them
over.

"The first," he said, "is a photograph of 'Baldy' Newman. He's a
good man for you to keep your eye out for, because if he ever shot
first it would be all day with you. The second photograph is of
Wagner. You have already seen him, but this picture will fix him
more firmly in your mind. The next photograph is the one our man
made of Atwood's letter. Of course, the letter doesn't tell us much,
but the handwriting may. That last photograph is of the hand marks
on the dining room table in the Ames apartment. Ordinarily, marks of
that kind would tell very little. Our finger print expert, however,
called my attention to the fact that there is a scar on the right
hand. Of course, a scar in that position might be found on many
hands, but if you look carefully at that photograph you will see
that the scar forms a sort of acute angle. It is, therefore, not an
ordinary scar. The man whose hand we find it on is pretty sure to be
one of the men who was in the Ames apartment that night."

"High class crooks like Atwood, while they work alone, are often
hard to get, but sooner or later they grow ambitious. They want to
be the brains of an organization. Then they call in second-rate
crooks like 'Baldy' and Wagner, to do the dirty work. These men are
never so clever, and some day, through them, the police get their
hands on the man higher up. I think, Marsh, that in this case that
is what we are going to do."

"You have done well, Morgan," praised Marsh. "I believe on the whole
that, while I have secured some valuable information, your work has
really brought us the nearest to the man we want."

"That was pretty sharp of you to tie up Merton with the case,"
commented Morgan. "Of course, when you mentioned it to me I saw its
possibilities. Before that I was thrown off the track by the fact
that Merton was reported to have been missing for ten days, whereas
this supposed crime occurred at two o'clock last Tuesday morning.
Why do you suppose that fellow Hunt threw us off like that?"

"Probably he did not do it intentionally," answered Marsh. "Hunt is
running the business for Merton, and very likely saw little of him
outside of the once. It may have been ten days since Merton had
appeared at his office, although only a few days since he was
missing from the hotel."

"What made you suspect it in the first place?" inquired Morgan.

"I'll tell you the whole story," said Marsh. "Naturally, I was
watching the papers for mi