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Show I Charbs J. Butter j J Vfl i"1 'T7 Copyright 1922 By DcxJd.MeadandCo. Inc. J j THE BALCONY John Hartley, noted criminal In-velit;iitor, In-velit;iitor, rtittinlly returnrU from tju':rul .Stivtco work diirlnfi the wur, In u.iittd by Ln fcuvernor a( New Voik lu liivollKte a mj'H-t'M'itnis mj'H-t'M'itnis iiUt!iitited ruMx'ry of lim Kub:rt ,slkH liuine aL Circle I-ake, ru-ar fcaraloria. and lo establish tlio guilt or illllot. t:lli: of tw o llll;n 111 l.ho tMrriiLnitlary lor thu crime. A InlMC.irriiLiiu ot JuuLico iH Hll:in;cteii. :ai'th;y iiodu in it tne rcuainK of an old case, lu interested a:id agrees lo holve the mystery. With hia lrl(,nd 1'clt, a ni!W.s.ap.r man, Harth y fcocs to Circle 1-aUe, the pair lioconilni,' the Ki'eiit.s ot liob Currte, au old trieiid. Thu three vlwlt Hie Hlyl.e homo. Slylte re-iicuIm re-iicuIm I'.artley'H conilnii. sayinir he In Haiii.hiMl the two met) hi i:i.son are tnllly. Hartley l.i not. Next mornme, tiiyko in found dead in bed, ii I'l'areti tly having Hhot lilm-Hell. lilm-Hell. JMl.sa I'otter, the dead man's Hi.-Uor-ln-law, the village nolice cliiel', Koche, and the family pliy-aiciail, pliy-aiciail, iJocLof Kiiik, all ai;rue Slyke killed hiniaelf, hut lial'Uey UlalaU he waa murdered, CHAPTER III Continued. G "When you look tit the pillow," lie explained, "on which his head lies, you will linil only ono or two spots of lilootl. The shirt, In fact, hits none nt nil. The wound must have bled Rome uot much, It is true, but fur ' more than it seems to have done from the appearance of tlie bed. He was killed elsewhere and placed in this lied afterwards. I doubt If he was pven undressed at the time of his dcMlh." Miss Potter, who had remained silent si-lent although obviously very nervous, nsUed If she might go to her room and leave thu doctor In charge. This dele-ratlng dele-ratlng of her authority to the doctor ' did not appeal to Koche; and he told ; lier that, If her brother-in-law had j been murdered, It would be the police j and not tlie doctor who would take ; charge of things. Tlie ordeal through ; which she had passed must have been 1 more tluin she could stand, for she made no comment on his challenge tint started to leave the room. "Miss Potter," Bartley .asked, as she reached the door, "did you ever eee this revolver In Mr. Slyke's hand?" She hesitated a moment and then Veplied, "It's Mr. Slyke's; he was In the habit of keeping It In a drawer of his desk. The gun was bought t noon after the burglary, but, so far r.s I know, lie has never used It." Although her statement that the re- volver had belonged to the dead man made the suicide theory plausible, yet j I could not quite see how the facts that Hartley hud brought forward to disprove the suicide could be overthrown. over-thrown. "What makes you think, Mr. Hartley," Hart-ley," Koche asked, "that Slyke was 'dressed at the time he was killed?" Hartley answered: "If Slyke had lieen killed In bed there would have ln?en more blood on the bedclothes than the few drops we see on tlie pillow. pil-low. His nightshirt, too, if It bad been worn at the time he was killed, vould have had some traces of blood Dn It. There are no such stains. This, End the fact that death must have mil , V- 7 k. 7. .-v 4 ? feartley Began a Searcn of the Room, Using a Small Glass Once or Twice as If He Were Looking for Fingerprints. Finger-prints. been Instantaneous, makes me feel iure that he vvus undressed after he (vas kilioil and then placed on the ed in the position In which we have tound him." Bartley began a search of the room, bslng a small glass once or twice as I? he were looking for finger-prints. Slyke's clothes were (lung over a chair, nd one of his stockings had fallen to the floor. The way the gray suit lay pn the chair made me wonder If Hartley Hart-ley wus right. when he said the mur-Berer mur-Berer hud undressed him after the trtma. It looked so much as If It had neen carelessly nung mere Dy a man preparing for bed. After going through Slyke's pockets Hartley suld slowly, "I have grave doubts If he was even killed in this room." He continued to examine the room, searching tlie floor, looking into the drawers of the desk, examining the walls even; then he came back to the clothing. Picking up the blue silk shirt from the chair, he examined It a second time before he said: "1 was right. He was not killed in this room. Here Is tlie suit he wore. You will notice that all his clothing Is placed on this chair In the manner that a man would naturally place It if he was undressing for bed. But there Is no button In the front of bin shirt to hold his collar, and one stocking is missing. Any man may lose a collar col-lar button, but if he does, that button will be dropped at the place where he undressed. No button Is In this room. It was lost In the room in which he was undressed. We find his shoes here but only one stocking, and we naturally ask where Is the other stocking. stock-ing. Then, too, there are no blood stains anywhere in this room. Though his wound did not bleed much, It must have bled some. These are the reasons rea-sons why I say he was not killed in this room, or even undressed here." His explanation seemed reasonable enough, yet somewhat mystifying. Why had tlie murderer taken all this trouble to undress Slyke, and why had ho done it in some other room? The next question was just as puzzling. If Slyke had not been killed In this room, where had the crime taken place? As If he had read my thoughts, Koche suggested that as there was another room in the tower, we might see what could be found there. The butler, who entered at this moment, mo-ment, did lils best not to glance at the bed. He was holding with great difficulty a half-grown Airedale that growled fiercely when he saw us. The butler motioned to the doctor to come to him. As he reached his side, Doctor Doc-tor King placed his hand upon the dog's head and It ceased to show Its teeth and licked his lingers. For several sev-eral moments he and tlie butler held a low conversation, then King turned to us to say that he had just been called to the hospital for an operation and would have to leave at once. Bartley scribbled something on a piece of paper, and handing it to the doctor said, "I think there ought to be a picture taken of the body so it can be used at the inquest." Tlie doctor agreed and went out, accompanied ac-companied by the butler. As the door closed behind them Bartley went to lock It, but the key was missing. After a moment's hesitation he decided de-cided it would do no harm to leave it unlocked while we were gone, and we all started for the floor above. The room we entered was of the same si;:e as the one in which we had found Slyke. Here, too, there was little furniture three chairs grouped around a little table in tlie center of the room, a lounge in one corner, a small desk In another. It was the table that attracted Hartley's attention. atten-tion. On it stood a half-emptied bottle of Scotch whisky, and beside the bottle three glasses, one of them holding about a spoonful of liquor. Near one of the glasses was a half-smoked half-smoked cigarette and a magazine, and on the opposite side of the table the stub of a cigar. Bartley looked at both of them with keen interest and finally placed hem in an envelope. Tlie cigarette must have been a very high-priced one, for the end was of tlie tinest straw. The appearance of the table suggested that three men had been present and that two of them had been smoking. A conference, confer-ence, perhaps, at which a bottle of whisky had assisted. Aside from the table, there seemed to be nothing of interest in tlie room. While Bartley was still glancing at the table, I walked over to tiie large window and drew aside the heavy curtain cur-tain that reached to the floor. At my feet was a playing card that had been concealed by its folds. Glancing around to see if there were any others and tinding none, I brought the card to Hartiey. As I stepped to his side, I saw that he was examining the magazine. Like many magazines, the back carried a gaudy advertisement that covered the entire page. This one had an unusual amount of unused white space. Bartley Bart-ley pointed silently to where someone had idly amused himself by drawing en It with a pencil, a habit many people have. The design was simple, only a mass of scrolls, with a little figure here and there, and lines rtia-unug rtia-unug through them. .Whatever it meant to Hartley, the mass of zeros held no significance to me. Ue did not enlighten me, but placed the magazine In pocket, j Then I showed him the playing card and told him where I found It. He asked, "Are there no more?" I was answering, "No," when Koche Interrupted, Inter-rupted, "1'es, there Is one." He pointed to the stairway that led to the top of the tower. There, lying under the bottom step, was a second playing card with tlie same design on the back as the one I had found. What were they doing in that room? Hartley smiled to himself as he examined ex-amined the second card. Koche asked, "What do they mean?" With a gesture that might have meant anything. It was so expressive, Hartley replied, "They had a card party downstairs last night," Koche was excited In a moment. "I'll tell you what it means. Some-; Some-; one at that party killed Slyke, followed fol-lowed him up here and killed him." It was not a half-bad theory, and even Bartley did not protest as much as I had thought he would Instead he said, "There Is something In what you say, Koche. We must look first for the person who had the chance to kill him. You assume that after the parly the person who dropped these cards did what any absent-minded person might do. That Is, he placed the cards of his last hand In his pocket. He may have followed Slyke up here, hidden behind the curtain, and as he killed him dropped some of his cards on the floor." He paused, half frowned, as If the theory did not quite appeal to him, and added slowly, "Still, Roche, there are other things to be considered. Those two cards are In different parts AllWK "There Must Be Blood Spots Somewhere, Some-where, Yet Where? There Are None in This Room." of the room ; not together as we mls-ht have expected If they had been dropped by accident. It looks to me as if they might have been placed where we found them by design. As if someone wished us to think just what you thought. Then there la that bottle of whisky and tlie three glasses. All three glasses have been drunk from. The glasses show that they were all used at about the same time. Evidently two of the men smoked; the third did not. What I wonder is, were these three persons In the room at one and the same time?" Koche, wdio had long since lost his air of self-satisfaction, now offered to help us make a thorough examination of the room. When we bad ended our unsuccessful search, Bartley stood silent, si-lent, a puzzled expression on his face. "It's more mysterious than ever," he said at last. "I am sure he was not killed in the room below. I am also sure he was not killed here. There must be blood spots somewhere, yet where? There are none In this room." He went to the window and glanced out, then came back and glanced up at the steps that led to the roof. Ml at once his face brightened, and motioning mo-tioning us to follow him he bounded up the seven steps to the little door that opened onto the balcony. We followed more slowly. We found ourselves on a bale my some four feet wide that ran around the tower. About eight or ten feet below its bronze-tipped top, an iron railing protected the edge of the bal-cojjy bal-cojjy and was covered Willi ivy, as were also the sides of the tm.'cr Itself. Hartley paused for a moment, standing with his hand on the rail, his face serious, his eyes thoughtful. But it was for a moment only; tlie next he was out of sight around 'he tower. Almost instantly we board him call us, and when we reached ids side he was on his knees examining I lie lloor and the lower part of the flail.; Looking where he pointed, I saw at his feet a dark splotch on the floor of the balcony, and n little higher up several similar spots on the wall of ilie tower. I realized that, at last, ne had found what he bad been looking for. There was no doubt that the splotches we saw were blood, and that it had been shed within a few hours. Had he expected to find them Just where he did? I wondered. i"You say I know who kilkd him I I know?" (TO BE CONTlXCClJ.l |