Gulliver hit the concrete up at Fourteenth Street. I want some action, get me?”

Druggan saw the futility of arguing further.

Conalan tossed the police report on the mystery outlaw’s latest depredation at Druggan and bade him read it.

“Read it aloud,” he suggested, “so that Barrow can hear it. Maybe if you do that you’ll know that this bird’s been raising hell under your nose for the last month.”

Druggan read:

Slowly Druggan turned the sheet he had been reading and there, staring up at him as two malevolent eyes, shone the two words of mystery:

“Whew!”

A heavy sigh escaped the detective captain’s lungs and he made a gesture of despair.

“Don’t it beat hell?” he was speaking to Barrow. “Don’t it beat hell?”

The Citadel man nodded emphatically, but Inspector Conalan was cruel in his comment at this.

“I never in all my experience as a policeman,” he said, “and it has been considerable, ever knew of a prisoner that was taken with words.”

Druggan’s lips were set grimly.

“Neither have I,” he agreed. “That’s why I don’t use so many.”

Chapter V Balcolm’s Last Bow

Druggan was worried after he had left the official presence, and there was cause for his restiveness. His climb to his present position in the police department was not made without its obstacles. Time and again he had risked all to bring offenders to justice, and the thought of losing out now was unbearable.

“That would be hard enough,” he told Barrow, “but it’s doubly difficult to take what I’ve just taken from him. He never was a good policeman and never will be. It looks like I’m up against it for certain.”

Again Druggan was right. He was up against it. Just after Barrow left him he was summoned to the commissioner’s office and told by the chief executive of the department that perhaps a new captain was needed for the detective bureau.

“It looks to me, Druggan,” the commissioner told him, “that maybe you are going a little stale. Have you thought of that?”

“I have, Mr. Commissioner,” Druggan replied, “and I am not. The truth of the matter is that we have a super-crook, one who is unbelievably adroit and clever, to deal with and he has every man in the department stumped.

“The newspapers are raising hell about it and somebody has to be the goat. It looks to me like I’m tagged for the honor. I didn’t think this administration was operating that way.”

The commissioner was human. He liked Druggan.

“Pull a chair over here and sit down,” he directed him.

Druggan sat down.

There ensued five minutes of earnest conversation — one-sided conversation with Druggan supplying none of it save an occasional nod.

“And that’s the situation, captain,” the commissioner concluded. “I’m running this department and there is no politics involved. When I said perhaps you were getting stale I was honest. If you are not you know it better than I do. Stop worrying and try to get your man. I’m with you.”

He arose and Druggan, buoyed by this decent gesture from his commanding officer, thanked him.

A sincere handclasp was the commissioner’s response, and Druggan took his leave.

It would be interesting and satisfying to recount that the captain of detectives thereupon sauntered out into Center Street and found his tormentor. But such was not his luck. The days of investigation that followed and left Druggan a bleary-eyed picture of discouragement were as unproductive as the others had been.

Despite the renewal of police activity, the newspapers were as bitter as ever over the elusiveness of the killer-bandit. Druggan, and now even the commissioner, were lampooned by cartoonist and writer.

Citizens began to take mass action, spurred on by this concerted propaganda, and finally one organization, the Voters’ Union, which was devoted to attacking anything vulnerable in the matter of civil government, announced a great meeting, the purpose of which would be to demand immediate action by the authorities.

The principal speaker of the occasion was to be Colonel Bosworth J. Balcolm, banker and chairman of the board of the Coastwise Railroads system, a luminary with whom civic virtue was an obsession and who never missed an opportunity to enlist under its banner. Others almost as prominent were scheduled to address the throng of indignant.

The Garden was jammed to suffocation on the night the meeting was held, so crowded that overflow speeches were necessary.

Unhappy were the police who were assigned to maintain order. They heard themselves and their department raked fore and aft for their mutual failings. Grimly they stood their ground and glared defiantly at the emotional men and women who hissed at every mention of the uniform they wore.

And through it all, from the time the chairman uttered his first word, Balcolm sat in his seat on the platform wearing a satisfied grin. Who would forget for some time the speech he made as the crowd listened attentively?

“What utter nonsense they exude.” he thundered. “They, the ‘finest.’ prattle like lisping babes about the ‘perfect crime,’ and say there is nothing they may do about it.

“We have seen two of our good citizens slain before our very eyes, figuratively, and robbery is rampant. We ask the police who have sworn to protect our lives and property what they are going to do about it. What is the answer?”

A pause, for the effect it might have.

“Nothing,” went on Bosworth J. Balcolm, “has been done by them. We are told the perpetrator of these outrages is clever, so smart that the New York police force cannot apprehend him.”

He smiled and cast his shot.

“And that,” he bellowed, “is probably true.”

He went on:

“This prattle of ‘perfect crime’ is the most arrant nonsense. There is no such thing and they know it. They know as police officers must know that there has been no crime since time began which could not be solved if the proper measures were taken. I say it again and defy contradiction. There is no perfect crime!”

He sat down amid a salvo of applause and listened smugly as the other speakers of the evening made their oratorical appeal to reason.

Presently the meeting adjourned, the band played the “Star Spangled Banner” while the crowd stood at attention, and then a spirited exit march started the mass of humanity for the doors, Balcolm escorted by the chairman. He liked to rub elbows with the common people.

They were passing through the proscenium just outside the arena when the chairman heard an exclamation escape the lips of Balcolm and caught his arm as he stumbled. Those in their vicinity turned at Balcolm’s cry and helped him as he assisted the guest of honor to a lounge near by.

Balcolm was gasping painfully as they lay him on the couch. He was unable to speak, and a physician was hurriedly summoned from the crowd.

“It seems to be a heart attack,” he told the bystanders, as he thrust his hand into the bosom of Balcolm’s shirt.

A look of bewilderment overcast the physician’s features as he withdrew his hand. It was covered with blood.

“God!” he exclaimed. “He’s been stabbed.”

And he hastily turned the banker over and ripped the clothing that covered the wound. A near panic followed among those of the audience who had stopped to witness this unscheduled scene.

Balcolm died immediately, as two stalwart policemen, grimly silent, stood by. The Garden was cleared and police headquarters were immediately notified of the tragedy.

Inspector Conalan, Captain Druggan and the commissioner himself arrived at the Forty-Ninth Street entrance to the big arena at the same time. They entered together and found some of the officers of the Voters’ Union with the body, now guarded by uniformed men.

Druggan strode directly to the couch, put his hand in Balcolm’s coat pocket, hoping against hope that he would find nothing, and drew forth a piece of white paper. Slowly he unfolded it and passed it to the commissioner. There, centered on the page, were the words:

Balcolm’s associates were inclined to be nasty about it. The chairman asked the commissioner:

“Well, what are you going to do about it now?”

Disdainfully the police executive replied:

“I understand you were walking with Mr. Balcolm when they got him,” he said. “If you don’t know how it happened, how in the hell do you expect the police department to know it?”

“I’m not a policeman,” the other retorted.

“That’s right,” the commissioner sneered. “You’re not. From the way you’ve been trying to run the department I thought you might have been.”

They removed the banker’s body to his late home immediately, and police headquarters hummed with activity all night. All suspects, all known police characters were rounded up and brought down to Center Street for questioning before they were released.

It was a brave gesture, but the erudite Druggan could have told you before it was done that they would not get their man that night. Its end found him sitting in his office, weary and beaten.

Chapter VI From Dead Hands

When Barrow arose the morning after the Balcolm murder he had heard nothing of the Garden stabbing. A glance at the first page of the Sphere told him enough, however, to send him winging for the Citadel’s offices. He had reason to suspect that the mystery man’s stiletto had struck heavily into the company’s strong box this time.

He immediately entered Gresham’s office and found the chief of claims eagerly examining records.

The old man gruffed a greeting and continued his calculation. Presently he looked up and passed a memorandum to Barrow.

“That’s all it means to us,” he said, his voice trembling.

The investigator looked at the penciled notation and sat down heavily in the nearest chair.

“Whew!” he exclaimed. “Are you sure you’re right, Mr. Gresham?”

A nod from the gray head at the other side of the desk.

“Can’t be mistaken,” Gresham verified. “Eight hundred thousand. We had him for four hundred thousand dollars straight, and it was double indemnity.”

He leaped to his feet.

“Barrow,” he said, “this is not my money, and the Citadel recognizes its obligations to the extent of wanting to pay just claims, but this thing is getting too damned costly.”

The investigator waited respectfully for the chief to finish.

“The police are supposed to suppress murderers. We rely upon them to do that. But the Citadel is certainly entitled to some representation in this man-hunt, I’m thinking. I want you to go out after this fellow. Get him.”

Barrow was not keen about this.

“Thanks for the compliment, chief. That’s not as easy as it sounds. All the detectives in New York have been trying to for a long time.”

Gresham nodded.

“I know they have,” he said, “and I think they’ve tried hard enough, but they haven’t done it. I think you can. Take as long as you like. But get him.”

Gresham turned away, and Barrow knew further parley was unnecessary.

The chief of claims had unbounded faith in his star investigator, a faith built up by Barrow himself, and it did not occur to him that his man could fail.

So Barrow sallied forth on his toughest assignment.

“To begin with,” he told himself, “I’m going to do something now that I never have done before, and hope I never have to do again.”

And he went up to police headquarters and borrowed a pistol from Druggan.

To the captain of detectives he told the story of Balcolm’s insurance and how Gresham had assigned him to run down the mystery killer.

Druggan smiled wanly.

“I feel as weak as a woman,” he told Barrow, “and God knows if you can land this fellow the police department will owe you a vote of everlasting gratitude. You know how we stand.”

Barrow nodded.

“I know,” he said, “and I’m as much up a tree as you are.”

“How are you going after him?” Druggan asked.

The Citadel man had to concede his lack of an idea on this subject.

“I guess I’ll just have to dope it out,” he told the other.

After a general discussion, during which he learned that the Garden killing had produced not the slightest clew, and that it was considered by the police as a gesture of defiance on the part of the “There Is” killer, Barrow left headquarters for his home, where he proposed to consider quietly the entire mystery from its beginning and then to proceed carefully from that point.

This was orthodox with Barrow. He had never made claim to greatness as a detective. But he had often given it as his conviction that the only logical way to investigate anything was from its genesis.

This fixed the starting point squarely upon the last day of Dave Gulliver’s life. Whatever had occurred later, the mystery outlaw’s depredations had begun with the deadly attack on the writer, and it was there, Barrow reasoned, that it would be well to begin his study.

He was reasonably certain that robbery had not been the original motive, for in each killing none of the victims had been searched.

“Druggan and his crowd can have their own opinion,” he told himself, “but I can’t see anything but a mad man in action here. What could Gulliver and Tasney have done to have stirred up hatred of so pronounced a type? And then there was old Balcolm, killed just because he demanded that the murderer be caught.”

Another consideration was carefully weighed by the Citadel man. Who but a crazy man would stage the killings so openly?

“It must be,” he finally concluded, “that Gulliver in some way offended somebody, either the killer or one of his friends. They might have tried blackmail. At any rate, we’ll find out about that phase.”

He telephoned to Mrs. Gulliver almost immediately and told her of his mission. She, hopeful that this might be the beginning of an investigation that would bring her husband’s slayer to justice, readily assented when he asked if he might see her.

Barrow explained his theory to the widow.

“I should like, if possible,” he suggested, “to see Mr. Gulliver’s most recent correspondence. Is it available? Did he keep a file?”

“Always,” she said, “and there’s no objection to your seeing it.”

She had put the writer’s records away, and now brought them out for the inspection of the Citadel man. There were no letters that would indicate alliances unknown to her, nothing to suggest blackmail or a quarrel of any sort.

She was examining some of the carbon copies of her husband’s stories as Barrow finished looking over the letters.

“Hello,” she suddenly observed, as she held one of the stories before her. “This is one I haven’t seen and know nothing about.”

Barrow was alert.

“A story?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s called ‘Power.’ I didn’t know he had done it. He wasn’t paid for it, at any rate. I know that.”

“Who has the original?” Barrow asked.

Mrs. Gulliver arose and walked over to a small cabinet on a near-by desk. There she opened a card index drawer. Gulliver was that methodical about his work.

“Let’s see,” she said softly. “ ‘Power.’ Here it is.”

There was a pause.

“Why,” she gasped as she turned to the Citadel man, “he was — why — oh, that can’t be — why—”

She was weeping, and Barrow crossed the room and took the card from her hand. There, written in Gulliver’s hand was the notation:

“Taken by hand to Parkinson, editor Master Sleuth. May 5, 19—”

It was Barrow’s turn to register the amazement he felt.

“Why,” he said, “he must have had it with him the morning he was — the morning it happened.”

“He did,” she breathed.

Barrow nodded.

“But it wasn’t found by the police,” he said. “Perhaps he mailed it instead.”

“That,” she replied, “is quite unlikely. Dave was very methodical. I’m certain he must have had the story with him when he was—”

“Then,” Barrow interrupted her, “it seems to me that our next move is to ask Parkinson, of the Master Sleuth, about it.” She agreed, and within three minutes Barrow was on his way to the offices of Master Sleuth, the copy of “Power” in his pocket.

Parkinson received him cordially when he told the editor who he was, and spoke to him of the story.

“Have you seen it before?” he asked, as he handed over the manuscript.

“No,” Parkinson replied. He read through a page or two before handing it back to the Citadel man.

“It’s Gulliver’s stuff all right,” he said. “I’d recognize it anywhere. But I’ve never seen this.”

Barrow was plainly disappointed.

“Well,” he offered, “selling stories is out of my line, but I promised Mrs. Gulliver I’d leave it with you for your consideration. I guess maybe she’d like to see it printed if it’s good enough.”

Parkinson smiled.

“His stories usually are,” he said. “I’ll be glad to read it.”

Barrow left a card and withdrew. He was off on another track now, his objective this time being the offices of the Morning Sphere. He would try to establish a motive for the killing of Fred Tasney.

He had spoken to a number of the late editorial writer’s associates, all of whom assured him that, so far as they knew, Tasney had no enemies, when he determined upon another approach to this phase of the killer’s activities. He asked that he be permitted to read some of Tasney’s editorials dealing with the death of Gulliver.

“It may be,” he told Lauter, the Sphere’s managing editor, “that something Tasney said inflamed the man, just as he resented Balcolm’s attack. I’d like to find out.”

Lauter produced the clippings from the Sphere’s morgue, and Barrow sat down to study them.

It was after he had finished the fourth editorial dealing with the mystery outlaw that Barrow began to see a rift in the tangled mass of theories which had grown out of the killings.

Throughout his writings Tasney had placed a peculiar emphasis on the declaration “there is no perfect crime.”

Could it be — it undoubtedly was — well, anyway.

Barrow hastily gathered the clippings together and returned them to Lauter.

“Get anything?” the editor asked him.

Barrow was cautious.

“Not a thing,” he replied. “It looks hopeless.”

Lauter nodded in agreement. The Sphere had been offering a reward ever since Tasney’s death to any person who might bring his slayer to justice, and Barrow was only one of a score who had gone through the same motions without result.

The Citadel man had not found a dew of importance. But he was convinced by this time that there was special significance in the two-word legend on the slips of death which had been placed in the respective pockets of the victims.

“There is,” he repeated as he left the Sphere office. “Of course, that’s what he means to say. ‘There is a perfect crime.’ How stupid we’ve all been.”

Even so, this finding led to nothing of importance, and the days dragged slowly for Barrow. He was beginning to tire of the chase, which always led back to the starting point.

The police had been equally powerless, they, like Barrow, finding their sole consolation in the fact that the killer had been under cover since the Balcolm attack.

Chapter VII “Not”

Barrow returned to his home one evening fagged out. He had been working on the Parberry end of his hunt and the day had been spent in questioning the maid and butler and going over the route the police assumed was taken by the outlaw.

The investigator found nothing to indicate that they had been mistaken, and consequently was as far away to-night as he had ever been from a solution of the mystery.

He found a note on his dressing table.

“Mr. Parkinson, of the Master Sleuth Magazine, has been trying to get you all day,” the message read. “He says it’s very important.”

Instantly the fatigue was forgotten. Barrow hastily changed his clothes and sought Parkinson’s home telephone number. Throughout the evening he tried every channel of information without success until he thought of the Press Club. There he was told to try the Alcazar, and after several minutes of waiting the editor was raised.

“This is Barrow, Parkinson,” the Citadel man said. “You were trying to get me?”

Parkinson assured him that he certainly had been.

“We can’t discuss it by telephone, Barrow,” he told him. “All the information I have is at the office. Come down early in the morning, eh?”

What was there to do but agree? This Barrow did with good grace and, after a restless night, he presented himself before Parkinson when the editor reached his office the next day.

“I think, Barrow,” Parkinson observed quietly, “that what I am about to tell you will be a surprise.”

“Yes?” Barrow was intent.

“You recall the manuscript, ‘Power,’ that you brought down from Mrs. Gulliver?”

Barrow nodded.

“Well,” Parkinson went on, “we got another through the mails yesterday, one called ‘Leverage.’ ”

The Citadel man could not fathom the editor’s conversation.

“What of it?” he asked.

“I thought you’d ask that,” Parkinson smiled. “Not much, only this. It’s Gulliver’s story in masquerade.”

Barrow’s eyes glistened.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Parkinson was certain.

“I’ve been handling manuscripts twenty years,” he observed, “and, even if I hadn’t, this steal is too palpable to miss. There are whole pages lifted verbatim. But the story has been considerably changed.”

“In what way?”

This was a supreme moment for the editor, and he enjoyed the jolt he handed Barrow as he spoke again.

“In this way: Gulliver’s story, as all of his detective yarns had a way of doing, ended with the authorities triumphant, the criminal in custody and the wrongs by the culprit avenged.”

“This new version runs the other way about. It deals with the perfect crime, the police are outwitted constantly, there is no arrest and the criminal himself is glorified.”

Barrow was no longer doubtful about the significance of this manuscript. Unquestionably the killer had made his one mistake and vanity, together with a desire to boast, were responsible.

At the investigator’s suggestion, Parkinson forwarded a letter to the address written on the top of the first page of the story. The author had signed himself “Don Regneva.” The letter asked that the man call to see the editor of Master Sleuth the following afternoon at three.

“With some exceptions,” Parkinson wrote, “I find your story, ‘Leverage,’ excellent material for our publication. I feel that a short talk will convince you of the merit of our suggestions and that you will be glad to make the changes.”

Barrow and Parkinson discussed at length the reception of the suspect, and it was determined that the editor should do all the talking during the interview. Barrow purposed to sit within easy range of the stranger and watch for hostile gestures.

Parkinson himself readily agreed to secrecy, for the Citadel’s investigator feared the slightest move might scare off the suspect, who, he was convinced, was responsible for three murders.

Hence, when the following afternoon’s excitement began, Parkinson’s office was functioning as it always did — with quiet efficiency.

Promptly at three o’clock the door opened and Barrow saw a man step to the information desk and make an inquiry. Almost immediately Parkinson’s telephone bell rang and the editor directed that the visitor be shown in.

As the man entered the editor’s office, Barrow studied him closely. He was not of forbidding type. Apparently of middle age, he was quietly attired, and save for a peculiar glint in his eyes appeared to be the average American business man. Certainly he was not of the Latin type, as his name implied.

Parkinson introduced himself and then presented Barrow. All three sat down.

“We like your story, Mr. Regneva.” Parkinson began, “but we feel that it can be improved by the slight changes of which I spoke in my letter.”

The visitor said nothing — just sat and stared wildly at the editor.

“So,” Parkinson continued, “we are going to ask you to make some changes. For instance, you hold your criminal, the master mind of the plotting, as a hero, when, in truth, he should not be.”

“Why not?” The demand from the stranger was sharp and incisive.

“Well,” Parkinson sought to soothe the man, “because magazines are not supposed to run contrary to public welfare.”

“In other words,” the visitor rasped, “you are not prepared to tell the truth. Is that so? You can go to hell!”

He arose. Parkinson flushed.

“If that is your attitude,” he said, “what have you to say to this?”

Barrow had arisen from his chair.

Parkinson flung Gulliver’s duplicate manuscript across the desk toward Regneva with a grim smile.

The suspect glanced hurriedly at the papers and thrust his cane toward the seated editor.

“Look out!” Barrow shouted, and as he called he swung hard. There was a crunching thud, a grunt from the lips of the cane swinger and he crashed to the floor.

Parkinson had fallen from his chair to avoid the thrust, and it was well he did, for before the visitor had fallen he had pressed a spring on the handle of his stick.

“Spung!” an eight-inch stiletto had darted from the end of the stick and the lethal weapon now lay slightly stuck in the desk.

“Charming little thing, isn’t it?” he asked of the score of office workers who had rushed to the scene. He pressed the spring and, by means of a string, the blade returned to its niche as speedily as it had appeared.

Regneva began to stir, and Barrow hastily procured sufficient rope to securely bind him.

“Why,” Parkinson asked the Citadel man, “didn’t you kill the dog when you had the chance.”

Barrow replied earnestly.

“I never use a gun,” he said.

He noted Parkinson’s amazement and smiled.

“Oh,” he observed, “I did have a gat, didn’t I? I had forgotten for the moment.”

He reached for the telephone and put in a call for Druggan.

“Hello, Bill,” he greeted the captain of detectives. “This is Barrow. I’ve got the mystery man and I need some help. Come on down.”

Druggan spluttered

“What the hell are you doing, Barrow,” he demanded, “kidding me?”

“Nope, I’m not,” Barrow reassured the captain. “You’d better bring some men with you, and maybe a strait-jacket.”

He hung up after directing Druggan to Parkinson’s office, and then turned his attention to the prisoner, who was writhing in an effort to free himself and screaming imprecations at those who looked on. A gag was speedily provided and the suspect silenced.

Barrow had gone to headquarters with the prisoner, and now he was in Captain Druggan’s office with the commissioner, the inspector and the captain.

The prisoner, heavily manacled and guarded by two husky detectives, sat before them. At a desk in the corner of the room and out of the prisoner’s line of vision sat a stenographer.

Barrow asked gently of Regneva:

“Why have you done these things?”

The prisoner glared back at him.

“They made me sick,” he observed. “Always talking about their smart detectives.”

He laughed hysterically.

“No such thing as a perfect crime,” he chuckled. “I guess I showed them.”

“Is that why you killed Gulliver?” Conalan interjected.

“Yes, that’s why I killed Gulliver,” mimicked the manacled man. “He was always writing about how great the cops were and that they couldn’t be fooled. Hell! He was the guy to start with, wasn’t he?”

It was the same with Tasney and Balcolm, the prisoner told them.

He had set out to prove that the perfect crime could be committed. The robberies were mere incidents, just to annoy the police further.

“So you killed three men for no reason other than that — to show up the police?”

The commissioner was amazed as the tale unfolded itself. He turned to the others when the prisoner snapped an affirmative.

“Of course, captain,” he directed Druggan, “this man is mad. You’ll see that he is given every care.”

Druggan nodded.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “He’s raised hell with my peace of mind for a long time, but there’s nothing else we can do.”

Barrow arose.

“Well,” he remarked to the police officers, “I guess I’ve no further interest in this fellow. We pay. That’s all there is to it. I think I’ll go home.”

As he reached the door he turned toward the prisoner

“You have a peculiar name for a man of your Nordic blood,” he said carelessly. “Where did you get it?”

“It’s my title,” the prisoner smirked. “Spell it backward.”

“ ‘Avenger,’ eh?” Barrow was amused at this further gesture of bravado. “And what did you mean by the words ‘There is’ that you left in the pockets of your victims? Do you mind telling us that?”

Proudly the prisoner drew himself erect.

“I meant, and I still maintain,” he declared emphatically, “that there is such a thing as a perfect crime.”

Barrow grinned annoyingly at the fettered man.

“From the looks of things,” he said quietly, “you made a mistake in those notes. You left out something.”

“Yeh,” sneered the mad man, “what?”

“The word ‘Not,’ ” smiled Barrow, and he stepped through the door, his ears ringing with the maledictions gushing from the mouth of his captive.

“This,” said the Citadel man, as he headed for the Citadel and Gresham, “is one coup that we don’t get credit for — at least not in real money. Parkinson deserves the reward the Sphere offered.”