reatest case my detective agency has had since I left
the police force eleven years ago. It's too big for me, and I've come
to you to do a stunt as is a stunt. You will plug it for me, won't
you--just as you've always done? If I get the credit, it'll mean a
fortune to me in the advertising alone."

"Haven't I handled every case for you in confidence. I'm not a fly-cop,
Captain Cronin. I'm a consulting specialist, and there's no shingle hung
out. Perhaps you had better take it to some one else."

Shirley pushed away his empty glass impatiently.

"There, Monty, I didn't mean to offend you. But there's such swells
in this and such a foxey bunch of blacklegs, that I'm as nervous as a
rookie cop on his first arrest. Don't hold a grudge against me."

Shirley lit a cigarette and resumed his good nature: "Go on, Captain.
I'm so stale with dolce far niente, after the Black Pearl affair last
month, that I act like an amateur myself. Make it short, though, for I'm
going to the opera."

The Captain leaned over the table, his face tense with suppressed
emotion. He was a grizzled veteran of the New York police force: a man
who sought his quarry with the ferocity of a bull-dog, when the line
of search was definitely assured. Lacking imagination and the subtler
senses of criminology, Captain Cronin had built up a reputation for
success and honesty in every assignment by bravery, persistence, and
as in this case, the ability to cover his own deductive weakness by
employing the brains of others.

Montague Shirley was as antithetical from the veteran detective as a man
could well be. A noted athlete in his university, he possessed a society
rating in New York, at Newport and Tuxedo, and on the Continent which
was the envy of many a gilded youth born to the purple.

On leaving college, despite an ample patrimony, he had curiously enough
entered the lists as a newspaper man. From the sporting page he was
graduated to police news, then the city desk, at last closing his career
as the genius who invented the weekly Sunday thriller, in many colors
of illustration and vivacious Gallic style which interpreted into heart
throbs and goose-flesh the real life romances and tragedies of the
preceding six days! He had conquered the paper-and-ink world--then deep
within there stirred the call for participation in the game itself.

So, dropping quietly into the apparently indolent routine of club
existence, he had devoted his experience and geni