ng after him.

"Sure you can ask," he replied. As he found me following, he turned
and snapped: "Say, what the hell are you hangin' around here for,
anyway?"

"I merely wanted to ask what you had discovered about the men in the
black limousine. That's why I stopped."

"Well, you've found out, haven't you? _Nothin'_. All right then, you
go on into the city and see if you can find out anything more!"

I walked on down the sloping bank, searching the ground to see if I
could find the gun that might reveal so much. I could feel the eyes of
the inspector boring into my back.

"What are you looking for?" he demanded.

"A cuff-link," I answered easily. "I think I lost one here last night.
You didn't happen to find it, did you?"

"A cuff-link? Humph!" he grunted. "No, I haven't found it, but I
wouldn't be surprised if I was lookin' for that same cuff-link."

All this time I was searching the bank with my eyes. A scrubby, little
bush overhung the creek and I kicked at it with my foot. There was a
"plopp" as though something heavy had dropped into the water.
Instinctively I knew it was the object for which we were both
searching, and I turned to find the inspector eying me quizzically.

"What was that noise?"

"What noise?" I asked.

"Sounded as though that precious cuff-link of yours had dropped into
the water." He started for me, and as he did so, I bent down quickly
and plunged my arm into the water. My fingers closed on the revolver
just as he came bounding toward me. With a quick shove I pushed it far
into the soft clay of the bank, and, grabbing a rock off the bottom of
the creek, withdrew my arm from the water and slipped the rock into my
pocket. The red-faced little detective was peering over my shoulder as
I turned. Rarely have I seen a man so angry.

"Give me what you pulled out of that creek!" he almost screamed.

"What for, Inspector?" I asked quietly.

"Never mind what for. You give me what you found in that creek, or
I'll--" he grabbed me by the shoulder.

"All right," I said; "all right, Inspector, don't get so excited over
nothing. It's yours." I pulled the muddy rock from my coat pocket and
gravely handed it to him. "It was only an ordinary, every-day rock. I
didn't know you were a geologist."

He pounced on me and ran his fingers over my person. Red-faced, he
surveyed me.

"I ain't a geologist, but I am a criminologist, and just one more of
your monkey tricks like that