ly.

"Yes, but I wonder why professional detectives are so primitive. They
wear their calling cards and their business shingles on their figures
and faces. Surely the crooks must know them all personally. I read
detective stories, in rest moments, and every one of the sleuths lives
in some well-known apartment, or on a prominent street. Some day we
may read of one who is truly in secret service, but not until after his
death notice. But there, I am talking to quiet my own nerves a bit,--now
we will get to cases."

The doctor dropped his cigar into the bronze tray on the table, leaning
forward with intense earnestness, as he continued.

"This, Mr. Shirley, is the third murder of the sort within a week.
Wellington Serral, the wealthy broker, came to a sudden death in a
private dining room last Monday, in the company of a young show girl.
He was a patient of mine, and I signed the death certificate as
heart failure, to save the honorable family name for his two orphaned
daughters.

"Herbert de Cleyster, the railroad magnate, died similarly in a taxicab
on Thursday. He was also one of my patients. There, too, was concerned
another of these wretched chorus girls. To-night the fatal number of the
triad was consummated in this cycle of crime. To maintain my loyalty
to my patients I have risked my professional reputation. Have I done
wrong?"

"No! The criminal shall be brought to justice," replied Shirley in a
voice vibrant with a profound determination which was not lost upon his
companion.

"Are you powerful enough to bring this about, without disgracing me
or betraying this sordid tragedy to the morbid scandal-rakers of the
papers?"

"I will devote every waking hour to it. But, like you, my efforts must
remain entirely secret. I vow to find this man before I sleep again!"

"You are determined--yet it cannot be one single man. It must be an
organized gang, for all the crimes have been so strangely similar,
occurring to three men who are friends, and entrez nous, notorious for
their peccadilloes. The girls must be in the vicious circle, and ably
assisted. But there is one thing I forgot to tell you, which you forgot
to ask."

"And this is?"

"How they died. It was by some curious method of sudden arterial
stoppage. Old as they were, some fiendish trick was employed so
skilfully that the result was actual heart failure. There was no trace
of drugs in lungs or blood. On each man's breast, beneath the sternum
bone