APTER II

I MUST SAVE HER LIFE

Within a few minutes Transome Kent had leapt into a car (a surface car)
and was speeding north towards Riverside Drive with the full power of
the car. As he passed uptown a newsboy was already calling, "Club Man
Murdered! Another Club Man Murdered!" Carelessly throwing a cent to the
boy, Kent purchased a paper and read the brief notice of the tragedy.

Kivas Kelly, a well-known club man and _bon vivant_, had been found dead
in his residence on Riverside Drive, with every indication--or, at
least, with a whole lot of indications--of murder. The unhappy club man
had been found, fully dressed in his evening clothes, lying on his back
on the floor of the billiard-room, with his feet stuck up on the edge of
the table. A narrow black scarf, presumably his evening tie, was twisted
tightly about his neck by means of a billiard cue inserted in it. There
was a quiet smile upon his face. He had apparently died from
strangulation. A couple of bullet-holes passed through his body, one on
each side, but they went out again. His suspenders were burst at the
back. His hands were folded across his chest. One of them still held a
white billiard ball. There was no sign of a struggle or of any
disturbance in the room. A square piece of cloth was missing from the
victim's dinner jacket.

In its editorial columns the same paper discussed the more general
aspects of the murder. This, it said, was the third club man murdered in
the last fortnight. While not taking an alarmist view, the paper felt
that the killing of club men had got to stop. There was a limit, a
reasonable limit, to everything. Why should a club man be killed? It
might be asked, why should a club man live? But this was hardly to the
point. They do live. After all, to be fair, what does a club man ask of
society? Not much. Merely wine, women and singing. Why not let him have
them? Is it fair to kill him? Does the gain to literature outweigh the
social wrong? The writer estimated that at the rate of killing now going
on the club men would be all destroyed in another generation. Something
should be done to conserve them.

Transome Kent was not a detective. He was a reporter. After sweeping
everything at Harvard in front of him, and then behind him, he had
joined the staff of the _Planet_ two months before. His rise had been
phenomenal. In his first week of work he had unravelled a mystery, in
his second he had unearthed a packing scandal whi