The Vanishing Corpse

There was much distinctly feline about the ability of Sidney Zoom to prowl around in dark places. He had a catfooted silence of motion, and his eyes had that peculiar quality of adjustment which enabled him to see in the dark.

More — he loved the mysteries of dark side streets, of deserted wharves.

Micky O’Hara, the officer who had the waterfront beat that embraced Piers 44 to 59, had grown accustomed to the gaunt form that appeared mysteriously from the darkness, strode silently across lighted patches, and disappeared in gloomy blotches of shadow. Always that figure was accompanied by an alert police dog which padded faithfully at the side of his master, ears, eyes and nose keenly aware of the activities of the night.

For Sidney Zoom’s yacht was moored at the foot of Pier 47, and dog and master could never sleep without a midnight patrol of the dark places.

Long ago Officer O’Hara had given up trying to chat with the aloof figure. Zoom’s strange personality contained a grimness that was a wall of defense to friendly advances. Only his secretary, Vera Thurmond, with her woman’s instinct, had learned that back of this wall was a vast yearning, a loneliness of soul which craved companionships the personality repelled.

To the world Sidney Zoom was a mystery, a strange man who came and went, who aided misfortune, yet detested weakness.

On this summer night the darkness had a velvet texture, a warm lure of hinted adventure. Officer O’Hara patrolled his lonely beat with a sense of physical well-being, yet with an inner restlessness.

A hundred yards ahead of him, the darkness of an alley between wharves seemed to move with black life. The officer stopped stock-still. The darkness churned with silent motion.

The officer slipped well toward the walls of the dock buildings and started to walk rapidly, noiselessly.

When he had covered some thirty yards, he saw a stalking figure move out of the patch of darkness. Beside that figure, padding stride for stride, came the form of a tawny police dog, well-muscled, steel-tendoned.

Officer O’Hara’s hand came away from his hip. He sighed.

There was no use accosting Sidney Zoom, or giving him a greeting.

The police dog flung his head in a half circle of listening attention and growled. Then, as the warm night breeze carried the scent of Officer O’Hara to the dog’s nostrils, the throaty growl subsided, and the dog gave his tail a brief wag.

So much he gave by way of friendly greeting, and no more. The dog reflected the personality of his master.

Sidney Zoom did not even look around, but strode across the lighted sidewalk to the next alley which opened between the rambling buildings, the littered wharves, and vanished, swallowed in the shadows.

Sometimes Officer O’Hara patrolled those wharf alleys. Upon such occasions he took out his electric flashlight and sent the beam cutting through the thick darkness. For it was like the inside of a pocket in those gloomy passageways, at one end of which the lighted street showed as a golden oblong, at the other end of which the lap-lapping of waters gave forth a sound of ceaseless mystery.

But Sidney Zoom made his way through the darkness with sure-footed stealth, a shadow within shadows, a bit of moving darkness against the black blob of night.

Officer O’Hara had come almost even with the alley mouth into which Zoom and his dog had disappeared when he heard a sudden scream, the patter of swift-running feet.

He stepped back, flattened against the wall of one of the rambling structures, reached for his night stick and made sure that his revolver was loose in its holster.

From the mouth of the alley, plunging from the darkness into the light of the street, came a swift figure. It ran with the light agility of a startled deer.

Officer O’Hara jumped forward.

“Halt!” he yelled.

The running man gave one frightened glance, then burst into fresh speed.

O’Hara tried to give chase.

He sighed as he realized the futility of his efforts. Running with a flatfooted stride in which main strength and awkwardness predominated, he was no match for the slender figure that slipped along the pavement like a wild thing.

O’Hara pulled out his blue steel weapon and prepared to fire a shot in the air. If that wasn’t sufficient...

There was a swirl of motion behind him.

The night gave forth a soft tattoo of beating feet. The police dog went past him like a flash of light.

Officer O’Hara lowered his gun and slowed his speed.

He could hear the pad of cushioned feet on the pavement, claws scraping cement, and then the running figure gave one frantic glance of alarm, one more scream.

The police dog went into the air like a steel spring. The shoulder of the dog crashed against the back of the running figure, and the momentum of that impact sent the runner staggering, off balance.

A stumble, and the man was down.

The dog stood over him, fangs bared, a rumbling growl coming from the throat. Yet his ears were cocked, alert and interested.

There was another rush of motion.

For the second time a sprinting body hurtled past Officer O’Hara. This time it was Sidney Zoom, running easily.

“Watch out! He may have a gun!” panted the officer.

But Sidney Zoom gave the warning no heed.

He sprinted up to the sprawled figure and made a gesture with his hand. The dog, obedient to that gesture, drew back.

“Get up,” said Sidney Zoom.

At that moment Officer O’Hara arrived.

“What’s — it — all — about?” he asked, panting heroically after his sprint.

But the question was unanswered. The figure rolled to its side, pillowed a head in an arm and started to sob.

“A hell of a guy!” said O’Hara, staring scornfully at the slight form that was a huddle of black on the sidewalk, shaking with sobs. “Get up!”

And he reached a brawny hand to the collar of the coat.

The paunchy weight of the officer, which had hindered him as a runner, gave him the advantage here. As a steel derrick lifts a weight, the strong arm of the policeman hoisted the slender figure up to its feet and to the light.

“B’gosh!” exclaimed the officer as the cap fell off and a shock of coppery hair dropped to the shoulders. “It’s a woman — a slip of a girl!”

Sheer surprise held him speechless.

She was dressed in the clothes of a man, just a trifle too large for her. Her eyes were dark with terror. The lips were pale, the cheeks chalky. She was young, and yet there was an air of self-reliance about her, despite the white terror which gripped her.

Officer O’Hara had within him a paternal streak, but the years of pavement pounding as an officer had dulled his sympathies.

“Now then, young lady,” he growled, “out with it!”

But the girl shook her head. Despite her fear there was determination in that headshake.

“Who are you?”

Another shake of the head.

“What were you doing here?”

Silence.

“Why did you run?”

More silence.

Officer O’Hara produced his handcuffs. The streetlight glittered from the nickeled steel.

“I’ll be putting the bracelets on yez, and callin’ the wagon,” he said.

This threat had always before been more than sufficient to crash through the silence of any woman. But, in this case, the threat was in vain. The girl stood, slender, silent, uncomplaining. The fear was still in her eyes, but her lips were clamped with decision.

“Perhaps,” said Sidney Zoom, “we can go back to the wharf and see what she was doing.”

It was the first time he had spoken. His voice held a peculiar timbre, something of the same quality which makes the blood quiver at the sound of a tom-tom beating, or the booming of an African drum as it throbs out of the jungle darkness.

Officer O’Hara put out his big hands, patting the garments of the girl with a practiced hand. She winced at his first touch, then stood still. Nor did she move when the officer gave an explanation and plunged his hand into the inside pocket of the coat. He brought out a pearl-handled revolver, short-barreled, nickeled.

He broke it open.

The brass shells showed as dull circles of coppery color, and two of those shells showed the mark of a firing pin. The other four were unfired.

Officer O’Hara smelled the muzzle of the gun.

“Shot recently — within an hour,” he said, and glared accusingly at the girl.

“This,” he added, almost regretfully, “is serious.”

The girl said nothing.

He snapped one of the handcuffs around her unresisting right wrist, led her back to the wharf from which she had rushed. His flashlight sent a white beam darting among piled boxes, odds and ends of junk, out into the darkness where the bay swallowed the beam of light.

Sidney Zoom scorned such a laborious method of search. He caught the eye of the police dog.

“Find, Rip,” he said.

The dog darted on ahead, nose to the rough timbers, giving an audible sniffing as he ran in questing circles. He picked up the trail, followed it, getting off to one side from time to time, only to swing back.

The girl hung back until the steel bit into her wrist.

Officer O’Hara raised his flashlight. The dog gave a single swift bark, then remained poised, forepaws spread apart, eyes glittering greenly in the light that was reflected from the flashlight.

Between those forepaws was a little black object, a hand purse of metal mesh, lacquered black.

Officer O’Hara stooped and reached.

The dog’s fangs glittered in the light as he made a snapping charge. Zoom snapped a command. The dog drew back, wagged his tail and sat down.

O’Hara picked up the bag.

“This yours?” he asked the girl.

She made no answer.

The officer opened the bag. He handed his flashlight to Sidney Zoom, who played the light beam upon the interior of the bag.

There was a powder puff, a handkerchief, a metal-cased lipstick, and a pasteboard cartridge box upon which was a green label bearing the name of a well-known manufacturer of ammunition.

The officer took the box from the purse. It was heavy. He shook it, then pulled back the cover.

It was about half filled with cartridges. The rest was wadded with cotton. The officer pulled back that cotton, then gasped. His sucked-in breath was an exclamation. His eyes bulged with sheer surprise.

For the beam of the flashlight seemed to have been magnified a thousandfold and then split up into coruscating beams of purple-white fire that darted about like some imprisoned display of northern lights.

“A diamond!” he exclaimed.

The stone was white, polished, filled with cold fire, and it was so large that it might well have caused the officer to exclaim.

He turned accusingly to the girl.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“The Diamond of Death,” she said, casually, as one might mention the title of a book, and then she became silent once more.

Special Detective Sam Frankly arrived on the scene within fifteen minutes of the time Officer O’Hara placed a call from the police box. He inspected the wharf, the purse, the diamond and the prisoner.

Zoom’s story was simple. He had seen the figure jump from the dark shadows and throw something in the direction of the water. That something had thudded to the planks of the wharf floor. Then the figure had sprinted past him.

Knowing that Officer O’Hara was coming along the street, and thinking the running figure would plump directly into his arms, Sidney Zoom had not given chase at first, nor had he released his police dog. It was only when he saw that the runner had turned the other way, that O’Hara was getting ready to shoot, that he had allowed the dog to sprint and capture the fugitive. Then Zoom had run swiftly after the dog to be where he could control him. During all of that time he had thought the fugitive was a man.

The detective listened with scowling perplexity.

The girl would say absolutely nothing. She had apparently tried to throw the purse with the cartridge box and the diamond into the black waters of the bay. There it would have splashed from sight and never been recovered. She had failed by a matter of inches. The black mesh bag had been within a foot and a half of the water when the dog had found it.

The girl refused to give her name, her address, or to account for her presence. Detective Frankly put her into his car and took her to headquarters. He was closely followed by Sidney Zoom, who was on terms of intimacy with most of the police department heads.

An examination by the matron revealed that the girl had retained her feminine underwear under her masculine disguise. The underwear had been tailored. Police had ascertained the name of the maker by a sewed-in label, had routed him out of bed and learned that the girl was probably Miss Mildred Kroom, a niece of Harrison Stanwood, who was an eccentric collector, residing in the exclusive district in the west end.

Since this was kept from the girl, she felt certain that her incognito had been maintained, and she still kept her silence.

Zoom had solved several mysteries for the police. He was friendly with the executive heads, and he knew just how far a civilian could, and could not, go in connection with police activities.

Hence Lieutenant Sylvester decided to ride out to Stanwood’s house with Zoom in Zoom’s car and let the squad of detectives go in the police car.

They arrived at about the same time.

The men were taking no chances. Two of them darted through the shadows to the back of the house before the other two detectives thumped up on the front porch and pressed the bell button.

The interior of the house jangled with the summons of the bell for many minutes before there was an answering stir of sound from an upper floor. Then they heard the shuffle of slippered feet on the stairs, and a Japanese servant attired in silken bathrobe and with sleep-swollen eyes demanded to know who was ringing the bell.

Satisfied that it was the police, he opened the door and the men walked into a reception hall and through it into a library.

Lieutenant Sylvester took charge of the questioning.

“Mildred Kroom lives here?”

“Yes-s-s-s,” said the Japanese.

“Tell her we want to talk with her.”

“She is-s-s asleep.”

“All right. We’ll go up. Show us her room.”

The servant hesitated for a fraction of a second, then shrugged his shoulders. He went up the stairs. Two of the men followed him.

There could be heard the sound of a muffled knocking, twice repeated, then the rattle of a doorknob. Voices rumbled in conversation. Then there were feet on the stairs once more, followed by a shuffle of slippers and a voice that hysterically rattled excited comment.

The detectives came into the room.

With them was a man in bathrobe and pajamas whose tousled hair gave him a look of wild excitement. He did not need to be questioned. Words flowed from his lips with the explosive rapidity of bullets from a machine gun.

During the few seconds that sufficed for him to enter the library and be seated, Sidney Zoom was able to get a more or less complete history of the man.

His name was Charles Wetler. He was a secretary to Harrison Stanwood. He said the girl, Mildred Kroom, a niece, rather an erratic, impulsive girl who had been expelled from college, had come to assist her uncle in research work and had been the cause of considerable anxiety. She had speculated on the stock market and lost heavily. Yet she was the only kin of Harrison Stanwood, and he was fond of her.

Lieutenant Sylvester advised Zoom of what had been discovered from a hasty search of the girl’s bedchamber. The bed had not been slept in. Her clothes were scattered about. Bureau drawers had been hurriedly ransacked. The girl was missing. It became more apparent than ever that the girl who had made such a mysterious appearance within the dark alley between the wharves was Mildred Kroom, but what she was doing there was an unanswered question.

The officers made a hasty check of the other occupants of the house. There were the Japanese servant, Hashinto Shinahara, an assistant, Oscar Rabb, and Philip Buntler, an old friend. Harrison Stanwood was a collector of rare gems, paintings and curios. He wrote articles from time to time. The articles were authoritative and compiled after the most exhaustive research.

The officer ordered the household to be aroused.

Phil Buntler was fully clothed. His drab eyes were preoccupied with thought, but there was no trace of sleep in them. He said he had been sitting up, reading an interesting work on rare pottery.

His mind seemed still wrapped in the contents of the book. He frowned when he learned of the reason for his being summoned into the drawing room. His comment on the wild pranks of the present generation was scathing, unsympathetic.

Oscar Rabb was a young man, nervously alert, attentive, but with a washed-out personality. He seemed a yes man who would agree to anything.

The Japanese servant showed his teeth through lips that smiled, and regarded the visitors through black eyes that were unsmiling.

Harrison Stanwood did not answer the knocks on his bedroom door. The Japanese servant made the report. The officers went up to investigate. They found the bedroom empty, nor were there any signs that it had been occupied that evening.

Questioning elicited the fact that Stanwood sometimes worked late in his study, poring over books and tabulating facts. The study was on the ground floor, but a short distance from the library.

The men moved toward it in a knot. It seemed that some unspoken thought actuated them with a common purpose, gave to their quest some pall of impending disaster.

It was Charles Wetler, walking rapidly in advance, with nervous, jerky strides, who tried the study door. It was locked.

“Oh, Mr. Stanwood!” he called.

Silence.

“Got an extra key?” asked Lieutenant Sylvester.

The men stared at each other vacantly.

“Can do,” said the Japanese, producing a key from his pocket.

The police officer looked at him in suspicious appraisal for a moment, then fitted the key to the lock. The bolt clicked. They crowded together, each one anxious to peer over the threshold, then they fell back.

The room showed that there had been considerable commotion in it. There were books on the floor, drawers had been pulled from tables. The safe was open and the papers and contents had been thrown on the floor. There was a dark red pool of a gruesome character in the center of the table.

It reflected the lights as in a dulled, red mirror.

There was no sign of Harrison Stanwood.

Phil Buntler grunted, staring with his preoccupied eyes at the red blotch on the table.

“Murder,” he said.

Lieutenant Sylvester turned to the knot of men.

“Get out,” he snapped, “and stay out. We’ll send for you as we want you. Joe, you and Jerry see that these men don’t separate. Take them in the library and keep ’em there.

“Pete, you and Tom better come in and help me check things over.”

Sidney Zoom strode back to the library.

He paced the floor with long, nervous strides. From time to time he lit a cigarette, inhaled fiercely. His head was thrust forward, his eyes gleamingly alert. They were the seeing eyes of a hawk, black pinpoints in the center of twin chunks of cold ice. Unwinking, he stared at the floor as he paced the room.

The others huddled into a group, seemingly wishing the protection of human companionship to guard them against the black mystery of the house. From time to time they talked in low, cautious tones. The detectives listened attentively to every word and that air of concentrated listening had its effect. Conversation died to a dribble, then faded away entirely.

A door slammed.

Steps pounded down the corridor.

Lieutenant Sylvester stared grimly into the room. His eyes were dark and smoldering. He spoke savagely.

“A nice mess,” he said. “There’s a typewritten note in that room threatening Stanwood with abduction if he doesn’t pay twenty thousand dollars. The note claims he will be drugged and removed.’

“And there’s the will, lying right out on top where we’d be sure to see it. That will leaves half of the fortune to Mildred Kroom. The other half goes to his employees with a share to his dear friend, Philip Buntler.

“That makes everyone here a possible beneficiary and gives everyone a possible motive. What do you say to that, eh?”

The men looked at each other, each trying to read the other’s expression.

“Murdered!” blurted Oscar Rabb.

“They can’t prove a murder unless they find the body,” said Phil Buntler, speaking almost dreamily. “They’ve got to find a corpus delicti.”

Lieutenant Sylvester crossed the room, thrust his face close to the scientist and snarled, “Is that so! You seem to have been reading up on the law of murders!”

But Buntler was unconcerned. He nodded casually.

“Happened to read a detective story a few days ago that mentioned the point. I asked a lawyer friend about it, just out of curiosity. He said it was so. No corpse, no murder, no murder, no conviction. That’s the law.”

Lieutenant Sylvester retained his menacing manner.

“Well, my friend, that crack is quite likely to send you to the chair.”

Buntler wrinkled his eyebrows. His washed-out eyes seemed to widen and gain something of a sparkle.

“Me?”

The officer’s answer was like the crack of a whiplash.

“Yes, you!”

The scientist inquired in a mild tone, as though the accusation failed to move him, “Have you, then, found the body?”

“No!” snapped the officer. “I presume you, as a scientist, know of several ways a body could be disintegrated and destroyed!”

Buntler puckered his forehead in thought.

“Only two,” he said, then added, as an afterthought, “that would be practical.”

Sylvester shook his head.

“No,” he said. “If you’d done it you’d have been smooth enough to keep from making incriminating statements.”

His knuckles rubbed against each other as he seesawed his clenched hands back and forth. “Look here,” he said, “any of you ever hear of a big diamond that Stanwood had? A stone that might be called the Diamond of Death?”

Phil Buntler nodded, a nod of precise affirmation.

“Now that I think of the matter,” he said, “I am convinced that you are referring to the rather large diamond that came from one of the tombs which I uncovered in the Amazon district.

“These tombs dated back hundreds of years to a lost race that seemed to have vanished from the earth. The tombs were overgrown with jungle growth and were discovered quite by accident. They contained the usual curse to prevent ghouls from disturbing the remains. I gave the diamond to my friend, Harrison. Doubtless it would be referred to by some of the more tragic-minded as the Diamond of Death.”

The Japanese servant bowed.

“Car gone, sir,” he said.

“Whose car?”

“Boss man’s car, sir.”

“A sedan, a big Packard,” said Wetler. “It’s colored a light blue.”

The Japanese nodded.

“Probably taken by the girl,” observed one of the officers.

The Japanese shook his head.

“No, sir. Girl take her car. Ford car.”

Sylvester’s forehead creased into a dark frown.

“How do you know?”

The Japanese smirked.

“Car gone, girl gone. Her car. She must have take, sir.”

But there was a subtle atmosphere of insincerity about the man that caused the officer to glower at him and roar: “You know she took her car! How do you know it?”

The Japanese smirked again.

“Car gone,” he said, and a mask of Oriental impassivity settled upon his countenance.

The detectives searched the premises, questioned the men individually, and admitted themselves baffled. It was three o’clock in the morning by the time they decided to concentrate on the girl who was held at headquarters.

Lieutenant Sylvester returned to his office, ordered the girl brought in for questioning. And Sidney Zoom, because he had been a witness to the girl’s flight, was allowed to be present.

But that questioning was as futile as had been the previous questions. The girl simply sat mute.

The officer raved, cajoled, threatened. The girl’s lips were sealed. She stared straight ahead, eyes expressionless.

The telephone rang.

Lieutenant Sylvester frowned at the instrument, disdaining to answer it. He was concentrating on the task of getting the truth from the lips of the silent girl.

There was an apologetic knock at the door. An officer thrust his head into the room.

“Beg pardon, Lieutenant, but there’s a man on the line in connection with this Stanwood affair. It’s important.”

Lieutenant Sylvester grabbed at the telephone, scooped the receiver to his ear.

“Okay, this is Lieutenant Sylvester speaking. Yeah... What?... You sure?... Where are you now?... You know him, eh?... You wait there. I’ll be there in seven minutes.”

He slammed the receiver back on the hook and motioned to an officer to remove the girl from the room. Then he turned to Sidney Zoom.

“Come on, Zoom. Your car’s outside and all ready to go. I want you to drive me out to the yacht basin. Your yacht’s located out there and you know the country. There’s a yachtsman just came in from a long trip, friend of Stanwood’s. He says the Stanwood sedan is parked against the side of a wharf with the lights on and old Stanwood is dead inside the car.

“He says there’s a dagger in his chest and that the car doors are locked. Funny business. Says there can’t be any mistake. He knows Stanwood well, been cruising with him several times.”

Zoom was on his feet, a hand on the doorknob.

“Who is the yachtsman?” he asked.

“Chap by the name of Bowditch.”

Zoom nodded approvingly.

“I know him well, a conservative man and a good sailor.”

They went down the stairs, out into the night that was just commencing to crispen with the tang of early morning. Zoom snapped his roadster into speed. They tore through the deserted streets, flashed past intersections and whizzed into the vicinity of the waterfront.

“A telephone in the Bayside Yacht Club House,” said Lieutenant Sylvester. “Know where it is?”

Zoom nodded, pushed down the throttle, swung the car, slammed on the brakes, rounded the corner of an alleyway between two of the wharves, and skidded to a stop where an office-like structure bordered the dark waters of the bay.

The east was just commencing to show streaks of light.

A man came running out to meet the car.

“It’s down here a couple of blocks, parked directly in front of where I dock my yacht.”

He caught Zoom’s eye, started, then nodded.

“Zoom! This is indeed a pleasure. How are you?”

Zoom shook hands and introduced Bowditch to the lieutenant.

“Better hop on the running board,” said Sylvester. “This is important.”

The man jumped on the running board. Sidney Zoom whirled the car, backed it, cut loose the motor in low gear, and the machine snorted forward like a frisky colt.

They went a block, turned down a little jog in a street, and came to a place where a parked sedan showed a glowing light from the dome globe.

“He’s in there. It’s ghastly.”

Sylvester nodded absent-mindedly. Spectacles that were ghastly meant but little to him. He had seen too many.

“Anybody else see it?” asked Sylvester.

“Yes. There were two of my crew. They were with me when I came up. I sent them back to the boat, because I was afraid there were rough characters around, and I had some rather valuable things on the yacht.”

Sylvester snorted.

“Rough characters is right!” he said.

Zoom drew his car up in behind the parked sedan.

“You’ll see it lying there on the floor, the face turned up toward the light. There’s a dagger in the breast, right here.”

And Bowditch indicated the right lapel of his coat.

Lieutenant Sylvester jumped from the car, lit upon the pavement with eager feet while the others were getting out, and ran to the sedan. He pressed his face against the windows, then jerked futilely at the door.

“It’s locked!” said Bowditch. “I tried ’em all.”

But Lieutenant Sylvester motioned them back with a fierce gesture.

“Keep away! Don’t touch the handles of those doors. I’ll be wanting fingerprints. He’s been taken out.”

“What!” Bowditch yelled incredulously.

Then he craned his neck forward, holding his hands behind him, careful not to touch the handles of the doors. Back of him, several inches taller, Zoom peered over his shoulder.

The sedan was empty.

The dome light showed the interior in a sickly light that was turning wan and yellow now that dawn was in the air. There was a red pool on the carpet in the rear of the sedan, and that was all.

“Sure he was in there?” asked Sylvester skeptically.

“Absolutely certain. I’ve had him out on my yacht often enough. I should know him when I see him. We’ve had interests in common. Once we purchased a collection together.

“Outside of Phil Buntler, I’m about the only close friend he has in the world. I saw him plain, I tell you. And my two men recognized him as the one who had been on cruises with us. He was lying on his back, his face tilted back. It was catching the full rays of the dome light. You couldn’t mistake the face. It was Harrison Stanwood all right.”

Lieutenant Sylvester nodded.

“Okay. You stick by that story and I’ll sure give someone a fry. That establishes the corpus delicti. You’re sure about the dagger?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“And that he was dead?”

“Ugh, I should say so. His face was all gray and his eyes were like glass. They looked awful! Awful!”

The officer nodded grimly.

“Okay. You two stay here. I’m getting down some fingerprint experts. Then I’m going to get rough with somebody.”

The police went through their routine. The car was gone over for fingerprints. The locks were removed from the doors. The red pool was tested to make certain that it was human blood.

The fingerprints found on the door handles were those of Frank Bowditch, the yachtsman. There were no other prints save such prints as were old and had been made by Harrison Stanwood himself.

It was Stanwood’s car, beyond a doubt. And the man who locked those doors upon the corpse had been careful to remove all fingerprints — unless that man had been Bowditch.

But what happened to the body after it had been found in the parked car? Why was it that the girl’s coat pocket held a thirty-eight-caliber revolver with two discharged shells, while Stanwood seemed to have been done to death with a dagger?

Sidney Zoom retired to his own yacht and apparently lost interest in the case. But he scanned the newspapers and from time to time rang up friends in the police department.

The police had found a bullet embedded in the wall at Stanwood’s house. That bullet had been fired from the weapon found in the girl’s pocket. That much the experts agreed upon with absolute certainty. But the girl refused to talk. Her silence continued in spite of all sorts of threats. On the other hand, she employed no attorney and seemed content to remain in jail pending further investigation by the police.

Matters continued at that deadlock for an even week. Then the body of Harrison Stanwood was discovered in its final resting place.

This time there was no question of a corpse being spirited away from under the noses of the police.

Children playing in a rubbish heap had noticed the foot of a man sticking out from under some cans. They had summoned parents. The parents had summoned the police.

The body was decomposed, but identification was positive.

There was a bullet in the left shoulder. That bullet, also, had come from the weapon which had been found in the girl’s pocket. There was a dagger wound in the left side of the chest, and that dagger wound had undoubtedly resulted in death. The blade had penetrated the heart.

Sidney Zoom read of the gruesome find and nodded his head. So might a man nod who had predicted a certain event, and that event had duly come to pass.

Zoom rang up Lieutenant Sylvester.

“The Kroom girl will talk now. I’ll be interested to know what she says,” he said.

The voice which rasped over the wire at him was keen with impatience.

“How do you know she’d talk now?”

“I just guessed she would.”

“Well, you’re a good guesser. She’s told her story and hired a lawyer. Whether we can keep her or not I don’t know.”

“What was her story?”

“Better come up to headquarters. There are a couple of questions I want to ask you. You may turn out to be the main witness of the prosecution against the girl.”

Sidney Zoom smiled grimly.

“I may,” he admitted, and hung up the receiver.

There had, for years, been a friendship between Sidney Zoom and Captain Mahoney of the police force. The two men held each other in mutual respect, which is the basis of all lasting friendship.

Zoom was surprised to find that Captain Mahoney was awaiting him at headquarters when he came to answer Lieutenant Sylvester’s questions.

Mahoney was a small man with a large mind. He had a voice which was rarely raised above a conversational tone, and he did not usually concern himself greatly over individual cases, but gave his attention to matters of policy.

Now he was smoking a long perfect with those meditative puffs which denote the thinker. He shook hands.

“Sit down, Sidney. I want to talk with you.”

Zoom sat down and crossed his long legs.

“The girl’s acting funny. She’s acted funny all the way through,” said the police captain.

Zoom nodded.

“She never made any statement or any defense until the body was found and she knew just where that bullet from her gun was located. Then she got an attorney.

“Here’s her story — now that she’s consulted with her lawyer. How much of it is hers and how much of it is his I don’t know.

“She claims she had been out on a party that had quite a bit of action and some gin, that she came home and went to see her uncle, that there was a light in his study and the door was unlocked. She walked in and found the room in confusion, very much as we found it.

“She says she was panicky and that she went out and locked the door and ran to her room. She always had the revolver in her dresser drawer, and something made her look for it. She found it in place, but detected an odor of burned powder, so she broke it open and found two shots had been fired.

“Then she happened to look in her jewel case and found the big diamond that she calls the Diamond of Death. It seems she’d given it that tag in talking with her uncle. The girl’s superstitious, or claims she is, or her lawyer claims it for her. It’ll sound all the same to a jury.

“She figured that her uncle had been murdered and that someone intended to blame the crime on her. So she started looking for anything else that might have been planted in her room.

“She turned everything upside down in a hurried search, then put the incriminating articles in a metal mesh bag and started for the waterfront to throw them in the bay. She said she figured that she might be watched, and that no matter where she concealed the things they’d be found. But if she pitched them in the bay it would be impossible to find them.

“Now here’s the case we’ve got against her. The diamond belonged to the dead man. The bullet from her revolver was found in his body, although not in a position that would prove fatal. Her Ford car was found parked within two blocks of where you found her when she was trying to dispose of the stuff.

“The sedan belonging to Harrison Stanwood was found within half a dozen blocks of where her Ford was parked. That car held the body. It was locked in the car and the lights were on. Later on the body disappeared.

“But there are holes in the case. The girl has played a game that’s almost sure to win. She’s kept her mouth shut until she’s found out everything that we have. Then, when she knows our complete case, she starts talking and gets a lawyer to coach her.

“Now there’s a lot of public sentiment against this girl. The circumstantial evidence against her points to coldblooded murder. But we can’t afford to guess wrong. We can’t afford to have a case of this sort result in an acquittal. If she’s innocent, we’ve got to know it now.”

Captain Mahoney peered shrewdly at Sidney Zoom.

Zoom lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, snapped the match out with an impatient gesture of the wrist and nodded.

“She is,” he said.

“Is what?”

“Innocent.”

Sylvester snorted.

“You talk like a fish!”

“Shut up, Sylvester,” said Captain Mahoney.

The two officers looked at Zoom. Sylvester’s stare was moodily hostile. Captain Mahoney’s glance was that of one who patiently waits.

Sidney Zoom broke the silence at length.

“Was there, perhaps, a cut in the right-hand side of Stanwood’s coat when you found the corpse?”

Captain Mahoney’s face did not change expression, but Sylvester’s face twisted in surprise.

“Yes,” said Sylvester.

Zoom pursed his lips thoughtfully and regarded the smoldering tip of his cigarette with judicial deliberation.

“Well?” said Captain Mahoney.

Sidney Zoom’s lips twisted in the ghost of a smile.

“You won’t believe what I’m going to tell you,” he said.

“Go ahead,” invited the captain.

Sidney Zoom took a deep inhalation, sucking in the smoke from his cigarette, exhaling it through his nostrils.

“Harrison Stanwood’s body wasn’t in the sedan when Bowditch put in the telephone call,” he said.

Sylvester laughed grimly.

“Bowditch was lying, eh? You want to involve him, huh?”

Zoom’s smile was paternally patient.

“No. Bowditch thought he saw a body. He didn’t.”

“What did he see, Sidney?” asked Captain Mahoney.

“A wax dummy.”

“A what?”

“A wax dummy. The man who committed that murder wanted to make certain it would be blamed on the girl. If there was going to be any hitch in the thing he didn’t want to become involved himself.

“He’d handled it all the way through so he could either go ahead with the murder or else quit. If the girl was going to get the blame, he’d go ahead. Otherwise, he’d quit. He knew enough law to know the police needed a corpus delicti in order to convict the girl. In this case it meant a corpse.

“Now here’s my theory of the case.

“The man who wanted to eliminate Stanwood sneaked up on him, held ether or chloroform to his nostrils, then removed him from the house. Before he did that, he inflicted a superficial wound with the girl’s gun, and fired one shot into the woodwork of the study. Then he planted clues in the girl’s room.

“The girl suspected something and tried to remove those clues. She was caught. Unwittingly, I helped the real criminal by assisting in retrieving the clues the girl was trying to get rid of.

“But the murderer was playing safe. He had a wax dummy to be used as a corpse. He planted it where it would be seen and identified. After it had been identified as a corpse, he removed it.

“Then he waited. If anyone had suspected him, or if the girl had been able to prove a good alibi, he’d have simply released Stanwood. And Stanwood wouldn’t have known but what the real criminal was his rescuer.

“As I reconstruct the crime, the man overpowered Stanwood, kept him unconscious, and kept him under the influence of drugs until he was certain the crime would be blamed on the girl. If he’d been suspected, he’d have let Stanwood regain consciousness, then rescued him from his prison and taken a lot of credit for solving the mystery.

“That’s why the coat was cut on the right side. The way the figure was jammed into the sedan left the right side uppermost. The man who pulled the job wanted to make sure the knife would show, so he stuck it into the upper side.”

Captain Mahoney shook his head.

“No, Zoom, I’m afraid that’s too improbable.”

Sylvester laughed aloud.

“I’ve heard some wild ones in my time,” he said. “But that’s the wildest I ever did hear.”

Sidney Zoom smoked complacently in calm silence.

After a few moments Captain Mahoney shot a series of swift questions at him.

“What made you think of this solution, Sidney?”

“Several things. A real corpse couldn’t have been juggled around so handily. It’s more than a coincidence that the dummy corpse was parked where about the only man who could positively identify it would see it.”

“How do you figure this drugging stuff?”

“Easy. The man drugged Stanwood. He wanted to lay the foundation for an abduction, so he wrote a note and left it in plain sight, stating that Stanwood would be drugged and kidnaped unless he paid some blackmail money.”

“Do you know who this man was?”

“No.”

“Have you any suspicions?”

“Only generally.”

“He could have been any one of the men who lived in the house and who were trusted by Stanwood?”

“Yes.”

“Can you prove the guilt of that man, if your theory is correct?”

Zoom shrugged his shoulders.

“Only by getting him to commit another murder.”

“Who would he murder?”

“Me.”

“You!”

“Not exactly. He used one dummy to perpetrate his crime. I’d use another to trap him.”

“You’d be in some personal danger?”

“Perhaps.”

“You think you could solve the crime?”

“Yes.”

“What would you want?”

“A brown candle and a microscope,” said Zoom, “also to be ensconced in Stanwood’s house as a scientific detective employed by the police to clear up the affair.”

Sylvester’s hearty laugh boomed heavily.

“Of all the damn fool theories!” he roared. “And you want a candle and a microscope. By Gad, Zoom, you’re good. You’ve got so romantic that your brain’s addled. Trying to protect a damned little two-timing, gun-toting, man-killing tart that had—”

Captain Mahoney raised his hand.

“Lieutenant,” he said, “please see that Sidney Zoom has everything he wants to clear up this crime.”

He bowed at Zoom and walked casually from the room. Sylvester’s laugh strangled in his throat.

“Hell!” he said.

Sidney Zoom was duly ensconced as a scientific detective working on the Stanwood murder case. He was given a room in the house of the murdered man and puttered about the corridors with tape measure and magnifying glass. Once or twice he swept up bits of dust and ostentatiously examined them through the binocular microscope which had been given him by the police department.

The occupants of the house watched him with varying expressions.

Charles Wetler, the secretary, was nervously alert to every single move. The Japanese servant, Hashinto Shinahara, was fawningly deferential. Yet, back of all that deference, there was a subtle impression of inward amusement.

Oscar Rabb was anxious to curry favor with the grim-visaged detective. Phil Buntler walked about as one in a dream, his eyes fixed upon space, his head bowed. He was vastly preoccupied, yet occasionally his eyes lost their dreamy abstraction and gazed at Sidney Zoom with pinpointed intensity.

Sidney Zoom worked all one afternoon. Then he retired to his bedroom. That room was at the end of the corridor, off by itself.

He read a book, consulting his watch from time to time. One by one, he could hear the other members of the household ascending stairs, retiring to their rooms.

Zoom waited.

At precisely thirteen minutes to one o’clock in the morning, Zoom opened the door of his room, took out a knife and the brown candle. He shaved the candle and let the shavings drop to the waxed floor of the corridor. He walked the full length of the corridor, sprinkling the wax shavings.

Then he returned to his room and picked up a heavy revolver.

He turned out the light and opened the window.

He pointed the revolver through the open window and fired three times, at intervals. The reports split the nocturnal silence with a roar.

Then Sidney Zoom stretched himself upon the floor, sprawled out, arms and legs extended, placed the revolver upon the floor and closed his eyes.

There were frantic steps in the corridor, voices that were raised in excited comment, a knock upon the door.

He had locked the door, and, when a hand tried the knob and found it locked, Sidney Zoom smiled to himself in the darkness of the room.

There was a hammering on the panels, no mere knock this time, then the sound of a weight thudding against the door.

Zoom realized that the entire household had now assembled.

Finally the combined weight of the hurtling bodies crashed the door open. Light from the corridor streamed in upon the form of Sidney Zoom.

“Murdered,” said a cool voice which Zoom recognized as belonging to Phil Buntler.

“Suicide — by Jove!” said Charles Wetler.

“Oh, isn’t it horrible!” muttered Oscar Rabb.

Hashinto Shinahara said nothing, but moved forward with catlike quickness and extended a hand.

Sidney Zoom sat up and grinned into the startled faces of his audience.

“Just a little test I had arranged for you boys,” he said.

They recoiled.

“Well, it’s a rotten test!” snapped Wetler irritably.

Oscar Rabb fidgeted. “I shall be unable to sleep,” he said.

Hashinto Shinahara grinned until his white teeth showed in a gleaming circle.

“Very smart!” he exclaimed.

Phil Buntler stared moodily downward at the floor, then said, “Rather clever. I am glad to be of any assistance, Mr. Zoom. Undoubtedly, wakening persons in the middle of the night, letting them discover what they think is the body of a murdered man, and watching their reactions, is a valuable psychological test.

“If any of us, for instance, had been implicated in the murder of my dear friend, Harrison Stanwood, I have no doubt that a trained psychologist would have detected something in the manner or appearance of us as we burst into the room which would have been a betrayal of guilt.”

And he beamed about him at the puzzled faces of the others.

“And you are a trained psychologist, Mr. Zoom?”

And Sidney Zoom, suddenly hard-eyed, nodded curtly.

“I am,” he admitted, “and I shall now have to ask that you retire to your rooms, gentlemen.”

They retired, muttering.

Zoom stretched himself in an easy chair, picked up his book, lit a cigarette, and smoked as placidly as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

When an hour had passed, he took his microscope, a few glass slides and some matches, and started on a tour of the house.

He first came to the bedroom of Phil Buntler. He tapped on the door, heard a swift rustle of motion from the room, the creaking of a bed, and then slippered feet on the floor.

Buntler’s eyes stared at Zoom.

“You again, eh? You seem determined we shan’t sleep!”

Zoom nodded. “I’m sorry. But this is important. I’ll have the murderer by morning. In the meantime I’m afraid I’ll have to inconvenience you for a few moments.”

He stalked into the room and sat down, depositing the microscope on the table.

“Would you mind removing your slippers and getting back into bed?” he asked.

Buntler kicked his slippers off and returned to the covers.

“I confess,” he said sarcastically, “that I am unable to follow your reasoning.”

Zoom nodded casually.

“I had hardly expected that you would be able to,” he commented, and picked up a pair of shoes as well as the slippers.

He took out a long-bladed knife and started scraping both shoes and slippers, digging carefully into every corner and crease of leather and sole, letting the scrapings drop on a plate of glass. When he had collected them, he scooped them onto a small glass slide and put them under the microscope.

Buntler watched him with interest.

“Humph,” said Zoom at length, puzzled.

“What is it?” asked Buntler, interested.

“Something funny on your shoes,” remarked Zoom.

Buntler’s bare feet hit the floor. “Mind if I look?” he asked.

Zoom drew back from the microscope.

Buntler peered through the lenses. “Little grains of dirt, and... oh, yes — you mean those flat translucent flakes?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmmm,” muttered Buntler to himself.

At length he raised his head and shrugged his shoulders.

“What’s it all about?” he asked.

Zoom pulled the slide from the microscope and struck a match. He held the glass slide over the flame of the match for several seconds. Then he took a handkerchief and wiped the black from the places where the flame had touched, and thrust the slide under the microscope again.

He peered at it, then chuckled.

“Look,” he said.

Buntler looked.

“It’s melted,” he observed. “Evidently a colored paraffin or wax.”

Zoom nodded, took a vial from his pocket and in it deposited the contents of the slide.

“Please remain in your room,” he said, and stalked into the hall.

He went at once to the room of Oscar Rabb and knocked at the door.

Rabb was not in bed, but was seated in a rocking chair. Zoom heard him get up, heard the click of the bolt. The door opened a crack.

Rabb was staring, white-faced, a magazine in his hand.

“You again!” he said.

“Yes,” said Zoom, and entered the room.

Once more he took out his knife, scraped off the soles of slippers and shoes, put the scrapings together upon the glass slide. Once more he called for the occupant of the room to peer through the microscope lenses at the strange flakes of translucent material which were mixed in with the dirt particles.

Rabb was as puzzled over their nature as Buntler had been until Zoom applied the flame of the match and invited Rabb to again look through the lenses.

“Humph!” said Rabb, “looks like some wax from a candle!”

Zoom nodded, dumped the scrapings into a glass vial, picked up the microscope and cautioned Rabb to remain in his room.

He next entered Wetler’s room and went through the same procedure.

Wetler had been lying on the bed. At Zoom’s first knock there had been a gentle snore audible through the panels of the door. It had taken three knocks to get Wetler up.

Wetler surveyed the flakes which Zoom found in the scrapings and shrugged his shoulders. After the flakes were heated he examined them again.

“They’ve melted!” he exclaimed, when he had his eyes glued to the microscope.

“Yes,” said Zoom, “they’ve melted.”

Wetler muttered a puzzled exclamation. His forehead was creased in thought.

“What,” he asked, “could they possibly be?”

Sidney Zoom dumped the scrapings into a numbered glass vial.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to make further tests,” he said. “Please remain in your room.”

And he went into the corridor, walked down the stairs, and tapped on the door of Hashinto Shinahara’s room.

The Japanese servant was at the door in a single spring, as lithe as a cat. He flung open the door, stood in the entrance half crouched, his eyes narrowed to gleaming slits, his hands curved like talons.

Sidney Zoom explained his errand.

The face of the Japanese wreathed itself in smiles. “Come in, come in,” he said.

Sidney Zoom made the same tests, secured the same flake-like substances, let the servant see them both before and after he had applied the match.

But Hashinto Shinahara volunteered no statement of any sort. He sucked in his breath once, the sound plainly audible as the air hissed past his teeth. But he continued to smile with his lips. His eyes were utterly inscrutable.

Sidney Zoom deposited the scrapings in a glass vial, screwed on the cap, and ordered the Japanese to remain in his room.

Then he padded down the corridor to the telephone.

It was precisely two o’clock, and he had left instructions for Lieutenant Sylvester to await a call from him at precisely two o’clock.

Zoom made no effort to lower his voice. “I’m on the trail of something hot in that Stanwood case, Lieutenant,” he said.

There was a moment of silence, then a question rasped over the wire.

Zoom answered it at length.

“In the first place,” he said, “the basic theory of the department has been wrong. The theory has been that the niece left the will out in plain sight because she was anxious it be discovered, since it gave her half of the property.

“As a matter of fact, since the niece was the only kin, she would have taken it all if it hadn’t been for the will. Therefore, it would have been to her interests to have destroyed the will.

“There’s another thing that must be remembered. The body of Harrison Stanwood was found in a car by a yachtsman who was one of the few intimate friends Stanwood had. That car was parked where the yachtsman was bound to notice it when he returned from his cruise. And the state of the tide governed the time of his return, so that one who knew the habits of yachtsmen could have come pretty close to determining just when Bowditch would have been passing the sedan.

“Now notice that the body was lying in a position to make it readily identified. That the knife was in the right side. That, when Bowditch went to telephone the police, the body was removed. That, when the body was discovered, there was a slit in the coat on the right side, as though a knife had been plunged in there, but there was no corresponding mark on the corpse.

“Notice, also, that the girl was locked up while the body was removed. It was physically impossible for her to have moved that body. She was in jail. Notice, also, that the doors of the sedan were locked and that the dome light was on, and that the body was placed in such a position the rays of the dome light fell upon the face.

“Those things are the determining circumstances in the solution I have worked out. But a certain discovery I have made has clinched the case.

“I’m going to go to the place where the body was discovered, the rubbish heap where you finally found the body. I think I can show you something interesting. I’ll go there at once. It’s nearer here than it is headquarters, so I’ll be waiting for you there. I’ll have my car parked against the curb and leave the dome light on so you can recognize me. Good-by.”

And Sidney Zoom hung up the telephone, stalked out of the back door of the house and into the garage where his coupé and his police dog awaited him.

The dog thumped his tail in greeting.

Zoom jumped into the car, opened the garage doors, started the motor and purred out into the night.

He drove directly to the lot where the rubbish had been dumped, a marshy hollow, surrounded with scattered dwellings of a cheaper sort, fringed with clumps of brush.

Sidney Zoom opened the back of the coupe and took out a straw figure. He sat this figure against the steering wheel, clamped his hat upon it, turned on the dome light, and walked briskly down the sidewalk and into the shadows of a clump of brush. The police dog padded at his side.

The silence of the night enveloped them.

Far away, there was a sleepy rumble from the slumbering city where heavy trucks or belated passenger cars ground their way through the main boulevards. Once there was the whine of a motor coming at high speed, but that sound abruptly died away.

Minutes passed.

Sidney Zoom yawned. The dog flexed his muscles, wagged his tail.

There was the distant wail of a siren.

Some sound, inaudible to the ears of the man, caused the dog to stiffen to rigid attention. His ears pricked forward. He crouched, muscles as tense as steel wires.

“Steady, Rip,” warned Sidney Zoom in a whisper.

A low, warning growl came from the dog, ceased when Zoom’s hand pressed down upon his head.

Motionless, tense, the two waited, master and dog.

Bang!

The darkness spurted flame. There was the crash of glass.

It was a rifle shot, and the stabbing flash had come from some fifty yards across the pile of rubbish, from a dense clump of brush.

Bang!

A second shot, fired with slow deliberation.

Glass tinkled and a window of the coupé collapsed. A great square of glass fell to the sidewalk.

Bang!

The third shot thudded into the straw figure, sent it hurtling to the seat of the coupe.

Sidney Zoom took his hand from the neck of the police dog.

“All right, Rip,” he said.

The dog went into the darkness like a streak of shadow, stomach close to the ground.

Bang! sounded the rifle.

A siren wailed.

Zoom was running now, his hawklike eyes penetrating the darkness sufficiently to show him the obstacles to be avoided. But the dog was far ahead, running with padded feet that made no noise, guided by eyes that were as accustomed to the darkness as the eyes of a wolf.

Zoom heard a throaty growl from the night.

A man screamed.

There was the thudding impact of flesh against flesh and the sound of a body striking the ground.

The siren wailed close at hand. A police car, red spotlight glowing like a red pool of fire, swung around the corner.

Bang! went the rifle for the last shot, such a shot as might have been the result of a cocked rifle having been dashed to the ground.

Zoom ran toward that shot, his long legs covering the ground rapidly.

“Steady, Rip,” he warned.

The police car applied brakes and wheels screamed along the pavement. The spotlight shifted its ruddy beam to the lot, showing a huddled figure on the ground, the form of the police dog crouched a little bit to one side.

Sidney Zoom shouted and burst into the circle of illumination, waving his hands.

The door of the police car banged open as two figures sprinted for the place where the still figure lay on the ground. Zoom was the first to arrive.

A second later Lieutenant Sylvester, accompanied by Captain Mahoney, produced a pocket flashlight and sent the brilliant white beam down on that which lay upon the ground.

“Wetler!” exclaimed Mahoney.

“Wetler,” said Zoom.

Mahoney knelt by the man.

“You murdered Stanwood?” asked Captain Mahoney. “You’re dying. Better tell the truth.”

Wetler nodded, groaned.

“Why?” asked Mahoney.

“Wanted money... under will... damned miser!... Dog knocked me over... rifle went off...”

“Why did you use a wax figure?”

“Afraid police... might trace car took him away in... wanted make sure to blame it on the girl... hated her... snooty... stuck up...”

The figure twitched and lay still.

Captain Mahoney got to his feet.

“That seems to be the end of it,” he said. “I suppose your call to Sylvester was intended to be overheard by Wetler?”

Zoom nodded.

“I used the wax for a third degree. I knew the murderer would become alarmed when he saw there was wax on his shoes or slippers. He would never think I had trapped him to walk on the wax, but would think I had doped out the solution of the crime and suspected him.

“Naturally, he would listen to my telephone conversation, then follow me, hoping to get a chance to kill me before I could tell what I knew. So I left a dummy for him to shoot at and relied on the dog to drag him down. I hadn’t figured on the man being killed. Rut it’s a good thing. Saved the executioner a job. Frankly, I’m glad of it.”

Captain Mahoney sighed and stared at Zoom curiously.

“A reasoning machine,” he commented, “devoid of sympathy.”

“Sympathy, bah! That’s the trouble with the world’s attitude toward the criminal. Sympathy! Here is a man who planned murder, planned to pin it on an innocent young woman, and you prate of sympathy!”

“You’re not strong for mercy, for a fact,” commented Lieutenant Sylvester.

Sidney Zoom raised his strong, rugged features.

“No,” he said in a tone that was almost dreamy, “I simply see mercy from a broader standpoint. For instance, from the standpoint of an innocent young woman accused of crime. And, perhaps, I see a little more in this than you do.”

“Such as?” asked Lieutenant Sylvester.

“Such as divine justice, for instance,” said Sidney Zoom, and turned on his heel.

“Come, Rip,” he called to the dog. “Our work here is finished.”

And, followed by the padding feet of the tawny police dog, he stalked away into the chill shadows of the night, walking with that catfooted sureness of motion.