the occasion of his
fatal illness. No one but the wife being in the room with him, and it
having been ascertained that she purchased the arsenic, hers was the
exclusive opportunity to drop it into the cup--and the evidence against
her is complete.

A case of this nature is not established by the deductive methods of a
Lecocq, but by the patient labor of a score or a half score of
detectives intelligently guided by their chief. The druggist who sold
the poison was found after a canvas of perhaps three or four hundred
apothecaries. The domestic strife in the victim's home was disclosed to
the police by relatives of the husband, whose interests naturally
conflicted with those of the wife. Other evidence was furnished
reluctantly by the servants, and, through the collective efforts of all
the detectives, the woman's crime has been reconstructed in a way
calculated to convince the ordinary juror.

It was because Detective-Lieutenant Britz was endowed with a rare
combination of talents that enabled him to direct the work of others,
even while participating actively in the physical search for evidence,
that he ranked as the foremost detective of the Central Office. Had he
been merely a shrewd, capable, resourceful investigator, he could never
have attained to his present eminence.

Britz occupied a position subordinate to Manning, but his reputation far
exceeded that of the latter. And Manning, conscious of the value of his
lieutenant, reserved his services for the more baffling mysteries which
the Central Office from time to time was called upon to solve.

He was not jealous of Britz's reputation, for he was aware that the
lieutenant did not aspire to the head of the bureau, would not have
accepted the promotion had it been offered. As a subordinate Britz was
relieved of all the routine which occupied so much of the chief's time,
so that he could devote all his energies to the single case to which he
was assigned.

Moreover, Manning by purely voluntary renunciation, exercised none of
the supervision over Britz which his higher rank authorized. So that
Britz having been given command of the Whitmore case, was at liberty to
proceed with the investigation along his own lines.

On the morning following the escape of the butler with the documents
which the detective had gathered in Beard's home, Britz was at his desk
in Police Headquarters at eight o'clock. He had not troubled to search
for the vanished servant, arguing tha