t ragged of all. The relationship
was unmistakable!

"I got you gov'nor," cried the operator. "Some dope, all right, all
right."

"Why, what is all this?" asked the manager, nonplussed. "The last three
are alike, but what good does it do?"

"It is known that the human voice in its inflections is like
handwriting--with a distinct personality. Certain words, when pronounced
naturally, without the alterations of dialect, are always in the same
rhythm. The records taken in the studio of those five words, 'Can you
hear me now?' are in the same general rhythm, but only the last three
snakes show exact similarity, to each little quaver and turn. There was
only the difference in shading: one was the voice of a women. The second
of a man of perhaps forty, the third of an old man--all three taken at
different times, and I thought from different people. But they all came
from one throat, and my work is completed along this line--Will you
please lock up the films, the phonograph, and my records in your film
vault, until I send for them; through Mr. Holloway?"

The criminologist arose and walked into the deserted studio, from whence
the company had long since departed for belated slumbers. He picked up
three bricks which lay in a corner of the big studio, and placed them
gently into his grip. The manager and the camera man observed this with
blank amazement, as he locked it and put the key into his pocket. Then
he handed each of them a large-sized bill.

"I'm very grateful, gentlemen, for your assistance. Pleasant dreams."

Shirley abstractedly walked out of the studio, one hand comfortably in
his overcoat pocket, swinging the grip in the other.

"Say, Lou," confided the manager, "he's the craziest guy I've ever seen
in the movies. And that's going some, after ten years of it."

Lou treated himself to a generous bite of plug tobacco, and spat
philosophically, before replying.

"Sure, he's crazy. Crazy, like the grandfather of all foxes!"

CHAPTER VII. ENTER A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

A reddening zone in the East silhouetted the serrated line of the
distant elevated structure, as Shirley walked along the gray street, his
thoughts busy with the possibilities of applying his new certainty.

He had reached Sixth Avenue, and was just passing one of the elevated
pillars when a black touring car crept up behind him. The clanging bell
and the grinding motors of an early surface car drowned the sound of
the automobile in his re