d I had been so confident, and had not
asked to be shown all the evidence they had against Hosley. That proved
to be more of a mistake than I supposed, as I hurried along.

Just before entering our house, I called a boy and sent this message to
Mr. Tescheron, at his home in Ninety-sixth Street. I found the address
in the telephone book:

"Have notified Coroner Flanagan. He has telephoned all the cemeteries
to hold body. Autopsy to-morrow. Rest easy. I am with you.

"HOPKINS."

CHAPTER IV

Flanagan would enjoy the joke, I thought, on my way home. Coroner Tim
Flanagan, the Tammany leader of the district in which we lived, was the
friend of everybody in his territory, and took a kindly interest in Jim
and me, although we held office on other tenure than "pull." We bought
tickets every year for the annual clam-bake of the Timothy J. Flanagan
Association, held at Rockaway, and there mingled with the politicians
big and little, and the fellows from our departments. We office-holders
knew which side our bread was buttered on, and we also liked clams. We
did not attend the annual mid-winter ball of the same association, but
we never failed to buy tickets admitting "ladies and gent." If the news
that I had taken undue liberty with his name came back to Flanagan I
knew he would quickly forgive me. Flanagan was a good fellow, straight
and loyal.

As I passed through the vestibule of our apartment house I looked at
the letter-boxes and noticed the narrow string of crape tied on the
little knob, under the badly written name, "Browning." If the sad event
had closed, as reported by the subordinates of Smith, the careless
undertaker had forgotten to remove this shred of formality.

I found the murderer, forger and bad man of the border, in bed, snoring
as if he was glad he had always stuck to the treadmill of virtue, and
had never murdered a wife to get another with money, or had raised a
check for a cool million or so without the formalities of a pious
purloiner from the people's purse. No criminal in history had ever slept
with a smoother rhythm to his heart-beat than this one, with the elite
of New York's private detective bureaus hot upon his trail for a long
chase. His sonorous snore might have sent a waver through the mind of
the crafty Tescheron, and made the wily Smith feel that the case would
dwindle to less than a week's job, when he was probabl