The two watchers swung once more toward the door. This time they didn’t veer apart. As the young woman stepped out, each man possessed himself of an elbow. They hurried her across the sidewalk into a car which had mysteriously appeared from nowhere and slid to a quick stop just in time for the young woman to be catapulted into the interior.

  Lester Leith pinched out his cigarette and said to the cabbie, “We’ll follow that car.”

  The cab driver made a quick U-turn which placed him behind his quarry, and a red traffic signal enabled him to slide up into an advantageous position.

  “No rough stuff?” he asked dubiously.

  “Certainly not,” Leith said. “Just a matter of curiosity.”

  The cab driver studied the license plate of the car ahead. “It ain’t the law, is it?”

  Leith said, “That is precisely what I am endeavoring to ascertain at the moment.”

  The cab driver seemed not too enthusiastic, but he competently followed the other machine until it came to a stop in front of a downtown office building. His expert eye appraised the trio who emerged. “They’re G-men,” he said.

  “I doubt it,” Lester Leith commented. “The obviousness of their methods, their desire for mutual support, and their complete lack of subtlety are more indicative of police officers of the old school. My personal opinion is they’re operatives from a private detective agency.”

  The cab driver looked at him with sudden respect. “Say,” he said, “I bet you’re a G-man yourself.”

  “With whom,” Lester Leith asked, “did you bet?”

  The cab driver grinned. “Myself.”

  Leith said solemnly, “That’s a break for you. You can’t lose.”

  Edward H. Beaver served Lester Leith in the capacity of valet, but his obsequious loyalty was a carefully assumed mask covering his true character.

  For some time police had suspected Lester Leith of being a unique super-detective—a man whose keen mind unraveled tangled threads in the skein of crime. But all those crimes to which Lester Leith devoted his attention had one peculiar and uniform denouement. When the police, following a sometimes devious but always accurate trail blazed for them by Leith’s activities, reached their objectives, they invariably found a somewhat dazed criminal completely stripped of his ill-gotten gains.

  It was because of this the police had “planted” an undercover man to act as Leith’s valet. Yet, much as the police wanted to catch Leith red-handed, so far the spy’s activities had been no more productive of results than the efforts of those committees selected from an audience to supervise a stage magician in his feats of legerdemain.

  The spy was waiting up when Leith fitted his latchkey to the door of the penthouse apartment.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “What, Scuttle, waiting up?”

  “Yes, sir. I thought perhaps you’d like a Scotch and soda, sir. I have the things all ready. Your coat? Your hat? Your stick? Your gloves? Yes, sir. Now, do you wish to put on your dressing gown and house slippers?”

  Leith said, “No. I think I’ll remain dressed for a while, Scuttle. You might bring me the Scotch and soda.”

  Leith stretched out on the chaise longue and thoughtfully sipped the drink which the spy had placed at his elbow, while Beaver hovered around solicitously.

  “Scuttle,” Leith said at length, “you make it a point to read the crime news, I believe?”

  The spy coughed apologetically. “You’ll pardon me for saying so, but ever since you outlined your theory that the newspaper accounts frequently contain some significant fact which points to the criminal, I’ve made it a habit to read the crime news. Sort of a mental game I play with myself.”

  Lester Leith waited until he had taken two more leisurely sips from his glass before saying. “A fascinating pastime, isn’t it, Scuttle?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But make certain that your solutions are always merely academic—that you keep them only in your mind. You know how Sergeant Ackley is, Scuttle—overzealous, unreasonable—and he has that inherent suspicion which is the unfailing indication of the prejudiced mind.”

  Leith yawned and patted back the yawn with polite fingers. “Scuttle, in your crime reading, have you perhaps run across an account of some crime which took place in the Rust Commercial Building?”

  “The Rust Commercial Building? No, sir, I can’t say that I have.”

  Leith said, “I notice, Scuttle, that on the sixth floor of the Rust Commercial Building is a whole string of offices occupied by the Precision Instrument Designing and Installation Company, more generally referred to, I believe, as Pidico. Have you heard of any crime which has been committed there?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t.”

  Leith stretched, yawned, and said, “Most annoying, Scuttle.”

  “What is, may I ask?”

  “To depend upon the newspapers for information—to know that something in which you are interested has happened and that it will be twelve to twenty-four hours before you can read about it.”

  Beaver kept his surprise concealed behind a rigidly immobile poker countenance. His eyes held burning curiosity, but his manner was merely deferential as he said, “Is there anything that I could do to help you, sir?”

  Lester Leith gave frowning consideration to the spy’s overtures. “Scuttle, could I trust you?”

  “With your very life, sir.”

  “All right, Scuttle, I’ll give you an assignment—a very confidential one. … In the Channing Commercial Building there’s a private detective agency. I didn’t bother to look it up. Some men took a young woman there about ten o’clock tonight. They questioned her. Perhaps they turned her loose, perhaps not. If my reasoning is correct, she was an employee of the Precision Instrument Designing and Installation Company. Find out if that is the case. If so, report to me her name and address. If the facts aren’t as I’ve outlined them, then I’m not interested in the matter at all.”

  “Yes, sir. And if it turns out you’re right, sir, may I ask the nature and extent of your interest?”

  Leith replied, “Simply to put my mind at ease by making a logical explanation of an event which has puzzled me.”

  “May I ask what the event was?”

  “The throwing of a silver fox cape out of a four-story window.”

  The spy’s eyes glittered. “Oh, yes, sir. I read about that in the paper.”

  “Indeed, Scuttle? Did you have any theories about it?”

  “Yes, sir. I gave that matter quite a bit of thought and reached a very satisfactory conclusion. I said to myself—if you won’t think it’s presumptuous, sir—I’ll pretend that I’m Lester Leith reading that newspaper clipping and try to find in it the significant clue which the police have overlooked.”

  “And what did you conclude?”

  “That the woman was merely a cog in a machine, a part of a very clever scheme.”

  “Scuttle, you amaze me!”

  “Yes, sir. I decided that her sole function was to distract the attention of everyone in the place while a clever confederate worked a foolproof scheme.”

  “What was the scheme, Scuttle?”

  “Switching price tags, sir.”

  “Can you give me a few more details?”

  “Yes, sir. Some coats are second-grade or imitation and valued at seventy-five to a hundred dollars. Others are the real thing and valued at from twelve hundred to twenty-five hundred. Obviously, a person who could switch price tags would be able to take advantage of the situation and for a relatively small amount get a high-priced coat.”

  “Marvelous, Scuttle!” Lester Leith said. “You’re doing splendidly.”

  “Thank you, sir. And do you think that’s what happened?”

  “Certainly not, but you’re improving, Scuttle.”

  “You mean you don’t think that happened?”

  “No, Scuttle.”

  “But it’s an entirely logical explanation,” the valet insisted.

  Leith yawned again. “That’s why I don’t think it happened, Scuttle, and now I think I’ll go to bed. Don’t call me before nine in the morning.”

  Incandescent lights blazed down on the cigarette-charred desk of Sergeant Ackley. The air in the building held that peculiar stench which comes to jails, police headquarters, and other places which are inhabited twenty-four hours a day. Beaver sat across the desk from Sergeant Ackley and said, “I just called on the off chance you hadn’t gone to bed.”

  Ackley yawned, ran his fingers through his hair, and said, “That’s all right, Beaver. I’d get up in the middle of the night to catch this crook. You say you need this information before nine o’clock in the morning?”

  “That’s right.”

  Ackley pressed a button and, when an officer appeared, said, “Find out what detective agency is in the Channing Commercial Building and get the guy in charge on the line.”

  When the officer had left the room, Ackley rubbed his hand around the back of his neck, yawned, then fished in his waistcoat pocket for a cigar. “And you think it’s connected up with this goofy shoplifting stunt at the Gilbert place?”

  “It seems to be,” Beaver said.

  Sergeant Ackley lit his cigar, puffed thoughtfully for a few moments, then shook his head emphatically and said, “Nope, Beaver. That’s a blind. That business at the furrier company was a price-tag switch, just the way you doped it out. My guess is Gilbert will be squawking his head off tomorrow that someone walked out with a two-thousand-dollar mink coat by making the payoff for a seventy-five-dollar rabbit imitation.”

  Beaver nodded his head. “That was what I thought. Leith thinks different.”

  Sergeant Ackley said, “That’s just the line of hooey he’s giving you to keep you from knowing what he really has in mind.”

  “He’s fallen for me this time, Sergeant. He’s really going to take me into his confidence.”

  Sergeant Ackley rolled the cigar around to the other corner of his mouth. “Nope,” he said, “he’s playing you for a sucker, Beaver. That business about the silver fox cape is proof that he’s stringing you along. I’ll bet there wasn’t anything that happened over in the Instrument—”

  He broke off as the phone rang. He scooped up the receiver and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Hello—Sergeant Ackley talking.”

  There was a moment’s silence in the room, then Ackley pulled the cigar out of his mouth and said, in a voice suddenly crisp with authority, “Oh, this is the Planetary International Detective Service in the Channing Commercial Building, is it? And you’re in charge? Okay. This is Sergeant Ackley at headquarters. Now get this, and get it straight because I don’t want any fumbling. Have you got a client, the Precision Instrument Designing and Installation Company? Oh, you have, eh? I see. Now, what kind of work are you doing right now for that company? I don’t care whether it’s confidential or not! This is police headquarters. We’re working on a case, and we think that angle enters into it…. Never mind how we knew about it. We’re asking for information…. No, you aren’t going to stall along while you call up your client. I’m asking for information, and I want it. We let you guys get by with a lot of stuff, but right now … Well, that’s better. Okay, go ahead and shoot.”

  There was almost three minutes of complete silence while Sergeant Ackley scowled at the telephone transmitter, listening to the voice which poured words through the receiver into his attentive left ear. Then he said, “How do you know this dame is the one? … I see…. Where is she now? … All right, you guys should have reported that in the first place. That’s a crime. That’s burglary…. Sure, they don’t want any notoriety, but they don’t need to have it. We can keep things under cover the same as anyone else. Do you eggs up there think you can do better work than the police department? … Well, that’s better. Tell him the truth. Tell him headquarters called up about it and demanded a report. Tell him we’re on our toes enough so we know about crimes even when the victims try to keep ’em secret, and you can tell him that Sergeant. Ackley is working on the case personally. Tell him I’ve made substantial progress toward a solution. In the meantime, you eggs keep us posted, see? … That’s right, Sergeant Ackley.”

  Ackley banged down the receiver and then grinned across the desk at the undercover man. “The chief’s gonna get a kick out of that,” he said. “They were trying to keep it secret. That bird up at the detective agency nearly fainted, wonderin’ how we knew about it.”

  “How we knew about what?” Beaver asked.

  Ackley said, “An inventor by the name of Nicholas Hodge worked out an improved submarine detector and locator. He made a rough model which seemed to do the work. He took it up with Washington and the thing got snowed under with red tape. Then he made a contact with one of the rear admirals who arranged for a definite test but insisted that a completely finished instrument be installed for the test, one that looked good enough to impress the big shots in the Navy. The Precision Instrument Designing and Installation Company was picked for the job.

  “Naturally, the thing was carried out in great secrecy. Jason Bellview, the president of the company, and his confidential secretary, a girl by the name of Bernice Lamen, were the only ones who knew what it was all about and where the master blueprints were kept. Those offices of the instrument company are just the designing offices—the factory is about a mile out of town. Bellview’s idea was that he’d split the thing up into parts, have workmen make the separate parts, and then, at the last minute, he, using a pair of trusted assistants, would assemble them himself.”

  “And something happened to the blueprints?” Beaver asked.

  “Vanished into thin air.”

  “This detective agency is working on it?”

  “That’s right. They’re under contract to take care of all the Instrument Company’s business. Bellview called them as soon as he knew what had happened. They suspected Bernice Lamen, laid some sort of a trap for her, and she walked into it. They nabbed her and are giving her a third degree and getting no place with it.”

  “So we take over?” Beaver grinned.

  Sergeant Ackley grinned also. “We take over,” he said, “but not until old Jason Bellview comes crawling in on his belly and begs us to. He was afraid of the publicity. If it ever gets out that those blueprints aren’t in his office, or if he can’t guarantee that while they were out of his possession no one made copies of them, the Precision Instrument Company is in one sweet mess.”

  Abruptly the grin left Beaver’s face. He frowned thoughtfully.

  “Well,” Ackley asked, “what is it?”

  “How the devil did Lester Leith know all about this?”

  Ackley’s eyes reflected the mental jolt this question gave him.

  Beaver said, “It was something that had to do with pitching that silver fox cape out of that window.”

  “Nonsense, Beaver. That’s just a blind he’s using.”

  Beaver said suddenly, “Look here, Sergeant, the Instrument Company’s offices are right across the street from the fur company. Do you suppose you could see into the—”

  Sergeant Ackley shook his head authoritatively. “The Instrument Company is on the sixth floor. The furrier’s on the fourth.”

  Beaver said doggedly, “Well, the furrier’s in a loft building, and the fourth floor of that building might be on a level with the sixth floor of the office building.”

  Sergeant Ackley’s eyebrows leveled. “You may have something there,” he admitted. Then he added hastily, “But I doubt it.”

  Lester Leith, over a breakfast of coffee, toast, and crisp bacon, listened to the valet’s report.

  “Very interesting, Scuttle, and I should say quite complete. How did you get your facts?”

  The spy coughed. “A young woman in whom I’m interested is keeping company with a police detective,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s right. You’ve mentioned that before. I’m not certain that I approve of the ethical aspects of the situation, Scuttle, but the relationship seems to have been signally productive of information.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re quite certain that Jason Bellview consulted the police?”

  “Yes, sir. After midnight.”

  “Let’s run over the story once more, Scuttle.”

  “Yes, sir. Bellview placed the master blueprints in his vault. The big door is kept open during the day but is closed and locked at night. Nicholas Hodge, the inventor of the device, and Bellview had just finished a preliminary conference. The blueprints had been placed in the vault. Bellview had an important matter to attend to and excused himself for a few moments, leaving Hodge waiting in an office which adjoined his private office. Bernice Lamen, Bellview’s secretary, had opened and sorted the early afternoon mail in her own office and was just bringing it to Mr. Bellview’s private office—so she said. She had just entered the office when she heard the screaming from across the street. Naturally, many of the employees ran to the windows to look out. Bernice Lamen says she heard the door slam in the private office—the exit door—as though someone had hurriedly run out. She assumed at the moment it was Mr. Bellview. That’s what she says.”

  “It wasn’t Bellview?”

  “No, sir. Mr. Bellview says he was in another part of the building. Whoever it was got the plans out of the vault. He seemed to know just where to go for them.”

  “Any chance someone entered the offices from the outside?”

  “No, sir. Frank Packerson, who has charge of the firm’s house organ, had been trapshooting over the weekend. He’d brought his gun to the office and, as soon as he heard the commotion across the street, he grabbed the gun, loaded it, and jumped out into the corridor. Hodge, the inventor, was the only man who appeared who wasn’t connected with the company. And, of course, Hodge would hardly steal his own blueprints.”