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nto the limelight that drags me up here." "You behold"--Bristow softened his statement with a deprecating laugh--"Mr. Lawrence Bristow, a finished, honest-to-heaven detective, a criminologist." "What do you mean?" "I'm going to make it my profession. I'm starting out as a professional detective." Overton burst into bubbling laughter. "That's rich!" he exclaimed. "You'd never in the world make good at it. Why, Bristow, you're lame; you've a crooked nose; that heavy, overhanging lip of yours--those things would enable any crook to spot you a mile off." He laughed again. "I'd like to see you shadowing some foxy second-story worker!" "I said 'a consulting detective'," Bristow corrected him. "That shadowing business is for the hired man, the square-toed, bull-necked cops. I'll work only as the directing head, the brains of the investigations." "Oh, that's different," said Overton, at once conciliatory. "That's nearer real sense. Big money in it, isn't there?" "Yes. I'm not an eleemosynary institution yet." Overton mopped his fat cheeks. "Ah, me!" he sighed. "We never know what's ahead of us, do we? A year ago you were dubbing around in Cincinnati trying to sell real estate and working out crime problems on paper--and here you are now, a big man. It's hard to believe." "It is, however, a very acceptable fact." "No doubt, no doubt," assented the fat man. On Overton's heels came the chief of police. After getting a minute recital of what had happened in Washington and Baltimore, he agreed that Braceway was only setting up straw men for the pleasure of knocking them down. "Even if there is something mysterious in Morley's conduct, in what occurred in Baltimore," said the chief, "it can't do away with the open-and-shut fact that Perry did the murder." "Of course," Bristow commented. "But what's the news with you?" "For one thing, Perry gave us last night what he calls a confession. In it he says he did tell Lucy Thomas he knew where he could get money 'or something just as good'; he did go to Number Five in a more or less drunken condition; and he got as far as the front door. "There, he says, he thought he heard a noise across the road from him, and he lost his nerve. He tiptoed down the steps and went away, passing in between Number Five and Number Seven. He ran all the way back to Lucy's house, threw down the key he had got from her, and then went to his own rooming-house. He says he stay
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