anybody who tries to talk with the
prison. Frick is up there!"

"How about O'Toole, who's watching Nichols?" asked Flynn.

"Leave him stay on that assignment. I need you here. Stick now! Watch
everybody who talks over these three phones. Arrest anybody who
receives or sends a call to the prison. There's plenty of Central
Office men handy for a pinch. Fosdick will back them up!"

Drew rushed for the subway. He realized that he had wasted valuable
time by not taking the complete set of fingerprint photos on his first
inspection of the booths. It was a detail he had overlooked. But then,
he could afford to make mistakes. The men or man he was after, dared
not make any. This was a thing he had often recalled in dealing with
super-criminals.

Fosdick's rooms at Detective Headquarters, on Center Street, were
luckily deserted as he rushed down through the hallway. The
Commissioner widened his eyes as Drew handed over the camera, with a
request that the films be developed and prints made within twenty
minutes.

"Can't be done that soon," said the detective. "Give us fifty minutes."

"I'll make it twenty-five!" shot Drew. "I got lots to tell you, but
it'll keep. Get those prints and we'll land our man. The last two films
have perfect samples of finger-work. Our man slipped there! He signed
his own death warrant!"

The Commissioner pressed a button. To the young man who came, he
explained the necessity of rushing the developing and printing of the
films. He turned as the messenger hurried out with the camera.

"What about that bullet?" he asked.

"Just as I said, Commissioner. It was fired from a smooth-bore pistol
or gun. What do you think?"

"Oh, maybe not! Sometimes there isn't much rifling on an old revolver.
Those little twenty-two affairs are made out of cast-iron."

"But the cupronickel bullet shows smokeless powder and high-class
criminal activity. I doubt if one of those little rods would take a
modern steel-jacketed bullet. They're used in automatics."

"But automatics have good rifling. That bullet was as smooth as before
it was shot. Here it is!"

Fosdick opened a drawer and pulled out a later-day projectile of the
lesser-caliber.

"This is smooth!" he repeated with heat. "It was cut from the old
millionaire's brain. It ain't scratched. It never took the rifling it
was intended for. My theory is, that it was fired from a gun of larger
caliber. That is to say, it didn't fit the bore. A thirty-thirty