“By the way, Scuttle, where is this man, Striker?”

  “I have his address, sir. He’s in Valparaiso, Indiana. That’s a place about fifty miles from here, sir.”

  “Has an office there, Scuttle?”

  “Yes, sir. He seems to have concentrated his holdings, sir, and he’s quite well fixed. He owns quite a bit of real estate in the town, business property, income-producing and what not.”

  Lester Leith nodded gravely. “Scuttle, go in the kitchen and see if you can find me a bit of mineral wool, and a cruet of vinegar.”

  The valet flashed one swift glance at Sergeant Ackley, then vanished. In a few moments he was back with the articles mentioned.

  Lester Leith took them, slipped the collar from the dog’s neck. “You got the name Bobo engraved on the collar very nicely, Scuttle,” he said. “I wonder what’s under the nickel name plate.”

  “Brass,” growled Ackley. “Brass takes a plate well.”

  “Let’s see,” remarked Lester Leith, and began to rub the plate with the mineral wool. Within a short time there was the gleam of yellow, and then a strip of brass was exposed. “Quite right, sergeant, quite right. You nearly always are right. Mind you, though, sergeant, I said nearly. By that I mean that I know of no man who is better able to pass upon brass than you are. But when it comes to the questions of guilt or innocence—but then, again, why bring that up?

  “Scuttle, has the local chief of police a good description of this man, Colby, with whom Martha Striker ran away?”

  “Yes, sir, of course, sir. The police are not as dumb as some people think, sir. This chief of police, C. A. Lambertson, is a very intelligent man —for a country officer.

  “He realizes, of course, that Colby is the probable murderer of the woman. In fact, it almost goes without saying that Colby is the murderer. And Chief Lambertson has secured a very fair snapshot of Colby, together with an excellent description.”

  Lester Leith glanced up from the dog collar to study his valet with quizzical eyes.

  “Ring him up, Scuttle. Tell him to wire the description to the warden of San Quentin prison in California, and see if the description doesn’t tally with that of a confidence man who was discharged sometime in the last part of twenty-five or first part of twenty-six.”

  The valet gulped, swallowed, cleared his throat, glanced at Sergeant Ackley.

  “Are you serious, sir?”

  “Certainly, Scuttle, why not?”

  “But how could you possibly know that Colby was an ex-convict, and that he was confined in San Quentin penitentiary?”

  “Tut, tut, Scuttle. I don’t know it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have Chief Lambertson waste the expense of a telegram. And would you mind doing as I say without asking questions, Scuttle? Of course, I realize it may be quite a request to make, but you must remember that I am paying you your salary, Scuttle. Not much of a salary, perhaps, but enough, nevertheless, to entitle me to your cooperation upon such minor matters.”

  And Sergeant Ackley echoed Lester Leith’s disapproval with a deep scowl. Since it was vital to the police to have Lester Leith shadowed at all times, it became imperative that the undercover agent must restrain his feelings in order to keep the job. If he should be dismissed, the police would have great difficulty in seeing that the man’s successor was also a police spy.

  Beaver oozed through the door to the telephone.

  Lester Leith turned to the dog collar again. “Now a drop or two of vinegar, my dear sergeant.”

  “What’s that for?” growled Ackley.

  “To furnish an impression of age, of course. You know vinegar and salt will polish brass. But a little vinegar left on brass will turn it green after a bit.”

  Sergeant Ackley leaned forward.

  “Look here, Leith, there was a murder of a Margy Marigold that has never been cleared up. She had a dog she’d adopted a day or two before the murder. That dog was named Bobo, the same as this dog. And it seems to me he came from out here some way. Seems like it was some little town in Indiana.”

  Lester Leith’s smile was oily in its suave benignity. “Yes, yes, sergeant. What a wonderful memory you have. You interest me strangely. Or, perhaps I should say, strangely, you interest me. Because there’s so much of the time when I’m not interested in your conclusions. Pray, go on.”

  “Well, that dog was a Boston bull,” blurted the officer.

  “What of it?” asked Leith.

  “Simply this. If you want to plant a dummy dog some place so it will look like that dog, why in hell don’t you get the same kind of a dog?”

  Lester Leith nodded smiling acquiescence. “Yes, indeed, sergeant. Do you know, my valet, Scuttle, or Beaver, as you call him asked me the same question in precisely the same words? It’s rather a unique instance of similar minds running in the same channel.”

  Fawkes glanced at his superior, gathered his feet in under him, ready to spring for Leith’s throat at a word of command.

  “But,” muttered Sergeant Ackley, restraining his temper in part, “that’s not answering the question.”

  “Quite right, my dear sergeant, quite right. It’s not answering the question. And the answer, sergeant, is, of course, that I’m not trying to make a dog take the place of the Bobo that figured in the Margy Marigold murder. That’s why I was so particular in selecting a fox terrier. Even a police mind couldn’t possibly figure that I was trying to make a fox terrier substitute for a Boston bull—no personal reflections, of course, sergeant. I merely had reference to the vast organization of which you happen to be a sergeant. But tell me, am I right in thinking that even the police would hardly suspect me of such an attempt?”

  “What attempt?”

  “That which I just mentioned, of trying to substitute a fox terrier for a Boston bull.”

  “No. Nobody’s going to think that.”

  “Well, sergeant, since you’re here, and since I’m here, would you mind giving me that in writing.”

  “Giving you what!”

  “A statement that even the police wouldn’t think I was trying to make my Bobo take the place of the Boston bull Bobo that figured in the Marigold murder case?”

  “I’ll give you nothing in writing,” growled the irate officer.

  “Tut, tut, sergeant. A man should never make a positive statement unless he is willing to put his name to it. However, we’ll let the matter pass for the present.

  “Now this license. You’ll notice it carefully, sergeant, because I intend to do things to it.”

  And Lester Leith detached the license from the collar, placed it upon the little anvil, took a cold chisel and began to tap little crisscross marks upon the soft brass, marks which almost completely obliterated the number of the license.

  “What in hell you’re doing that for is more than I know,” said Fawkes, booming into the conversation with a voice of deep-throated hostility.

  “I surmised as much, Guy,” said Lester Leith, without bothering to raise his eyes from the anvil.

  Sergeant Ackley placed a surreptitious, but, nevertheless, firmly restraining hand upon the tense arm of his subordinate. Catching the blazing eyes, he shook his head, intimated by pantomime that the conversation was to be left entirely in his hands.

  CHAPTER V

  “Sure I’ll Sign It”

  “Seems like you’re going to a lot of trouble with that job,” said Ackley, in his most ingratiating manner, “You’re not helping the looks of the dog license any.”

  “It’s my dog license, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. No call to get sore about it.”

  “I’m not, not in the least, sergeant, I merely wanted to know if it was not my dog license, my property, mine to do with as I liked.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “You’re an officer. You’d ought to know.”

  “I do know.”

  “And it’s mine?”

  “Naturally. You paid for it.”

  “And I can do what I want to with it? I can mutilate it. I can throw it away. I can give it away, or can sell it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Ah yes, my dear sergeant, and would you mind putting that in writing?”

  “Putting what in writing?”

  “That it’s my dog license.”

  A look of cunning came over the features of the officer. “Sure I’ll put it in writing, provided you’ll sign the writing along with me.”

  Lester Leith nodded. “I’m always willing to sign any statement I may make.”

  Whereupon Sergeant Ackley beckoned toward the valet. “Get me paper and pen, Beaver.”

  “Ah yes, and a carbon paper, Scuttle,” added Lester Leith. “It might be well to have carbon copy, you know.”

  The man brought the things with suspicious alacrity.

  With the pen pausing over the paper, Sergeant Ackley glanced at his assistants purposefully and intoned the legal formula which would make the document admissible in evidence against Lester Leith.

  “You are making his statement of your own free will and voluntarily, and with the understanding that it may be used against you?”

  “Why, sergeant, I fancied you were the one who was making the statement?” inquired Lester.

  “But you’re joining in it!”

  “Oh, certainly, my dear sergeant. But it should be capable of being used against either or both of us if it’s a joint statement. I’ll tell you what, let me dictate what I want and then, if it’s my own dictation there can be no question but what it’s free and voluntary.”

  “And can be used against you?” persisted Sergeant Ackley.

  “Oh, by all means,” murmured Lester Leith.

  “Very well,” said the officer, with a triumphant glance at the other two men, “You remember that, Beaver. You remember it, Fawkes.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the valet, leaning forward, his glittering eyes fastened upon the paper.

  “You’re damn tootin’,” grumbled Fawkes, his eyes flitting to the waistcoat pocket over Lester Leith’s well molded torso, and in which pocket there reposed certain I.O.U.s signed by Fawkes, and amounting to precisely one month’s salary.

  “Very well,” agreed Lester Leith, “We are ready. Here is the statement:

  “It is agreed that the undersigned Lester Leith is the owner of the dog collar upon which appears the word ‘Bobo.’ It is further distinctly understood that he is the owner of a license issued by the City of Pickets, Indiana. The undersigned Lester Leith admits that he is the owner of these articles, that they were procured for him at his special instance and request. The undersigned Sergeant Ackley bearing in mind the Marigold murder case, admits that the undersigned Lester Leith, being the sole owner of these articles, may sell or otherwise dispose of them as he sees fit, and that he has the police consent to do so.”

  Lester Leith paused, glanced about him. “That covers the situation, sergeant?”

  “Yes,” breathed Sergeant Ackley.

  “Very well. Ill sign, and you can sign, and we’ll have witnesses. You should sign in your official capacity, naming your station and rank, sergeant and the municipality of which you are an officer.”

  Sergeant Ackley signed as he was directed, passed the paper over to Lester Leith.

  That individual signed his name with a flourish.

  Sergeant Ackley carefully passed the paper over to Fawkes. “Sign,” he commanded.

  “With your official office and title,” prompted Lester Leith.

  Fawkes signed.

  Sergeant Ackley blotted the signature, folded the original, put it in his pocket, passed the copy over to Lester Leith.

  “No, sergeant, I must have the original. You see my word might not go very far, and a carbon copy can be erased much easier than a pen and ink writing. Your official station would preclude any one from raising a question that you had tampered with the document.”

  Sergeant Ackley hesitated.

  “Otherwise I would retract my signature,” suggested Lester Leith.

  The officer promptly exchanged copies.

  With that written admission that the collar and license had been procured at the “special instance and request” of Lester Leith, he felt certain of his case. Once before he had felt that Lester Leith was trapped, but that individual had slipped from the trap by calling attention to the fact that the mysterious articles, which had finally figured so dramatically in the shaking down of a fire-bug, had been procured by his valet without any suggestion on the part of Lester Leith.

  In the present case the articles had also been procured by the valet. Now Sergeant Ackley had a written statement which admitted Scuttle had been acting under the orders of Lester Leith.

  It would be wonderful advertisement to release that statement to the press when the time came, showing how the clever sergeant had matched wits with the suspect, had managed to get a statement which incriminated the defendant without said defendant having any idea of the noose into which the clever officer had managed to get him to put his head.

  “And now,” Lester Leith, “for the jar of cold cream and the hair dryer.”

  He took the jar of cold cream while Ackley watched him with eyes which were mere pin points of glittering suspicion.

  “Ah, yes, the jar bears the name of the town’s leading department store. Very nice. Very nice indeed.”

  He removed the cover, scooped out a part of the contents with his fingers, flipped the mass into a wastebasket, regarded the contents critically.

  “No, Scuttle. This is too oily. It won’t serve. What I need is more of a massaging cream.”

  The valet nodded his head after the manner of one who thoroughly appreciates his own importance.

  “Yes, sir. I got several different kinds so you could have the exact kind you wanted sir. Here’s a jar of massage cream.”

  Lester Leith took the new jar.

  “I know very little about such matters, Scuttle, but this is the sort, I believe, that dries upon the face and is rubbed out of the pores of the skin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good, Scuttle. We’ll try it.”

  And Lester Leith unscrewed the top of the jar, scooped out some of the contents, regarded the balance with a critical eye, smelled the jar, extended it to Sergeant Ackley.

  “Rather a gooey mess, sergeant. Just dip your finger in it. No, no, take the little finger, press it right down into the jar.”

  The sergeant pressed his finger into the jar. “Feels just like any other cream to me,” he said.

  Lester Leith regarded the depression where the finger had rested.

  “Seems to be awfully thick to me,” he growled. “See the way your finger left a deep print. You can trace every ridge, every whorl of the fingertip. Might be a good thing to keep fingerprints in, sergeant.”

  “No better than an inked impression,” snapped the officer, nettled that he was unable to figure out what Lester Leith could possibly want of the jar of cream, or, for that matter, with any of the other things he had been so anxious to obtain.

  Lester Leith connected up the blower, adjusted it so it was sending out a current of warm, dry air, directed that current upon the top of the jar.

  “Notice how rapidly it dries,” he said.

  The surface of the mass assumed a slightly different color, drew away from the sides of the jar. The depressions made by reaching fingers shrunk in size, but remained perfect as to detail.

  “Humph!” said Lester Leith, after a few moments, and screwed the top back on the jar. “You brought me a curling iron, Scuttle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Lester Leith took the curling iron. From his pocket he took a flask, a little glass phial of colorless liquid that looked like water.

  Very carefully he touched the cork, moistened with this liquid to the prongs of the curling iron. Almost instantly there was a peculiar, acrid odor, the trace of little smoke curls, winding up from the steel.

  “What’s that?” asked Sergeant Ackley.

  “A very powerful and very poisonous acid,” remarked Lester Leith. “It has the effect of oxidizing steel or other metal. In a few minutes there will be particles of rust form all over the curling iron. But if that were to be taken internally, sergeant—”

  He spread out his hands, palm upward, in a gesture of the utmost finality.

  “How did you—”

  Sergeant Ackley did not finish the sentence. There was an imperative pounding on the door. Before the valet could open it, the knob turned and a figure stood on the threshold.

  CHAPTER VI

  Affixing the Seal

  He was a great hulk of a man, pot-bellied, bull-necked. His thick lips were quivering beneath a stubby mustache of untrained bristles which sprouted from underneath wide nostrils. A big hat surmounted the head. Gray eyes bored into the faces of the occupants of the apartment.

  Sergeant Ackley jumped to his feet.

  “What in hell do you mean by busting in on—”

  The valet coughed.

  “This, gentlemen,” he said deprecatingly, “is C. A. Lambertson, the chief of police of Pickets.”

  “And,” murmured Lester Leith, with more than a faint trace of glee in his tone, “he is following a custom possessed by all police officers, of busting in wherever they damn please, whenever it suits their purposes.”

  For an instant Sergeant Ackley seemed about to eject the newcomer. Right when he was trapping Lester Leith into admissions which would put him in the power of the police. And this hick officer had to butt in!

  “Say, you birds,” bellowed the bull-necked one, “who in hell do you think you are? And what’s the big idea? You guys are mixed up in that Striker murder too thick to suit me. You’re going to come over to the station house, and—”

  “Steady,” cautioned Sergeant Ackley, and swept back his coat, showing the gold star which gleamed from his vest. “I’m the sergeant of a police force which numbers more men than your whole town can scrape up in the way of citizens. And Mr. Fawkes here is a plain-clothes detective assigned to me for work on a most important case.”