y from a dentist."

He was now speaking more slowly.

"Obviously an octogenarian could not commit these murders himself,
but being a former police commissioner, he could easily hire
someone to do it for him; he knew the ropes. He could not trust
the ordinary killer; he would have placed himself in such a man's
power.

"What better instrument than Amos Brown? Amos Brown could be made
to believe that he was performing an act of justice by killing the
men who had mistreated his grandfather. Such a man is much more
dangerous than the professional killer. He was a flyer and a good
one. He had a powerful, fast plane, small enough not to attract
too much attention. He could kill Schurman in the evening and
Miller, four hundred miles away early the following morning.

"Without Brown's knowledge 'Fingy' was watched. If he had not
found it necessary to rob the delicatessen store, he might have
met a stranger, as did Boyle, who would provide him with an alibi
that no one would believe. The work of providing a bad alibi might
have been done and probably was done by a person who knew nothing
and had no interest in the members of the Tontine group. Such a
man as McGuire could easily have arranged that.

"A police commissioner who was wiped out in the stock market
crash; a man who was accustomed to the good things in life in a
material sense. A man' who was forced to consort with criminals
professionally. He was cleaned out in the crash, and never
recovered.

"There is a record of a case similar to that of the Miller case.
Schurman was killed in the way that Emmeline Reynolds was killed
in 1898. In her case a bludgeon was used. In Schurman's case Brown
probably used his fist. The similarity in particular originality
displayed, the details were masterpieces of subtlety.

"We can picture what happened at Brown's farm this morning. Brown
refused to go any further with the plan. We have an indication of
Brown's character by the fact that he refused to extract a boy's
tooth. Oh, no. It is not at all inconsistent. A man like Brown
might commit murder to satisfy his false sense of justice, and yet
be tenderhearted enough to refuse to inflict pain on a little boy.

"But the old police commissioner had gone too far. There were
words. Brown would be of no further use to him. McGuire had the
small mirror in his pocket. He calculated that he would find
everyone on the pond. If I did not have a complete case against
him, what a perfect