er the inquest, an officer arrived from Sandusky.
He was a spectator at the funeral of Jake Miller, whom he readily
identified as the slayer of Mrs. Camp, and was afterwards a most
interested listener to the recital given on Lamson's porch by Marshal
Crow, who, described with considerable zest and surprising fidelity the
manifold difficulties he had experienced in "running the criminal to
earth,"--one of the most puzzling cases he had ever been called upon to
tackle.

The astonished officer walked over to the Grand View Hotel with Harry
Squires. From time to time he passed his hand over his brow in a
thoroughly puzzled manner.

"I don't mind telling you, Mr. Squires," he blurted out at last, "that
we hadn't the faintest idea that this fellow Camp was as desperate a
character as all this. We looked upon him as a rather harmless,
soft-headed guy,--but, my God, he turns out to be one of the slickest
all-round crooks in the United States. No wonder he managed to give us
the slip all these years. It only goes to show how even the best of us
can be fooled in a man."

"That's right," agreed Harry. "It certainly does show how you can be
fooled in a man."

"When I get back home and tell 'em at headquarters what a slick duck he
was, they'll throw a fit. Why, by Gosh, we all thought he was a nut,--a
plain nut."

"Far be it from me," said Harry, "to speak ill of either the living or
the dead."

"It's a wonder he didn't up and blow the head off this old Rube when he
found he was about to be cornered."

Harry took that moment to relight his pipe, and then abruptly said "Good
night" to the gentleman from Sandusky.

As he rejoined the group in front of Lamson's, Marshal Crow was saying:

"I'm mighty glad Harry Squires had sense enough not to say in the
_Banner_ that as soon as Jake Miller found out that the jig was up, he
took the law in his own hands, and lynched himself."

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Anderson Crow, Detective, by George Barr McCutcheon

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