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