ght one day grace
that radiant page--himself in a long, fashionable overcoat, carelessly
flung back to reveal the badge, with its never closing eye, and
underneath, "William P. Durgin, the Dashing Young Detective, whose
Coolness, Skill, and Daring have made his Name a Terror to Evil-Doers."

Famished for adventure, thirsting for danger, yearning for the perilous
midnight encounter, avid of secrecy and disguises, Billy had been forced
to toil prosaically, barrenly, unprofitably, about the sinless corridors
of the City Hotel. All he had been able to do thus far was to regard
every newcomer to the town with a steely eye of distrust; to watch each
one furtively, to shadow him in his walks, and to believe during his
sojourn that he might be "Red Mike, alias James K. Brown, wanted for
safe-breaking at Muskegon, Michigan; reward, $1000," or some like
desperado.

As such did he view them all--from the ornately garbed young man who
came among us purveying windmills to the portly, broadclothed,
gray-whiskered and forbiddingly respectable colporteur of the American
Bible Society. Some day would his keen gray eye penetrate the cunning
disguise; some day would he step quietly up to his man and say in low
but deadly tones: "Come with me, now. Make no trouble or it will be the
worse for you." Whereupon the guilty wretch would blanch and say in
shaking voice: "My God, it's Billy Durgin, the famous detective! Don't
shoot--I'll come!"

Billy had faith that this dramatic episode would occur in the very
office of the City Hotel, and he believed that some of those who had
joked him about his life passion would thereafter treat him in a very
different manner.

Though I had long won these facts from Billy, I had never known him to
play his game so openly before. But when I mentioned the thing to Solon,
thinking to beguile him from his trouble, I found him more interested
than I had thought he could be; for Solon knew Billy as well as I did,

"Did Billy follow you here?" he asked. "Perhaps he has a clew."

"A clew to what?"

"A clew to Potts. Billy volunteered to work up the Potts case, and I
told him to go ahead."

"Was that fair, Solon, to pit a sleuth as relentless as Billy against
poor Potts?"

"All's fair in love and war."

"Is it really war?"

"You ask Westley Keyts if he thinks it's love."

I think I noticed for the first time then that the Potts affair was
etching lines into Solon's face.

"Of course it's war," he wen