from the high walls, the
rows of painted faces looked down on him from their dull gilt frame.

"A fellow must feel a kind of a pressure on him to have an assorted
gang of ancestors looking down on him this way all the time," said the
big man, mentally. "I don't know whether I'd like it or not."

Stumph knocked at the study door, and when a voice bade them come in, he
opened it and stood aside while Scanlon entered. Ashton-Kirk sat upon a
deep sofa with his legs wrapped in a steamer-rug, smoking a briar pipe,
and going over some closely typed pages.

"How are you?" greeted he. "Take a comfortable chair, will you? You'll
find things to smoke on the table. And pardon me a moment while I finish
this."

Scanlon lighted a cigarette and sat down. The criminologist plunged once
more into the typed sheets, and while he was so engaged, Bat's eyes
roved about the room. Through the partly open door at one end he had a
detail of the laboratory with its shining retorts and racks of gleaming
apparatus; in the study itself were rows of books standing upon
everything that would hold them; cases were stuffed with them; they
littered the tables and stands, some spotless in their fresh newness,
others dingy and old, with warping leather backs and yellowed pages.

Ashton-Kirk put the sheets down at last and sat for a space smoking in
thoughtful silence, the singular eyes half closed. Then he threw aside
the rug and arose; pressing a call button he began pacing the room.

"This little case of ours is gaining in interest," said he. "Its scope
is widening, too. I put one of my men, Burgess, on a detail which I
wanted thoroughly searched, and it led him to New Orleans."

Scanlon elevated his brows.

"No!" said he. "Is that a fact?"

There were a number of newspapers scattered about the floor. Ashton-Kirk
kicked one of them out of the way as he turned the table in his pacing.

"I suppose you've seen the afternoon editions," said he, with a smile at
the corners of his mouth.

"Not yet," said Scanlon. "It's a bit early."

"I had Stumph get me some of them," said the investigator, "and it's
just as I expected it would be. My plan of last night worked perfectly."

"You mean what you gave Osborne at headquarters."

"Yes. One of the first things he did was to call in the reporters and
tell them of the new clues. He neglected to state, evidently, by whom
they had been found, and the reporters naturally took it for granted
that he was th