rns on one side and a brewery on the other. Hot proposition to
trot out as the big end of a six-million-dollar contract! But it was the
best I had to offer, and after the Lieutenant had finished his Oolong and
lighted a cigarette I loads him into the limousine again and we shoots
uptown.

"Here we are," says I, as we turns into a cross street just before it
ends in the East River. "The main works," and I waves my band around
casual.

"Ah, yes," says he, gettin' his eye on the tall brick stack of the
brewery and then lettin' his gaze roam across to the car-barns.

"Temporary quarters," says I. "Kind of miscellaneous, ain't they?
Here's the main entrance. Let's go in here first." And I steers him
through the office door of the middle buildin'. Then I hunts up the
superintendent.

"Just takin' a ramble through the works," says I. "Don't bother. We'll
find our way."

Some busy little scene it is, too, with all them lathes and things goin',
belts whirrin' overhead, and workmen in undershirts about as thick as
they could be placed.

I towed Cecil in and out of rooms, up and down stairs, until he must have
been dizzy, and ends by leadin' him into the yard.

"Storage sheds," says I, pointin' to the neat rows of shell-cases piled
from the ground to the roof. "And a dozen motor-trucks haulin' 'em away
all the time."

The Lieutenant he inspects some of 'em, lookin' wise; and then he walks
to the back, where there's a high board fence with barbed wire on top.
"What's over there?" says he.

"Blamed if I know," says I.

"It's rather important," says he. "Let's have a look."

I didn't get the connection, but I helped him shove a packin'-case up
against the fence, so he could climb up. For a minute or so he stares,
then he ducks down and beckons to me.

"I say," he whispers. "Come up here. Don't show your head. There!
What do you make of that?"

So I'm prepared for something tragic and thrillin'. But all I can see is
an old slate-roofed house, one of these weather-beaten, dormer-windowed
relics of the time when that part of town was still in the suburbs.
There's quite a big yard in the back, with a few scrubby old pear trees,
a double row of mangy box-bushes, and other traces of what must have been
a garden.

In the far corner is a crazy old summer-house with a saggin' roof and the
sides covered with tar paper. There's a door to it, fastened with a big
red padlock.

Standin' on the back porch of th