get any answer?"

"Not that I heard."

The young man pondered, then drew a chair up to, Mrs. Hale's escritoire,
and, with an abrupt "excuse me," helped himself to pen, ink and paper.

"There!" he said, after five minutes' work. "That'll do for a starter.
You see," he added, handing the product of his toil to Mrs. Hale, "this
street happens to be the regular cross-town route for the milk that
comes over by one of the minor ferries. If you heard a number of wagons
passing in the early morning they were the milk-vans. Hence this."

Mrs. Hale read:

"MILK-DRIVERS, ATTENTION--Delaware Central
mid-town route. Who talked to man outside
hotel early morning of August 7? Twenty
dollars to right man. Apply personally to
Jones, Ad-Visor, Astor Court Temple, New York."

"For the coming issue of the Milk-Dealers' Journal," explained its
author. "Now, Mr. Kirby, I want you to find out for me--Mrs. Hale can
help you, since she has known the hotel people for years--the names of
all those who gave up rooms on this floor, or the floors above or below,
yesterday morning, and ask whether they are known to the hotel people."

"You think the thief is still in the hotel?" cried Mrs. Hale.

"Hardly. But I think I see smoke from your blue fires. To make out the
figure through the smoke is not--" Average Jones broke off, shaking his
head. He was still shaking his head when he left the hotel.

It took three days for the milk-journal advertisement to work. On the
afternoon of August tenth, a lank, husky-voiced teamster called at the
office of the Ad-Visor and was passed in ahead of the waiting line.

"I'm after that twenty," he declared.

"Earn it," said Average Jones with equal brevity.

"Hotel Denton. Guy on the third floor balcony--"

"Right so far."

"Leanin' on the rail as if he was sick. I give him a hello. 'Takin' a
nip of night air, Bill?' I says. He didn't say nothin'."

"Did he do anything?"

"Kinder fanned himself an' jerked his head back over his shoulder.
Meanin' it was too hot to sleep inside, I reckon. It sure was hot!"

"Fanned himself? How?"

"Like this." The visitor raised his hands awkwardly, cupped them, and
drew them toward his face.

"Er--with both hands?"

"Did you see him go in?"

"Nope."

"Here's your twenty," said Average Jones. "You're long on sense and
short on words. I wish there were more like you."

"Thanks. Thanks again," said the teamster, and went out.

Mea