tterfly cabinets and collecting outfits
were kept, and set myself seriously to studying my files of
newspapers, beginning at a date a week preceding my man's appearance.
Then:

Slippy McGee
Makes Good His Name Once More.
Slips One Over On The Police.
Noted Burglar Escapes.

said the glaring headlines in the New York papers. The dispatches were
dated from Atlanta, and when I turned to the Atlanta papers I found
them, too, headlining the escape of "Slippy McGee."

I learned that "the slickest crook in America" finding himself
somewhat hampered in his native haunts, the seething underworld of New
York, because the police suspected him of certain daring and
mysterious burglaries although they had no positive proof against him,
had chosen to shift his base of operations South for awhile. But the
Southern authorities had been urgently warned to look out for him; in
consequence they had been so close upon his heels that he had been
surrounded while "on a job." Half an hour later, and he would have
gotten away with his plunder; but, although they were actually upon
him, by what seemed a miracle of daring and of luck he slipped through
their fingers, escaped under their very noses, leaving no clue to his
whereabouts. He was supposed to be still in hiding in Atlanta, though
as he had no known confederates and always worked alone and unaided,
the police were at a loss for information. The man had simply
vanished, after his wont, as if the earth had opened and swallowed
him. The papers gave rather full accounts of some of his past
exploits, from which one gathered that Slippy McGee was a very noted
personage in his chosen field. I sat for a long time staring at those
papers, and my thoughts were uneasy ones. What should I do?

I presently decided that I could and must question my guest. So far he
had volunteered no information beyond the curt statement that his name
was John Flint and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had
been stealing a ride and he had slipped--and when he woke up we had
him and he hadn't his leg. And if some people knew how to be obliging
they'd make a noise like a hoop and roll away, so's other people could
pound their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered them
to do.

As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, suspicious, unfriendly
face, I came to the conclusion that if this were not McGee himself it
could very well be some one quite as da