f breakfasting in bed.
He calmly proceeded to serve breakfast in spite of Crane's
remonstrances, having ceremoniously ordered out of the kitchen the
colored man who had been secured to take his place.

"Well, gentlemen," the detective began, "part of the mystery is
straightened out. I was entirely wrong, and each of you were partly
right. It was DuQuesne, in all probability. It is equally probable that
a great company--in this case the World Steel Corporation--is backing
him, though I don't believe there is a ghost of a show of ever being
able to prove it in law. Your 'object-compass' did the trick."

He narrated all the events of the previous night.

"I'd like to send him to the chair for this job," said Seaton with
rising anger. "We ought to shoot him anyway, damn him--I'm sorry duels
have gone out of fashion, for I can't shoot him off-hand, the way things
are now--I sure wish I could."

"No, you cannot shoot him," said Crane, thoughtfully, "and neither can
I, worse luck. We are not in his class there. And you must not fight
with him, either"--noting that Seaton's powerful hands had doubled into
fists, the knuckles showing white through the tanned skin--"though that
would be a fight worth watching and I would like to see you give him the
beating of his life. A little thing like a beating is not a fraction of
what he deserves and it would show him that we have found him out. No,
we must do it legally or let him entirely alone. You think there is no
hope of proving it, Prescott?"

"Frankly, I see very little chance of it. There is always hope, of
course, and if that bunch of pirates ever makes a slip, we'll be right
there waiting to catch 'em. While I don't believe in holding out false
encouragement, they've never slipped yet. I'll take my men off DuQuesne,
now that we've linked him up with Steel. It doesn't make any difference,
does it, whether he goes to them every night or only once a week?

"No."

"Then about all I can do is to get everything I can on that Steel crowd,
and that is very much like trying to get blood out of a turnip. I intend
to keep after them, of course, for I owe them something for killing two
of my men here, as well as for other favors they have done me in the
past, but don't expect too much. I have tackled them before, and so have
police headquarters and even the Secret Service itself, under cover, and
all that any of us has been able to get is an occasional small fish. We
could never lan