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Show By FREDEmc F. VAN DE WATE-R Sl . . . SYNOPSIS ,V,ld I?allory. in search of newspaper work in New York, is forced to accept a Job as switch-board operator in a swank t? .ment,house' manaBed by officious Timothy Higfiins. There David meets Miss Agatha Paget, a crippled old lady, and her charming niece. Allegra. One day. talking with Higgins in the lobby. David is alarmed by a piercing scream, uavid finds the scream came from the Ferriter apartment, not far from the Pagets . The Ferriters Include Lyon and Everett, and their sister. lone. Everett a genealogist. Is helping Agatha Paget write a book about her blue-blooded ancestors. an-cestors. Inside the apartment they And a black-bearded man dead. No weapon can be found. The police arrive. Higgins. Hig-gins. who actively dislikes David, informs in-forms him that he is fired. David is called to the Paget apartment. Agatha Paget offers him a Job helping write her family history which wlU unearth a few family skeletons. He accepts the offer. Meanwhile, police suspect Lyon Ferriter of the murder. Jerry Cochrane of the Press offers David a Job helping solve the murder. David accepts. He is to keep on working for Miss Paget. Later David meets Grosvenor Paget. Allegra's brother. Then, that night. David sees Grosvenor prowl through the Ferriter apartment. David confronts Grosvenor with the story. He is told to mind his own business. I know you now. Your face has bothered both-ered me for days. I saw you in Chicago. "If you did," I told him, "you saw me get trimmed." "By D'Armhaillac," he said as if that excused anything. "You know," he told the others, "this lad really is good." "Was good," I corrected. "That was two years ago." I was glad he fortified the hasty lie I had told to cover Grosvenor. Lyon ran on like a boy: "I use the sword a little myself. Sometime, I'd like to show you my collection of blades. Some of them are rather good." I almost told him I had seen them. Then I remembered the dead man who had lain before them, and didn't. I gave Miss Agatha my new address and left them talking as easily as though the last thirty-odd hours never had happened. The events of the final sixty minutes min-utes had scrambled my mind. They had kicked over what theories I had built and now memory of Allegra, loyal and valiant and fearful, fought against the erection of new. I was half-way to the corner before I remembered re-membered my suitcase still in Higgins' Hig-gins' basement flat. Here was something some-thing definite to do, an anodyne to rii j? -if mark on a bleeding knuckle. Suspicion Sus-picion that had pointed first to Lyon Ferriter, that had centered on Grosvenor Gros-venor Paget, swung wildly about now like a weathervane in a whirlwind. whirl-wind. I had left both men upstairs. The dim figure I had seen dart through the doorway had seemed slighter than either. It could not have been the buxom Everett Why had it been lurking in a basement hallway of all places? What had dropped to the floor with a clink of metal and then had vanished? Suddenly, I wanlfed to confide tn someone. It was the lonely wretchedness wretch-edness of the overburdened. I thought, as I slapped at my dusty overcoat and trousers, of Shannon, of Miss Agatha, of Allegra, and each time found at once good reason why I could not go to them. As I picked up my suitcase, an amused voice asked behind me: "Ever try a whiskbroom, accomplice? accom-plice? You can buy them at all the better stores." Jerry Cochrane's coat collar was turned up about his ears. His round face had been spanked red by cold and wind had watered his canny eyes. He was sane flesh and blood. I was glad to see him. "What's this?" he asked, nodding at my suitcase. "The body?" He was medicine for the jitters. At my question he gave a gesture, ges-ture, half shrug, half shiver. "I trailed Lyon Ferriter from the Babylon," he said. "Your hall force wouldn't let me wait in the vestibule. vesti-bule. I was across the street when I saw you go down the cellar. So when you came out, I " I grabbed his arm so hard that he stopped and stared. I had trouble getting hold of words. "Who came out ahead of you?" he repeated, wide-eyed. "Out of the cellar? Nobody." "I groaned. "If you'd only watched," I began, but he cut me short. "Listen," he bade. "I didn't have anything else to do, except freeze. No one came out of the basement except you. What's all the heat " "Save it," I told him and ran toward to-ward the Morello. My suitcase battered bat-tered my legs. I swore at it and myself. If Cochrane were not mis-l mis-l taken, if the intruder who fled had not gone up to the street, he had lurked in the area by the stairs until un-til after I had left. He might still be hiding in that black pit. Beyond the Morello, a taxi swung into the curb. Someone entered it. The door slammed and it slid away. We were too far oft to see the license li-cense number or even the passenger clearly. "Sometime," Cochrane asked politely, po-litely, "when you're not quite so active, ac-tive, you'll let me in on this?" I told him, as well as I could, for I was winded, what had happened. "Who was it?" Cochrane queried. "I think," I answered, "it was Mr. Addison Sims of Seattle." The wind boomed in the area while we talked in hushed voices. It struck my sweating face like the gush of a cold shower bath. Cochrane Coch-rane was panting, yet he shivered. "Lyon?" he asked. I wondered why it should have been his first thought, as well as mine. "Lyon Ferriter," I answered, "is upstairs in Miss Paget's apartment. apart-ment. He couldn't have got down here ahead of me." "Unless he took the hidden way the murderer traveled," Cochrane pointed out stubbornly, and his teeth chattered. "I'd like to know where he is, this minute." I turned toward the steps and said: "I can go back and find out if he's still upstairs." "I'd like to know," Cochrane repeated re-peated in a cold-shaken voice, as he followed me upward. "If I'm going to live to understand all this, I've got to get a taxi and a drink fast. Find out if Ferriter is still upstairs and then " But we had no need for search. As I came out of the area, a lean figure left the Morello vestibule. Shoulders hunched against the wind, Lyon Ferriter strode past us. I thought he recognized me, for he looked hard and seemed about to check his pace and then pressed on. We watched him to the corner. "Anyone," Cochrane gasped through his rattling teeth, "who can go without an overcoat on a night like this is a murderer or a suicide. sui-cide. Hi, taxi!" As we bounced along toward the address he gave, his questions prodded prod-ded me once again through the story of my struggle in the basement "It doesn't make sense," he complained. com-plained. "Maybe it was someone colder than me, even some Forgotten Forgot-ten Man ducking in out of the wind." "He wasn't too numb to move fast," I reminded him. "And why should he hang out in the area after I'd flushed him, unless there still was something in the basement that he needed?" "True," Cochrane said. "Perhaps he wanted to get his watch, or whatever what-ever you heard drop." "I heard it drop," I told him, "but it wasn't there. I looked." "It was, but it wasn't," he said bitterly. "And there you have the case in a few words, accomplice. I'm sorry we hired you. You keep messing up the puzzle. I owe you one, though, for your tip on the Babylon. I don't know who was sorer Shannon or the Ferriters when I ran 'em down." (TO BE COTtL ED) CHAPTER VI Continued Grosvenor watched me as I took my tankard. I thought he expected me to reach a foot for a brass rail or blow froth on the floor. Perhaps it was another doubt that bothered him. I forgot to wonder about it in admiration of Miss Agatha. She plunged her patrician nose into the foam and, after a brief instant, in-stant, set down the vessel empty with a contented sigh. She caught my eye. "Beer," she said with authority, "is a mass beverage, David. Its virtue lies in volume. People who sip their beer also like afternoon tea or Wagner on a fiddle. No beer, Allegra?" The girl sat close beside her brother. broth-er. He peered into his tankard. One of her hands lay on his bowed shoulder. shoul-der. "No," she said and smiled, "I'm too sleepy." "Always," Miss Agatha told me, nodding toward her niece, "the soul of courtesy. How much of that material ma-terial did you get through?" "All of it," I said. It pleased her. "Excellent," she exclaimed, with a tiny click of her teeth. "Then tomorrow we can get to work, burning burn-ing the scandal at both ends." "Isn't it nice," the girl asked, and I thought her jauntiness was forced, "that after all the family skeletons, Mr. Mallory will drink with you, Agatha?" "Bah!" said Miss Agatha and reached for the untouched tankard, "David is " "Just," I said as she paused, "an elevator man coming up in the world." The wrinkles came about her eyelids. eye-lids. She chuckled. "That isn't what I was going to say. Since you are in New York and your people are in Nebraska, you may have more use for families fami-lies as institutions than I have. Distance Dis-tance makes relations more endurable endura-ble to one another. Of course the republic is founded on the American home " "There she goes," Allegra said in a loud aside to her brother. "The family is the foundation of the nation," the old lady went on, "and I wonder if that isn't the trouble trou-ble with things. I believe" The peal of the doorbell cut her short. Grosvenor rose to answer it. "Damn," said Miss Agatha. "If it's that man Shannon again " It was Lyon Ferriter. I admired Miss Paget's balance: "Well!" she said warmly, as though a wish had been answered. "Come in and revel. Grove, another an-other tankard." Lyon checked the lad and smiled. His eyes, moving easily from face to face, rested on mine an instant and once more seemed puzzled. "Thanks," he said and bowed to Miss Agatha. "I shouldn't have intruded in-truded but they said downstairs that you had just returned. I came, with Captain Shannon's permission, to get some things from my flat and I wanted to thank you all of you for your neighborliness. There's an odd word to use in New York, but I can think of no better. You were very good to my sister, Miss Paget," Pag-et," he added more softly; "I shan't forget it. You've kept your head better than any of us, during this unpleasantness." "My dear man," Miss Agatha said crisply, "When you've lived as long as I have, a mere murder can't terrify you. And lone?" "Better," Lyon replied in the tender ten-der tone that always accompanied his mention of her. "We're coming back tomorrow. The Babylon is hardly a refuge. Newspaper men have found out where we were hiding. hid-ing. A policed man's life is not a happy one." He stood in the doorway, a brown, worn and pleasant figure, and spread his hands. I said to Miss Agatha: "It's time I went or several hours after time." "If," she answered and her eyes Were merry, "you can stir that that decoration there" she nodded toward Grosvenor "to an interest in fencing or any exercise, stay longer." As I turned toward the door, Lyon's Ly-on's exclamation halted me. "Fencing," "Fenc-ing," he repeated "Oh, by George, I saw, as I got to my knees, the outer door open and a dim figure fig-ure that fled. bewilderment. I faced about and went back to the Morello. The light was out before the basement base-ment door and the hallway beyond was dark. I thought that Higgins might be asleep. That stopped me for a moment Asleep or awake, I decided, there would be a squabble squab-ble and I might as well face it now. I closed the door, felt for a match and, finding none, went along the black hall. My fingers touched the whitewashed white-washed stone, once, twice. They reached out a third time and recoiled. re-coiled. They had brushed rough cloth and underneath that was a body, pressed tight and still against the wall. For a second, neither of us moved, or breathed. Then I lurched forward, arms spread wide. My hands grazed the harsh fabric but found no hold. Something tripped me. I went down. A foot stamped on my knuckles. knuck-les. I grabbed for it and missed, but its owner fell too, with a thud and a gasp and a flat chime of metal on stone. I leaped up to stumble stum-ble once more over the thing that first had tripped me. I fell again, this time upon it. An angle smote me in the midriff, driving out my breath. I heard the quick sound of retreating feet. I saw, as I got to my knees, the outer door open and a dim figure that fled. Then I squatted, squat-ted, blinking in a blaze of light CHAPTER VII I could see nothing but that glare. It hurt my eyes.- I knew dimly that my knees and my trampled hand ached. I squatted, half up, half down, for a long instant. The dazzling daz-zling haze thinned and Higgins' red face came through. "What," he asked and I thought he gloated, "is all this, hey?" "I fell. I was tripped," I said stupidly. Higgins chuckled. "So ye was tripped," he jeered. "Now ain't that too bad? The someone some-one that tripped ye lays beside ye, me lad." I looked down. The obstacle over which I had twice fallen was my own suitcase. Higgins, in a last flare of spite, had left it in the hall. I got up slowly and brushed dust from my sore knees. "Who else," I asked, "was in here?" The superintendent chuckled chuck-led and anger helped me get hold of myself. "Who else?" he echoed. "Nobody, ye fool, but yourself and your clumsy clum-sy feet." Higgins locked the door behind me. I stumbled up the steps. The wind stung my face. Its blast seemed to scatter my mind. Someone Some-one had been in that basement hallway hall-way when I had entered someone who feared to be found there, who had fought off my clumsy effort at capture. I had touched, I had heard the intruder. He had left his heel- |