is, and compelled his retirement from the force. But his advice is often
sought unofficially by the Department, and to those who know, Muller's
hand can be seen in the unravelling of many a famous case.

The following stories are but a few of the many interesting cases that
have come within the experience of this great detective. But they give
a fair portrayal of Muller's peculiar method of working, his looking on
himself as merely an humble member of the Department, and the comedy
of his acting under "official orders" when the Department is in reality
following out his directions.

THE CASE OF THE LAMP THAT WENT OUT

CHAPTER I. THE DISCOVERY

The radiance of a clear September morning lay over Vienna. The air was
so pure that the sky shone in brightest azure even where the city's
buildings clustered thickest. On the outskirts of the town the rays
of the awakening sun danced in crystalline ether and struck answering
gleams from the dew on grass and shrub in the myriad gardens of the
suburban streets.

It was still very early. The old-fashioned steeple clock on the church
of the Holy Virgin in Hietzing had boomed out six slow strokes but a
short time back. Anna, the pretty blonde girl who carried out the milk
for the dwellers in several streets of this aristocratic residential
suburb, was just coming around the corner of the main street into a
quiet lane. This lane could hardly be dignified by the name of street as
yet, it was so very quiet. It had been opened and named scarcely a year
back and it was bordered mostly by open gardens or fenced-in building
lots. There were four houses in this street, two by two opposite each
other, and another, an old-fashioned manor house, lying almost hidden in
its great garden. But the quiet street could not presume to ownership of
this last house, for the front of it opened on a parallel street, which
gave it its number. Only the garden had a gate as outlet onto our quiet
lane.

Anna stopped in front of this gate and pulled the bell. She had to wait
for some little time until the gardener's wife, who acted as janitress,
could open the door. But Anna was not impatient, for she knew that it
was quite a distance from the gardener's house in the centre of the
great stretch of park to the little gate where she waited. In a few
moments, however, the door was opened and a pleasant-faced woman
exchanged a friendly greeting with the girl and took the cans from her.

Anna