caught up the receiver, and placed his
palm for an instant over the mouthpiece.

"Ask him to say it again--that you didn't understand." Shirley removed
his hand, and obeyed. Shirley held the receiver to his ear, as the young
man spoke. Then he heard these curious words: "You poor simp, you'd
better get that family doctor of yours to give you some ear medicine,
and stop wasting time with the death certificate. I told you that Cronin
was over in Bellevue Hospital with a fractured skull. Unless you drop
this investigating, you'll get one, too. Ta, ta! Old top!"

The receiver was hung up quickly at the other end of the line.

Shirley gave a quick call for "Information," and after several minutes
learned that the call came from a drug store pay-station in Jersey City!

The melodious tones were unmistakably those of the speaker who had used
the wire from faraway Brooklyn where the house had been burned down!
It was a human impossibility for any one to have covered the distance
between the two points in this brief time, except in an aeroplane!

Van Cleft wondered dumbly at his companion's excitement. Shirley caught
up the telephone again.

"Some one says that Cronin is at Bellevue Hospital, injured. I'll find
out."

It was true. Captain Cronin was lying at point of death, the ward nurse
said, in answer to his eager query. At first the ambulance surgeon had
supposed him to be drunk, for a patrolman had pulled him out of a dark
doorway, unconscious.

"Where was the doorway? This is his son speaking, so tell me all."

"Just a minute. Oh! Here is the report slip. He was taken from the
corner of Avenue A and East Eleventh Street. You'd better come down
right away, for he is apt to die tonight. He's only been here ten
minutes."

"Has any one else telephoned to find out about him?"

"No. We didn't even know his name until just as you called up, when we
found his papers and some warrants in a pocketbook. How did you know?"

But Shirley disconnected curtly, this time. He bowed his head in
thought, and then, with his usual nervous custom, fumbled for a
cigarette. Here was the Captain, whom he had left on Forty-fourth
Street, near Fifth Avenue, a short time before, discovered fully three
miles away.

And the news telephoned from Jersey City, by the fleeting magic voice
on the wire. Even his iron composure was stirred by this weird
complication.

"I wonder!" he murmured. He had ample reason to wonder.

CHAPTER II