In the rumble seat of the roadster, crouched his companion of the night prowls, a tawny police dog, trained in the work of the police, trained, also, to obey the commands of Sidney Zoom. Master and dog worked together with unerring efficiency.

  Sidney Zoom knew that car eighty-two had beat him to the call as he swung his roadster into McAlpin. He could see the red tail light, just above which was a tiny pin-prick of blue light, signal of the police car. It was ahead of him and speeding along the boulevard.

  Sidney Zoom did not care to tangle with the police unless he derived some pleasure or benefit from the contact. The mere routine of a casual investigation was not a sufficiently alluring bait. He swung his car to the right on Fourth Street and let the police car go on to the corner of Third.

  Zoom drove in close to the curb and slowed down. He was listening for another call that would prove of interest. The siren whistle commanded attention while the mechanical voice of the police announcer reported a man chasing a woman, armed with a big knife. The chase was in a far corner of the city, however, and Zoom knew that car thirteen would be on the ground.

  Another call reported a burglary on the beat of car twenty-nine. Then there was a period of silence, and Zoom saw the man who was walking rapidly and purposefully along the curb, his face turned back, as though looking for a cruising cab.

  It was a section of the city where cabs rarely cruised, at that hour of the night. The business district was near, and this place was given over to wholesale offices, little retail stores that could not afford high rentals. Pedestrians were far from plentiful.

  The lights of Zoom’s car fell full upon the white, strained face of the man at the curb. He was dressed in a brown sack suit, wore a black felt hat, had on a red necktie and brown shoes. He was, perhaps, forty-three or four and was stocky in build.

  Sidney Zoom’s hawk-like eyes fastened upon the face of the waiting man, and something of tension in the strained, drawn expression of the mouth and eyes caused this connoisseur of adventure, to brake his car to an abrupt stop.

  “Perhaps I can give you a lift,” he said. “There won’t be a cab along here for half an hour, perhaps.”

  He saw the instant relief which flooded the face of the pedestrian. “Thanks,” said the man and moved forward.

  Sidney Zoom kicked a switch which shut off the radio from operation. The man climbed into the car and sat down.

  “Nice dog you have there,” he said. “Yes,” answered Sidney Zoom, shortly.

  The police dog leaned forward, smelling of the newcomer, his paws placed upon the folded top of the roadster. He gave a deep sniff, then braced himself and growled throatily.

  The man moved hastily. “Won’t bite, will he?” he asked.

  “No,” said Zoom. “That’s all, Rip. Get back and lie down.”

  The dog stepped back to the cushion of the rumble seat, dropped down; but he gave another of those low, rumbling growls.

  Sidney Zoom understood that growl as plainly as though the dog had spoken to him in words, and said: “I can smell a gun in this man’s pocket. It’s been shot somewhere recently. There’s the odor of powder, burnt powder.”

  But Sidney Zoom gave no sign that he had learned that the man he had picked up on the dark side street was carrying a concealed weapon. His manner remained courteous, but aloof.

  “I’m driving uptown,” he said.

  “I wonder if you’re going past the Raleigh Arms Hotel on Madison Street,” said his guest.

  “I can,” said Zoom, and spun the wheel.

  The man he had picked up stared at him in surreptitious appraisal. Zoom kept his unwinking eyes on the road. He seemed to have no curiosity, no desire for social conversation. The car came to Madison Street. Zoom drove to the hotel, slowed the car.

  “Thanks,” said his passenger. “Don’t mention it,” said Zoom.

  He speeded the car away from the curb, turned to the right at the corner, turned to the right again at the next corner and swung once more into Madison Street when he came to the intersection. He parked the car, ordered the dog to crouch down behind the lines of the car body so that he would be invisible to passers-by. Then Zoom walked to the other side of the street, stood in a position where he could watch the hotel lobby, both the front and side exits.

  He waited five minutes. The man he had carried in his car came out of the side door, looked about him, held up his hand for a cab. Zoom walked swiftly back, along the curb, climbed into his roadster and started the motor. By the time the cab had swung into the main street Zoom was on its tail.

  He followed the cab to the Yeardly Apartments, an unpretentious building sandwiched between two of the outlying business streets, saw his man pay off the cab and go up a flight of stairs.

  Zoom switched on the radio and started cruising again. He filed the appearance of the man and the place where he had discharged the cab in a hodge-podge of miscellaneous information which Zoom kept under his hat, and which concerned various and sundry of the night activities of the city.

  He had gone a matter of some eight or nine blocks when the sound of the radio, calling car eighty-two again claimed his attention.

  “An unconscious man is reported as being in an alley opening off of Fourth Street near McAlpin. Car eighty-two, investigate and report.”

  Sidney Zoom pushed the throttle of his roadster well down and speeded toward the place described in the radio alarm. There was no stopping for arterial stops, no pausing for speed limits. The roadster rushed through the dark streets, Zoom’s gaunt hands gripping the steering wheel.

  Once more he found that car eighty-two was ahead of him, but Zoom managed to catch up within the last two hundred feet. The cars swung to the curb together.

  There was the form of a man, huddled in the shadows at the mouth of the alley, lying limp and inert. As the officers bent over him, the sound of the clanging gong of an ambulance came to their ears.

  Sidney Zoom pushed his way forward.

  One of the officers frowned, grunted: “Look who’s here!” The other officer straightened, said: “Hello, Zoom.”

  The greetings were not particularly cordial, nor were they entirely unfriendly. Lonely men who patrol the night streets, in more or less constant danger, welcome company, even though they do not always agree with the methods used by that company. On two occasions Zoom had been of considerable assistance to the patrol cars. On one evening he had saved the life of an officer who was trapped between the fire of two desperate bandits.

  “Dead?” asked Zoom.

  “Don’t think so. Got a sock on the head. Turn him over, Frank, and let’s see if there’s any blood.”

  The men tugged at the inert body.

  One of the officers straightened with a whistle, a low note of whistling surprise. His flashlight, illuminating a circle of white brilliance in the darkness of the alley, disclosed something that sent the beam glittering back in scintillating reflections of cold fire.

  The second officer lunged toward it, clamped his hands on it. “Diamond bracelet,” he said.

  “Genuine?”

  “Looks like it.”

  The ambulance clanged its way to the curb, turned, backed into position. “Better take a look and see if we can find any more. That looks funny.” They pawed through the man’s pockets.

  “Here’s another one. Guess that’s set in platinum, eh, Bill?”

  “Looks like it. Take a look through this wallet and see if there’s any cards.”

  The stretcher bearers from the ambulance came up, set down the stretcher. A young man bent over the prostrate form.

  “Dead, Doc?”

  “Nope. Case of concussion. Think he’s coming around. Find out what hit him?”

  “Think it was a sock on the bean. Looks as though he’d been robbed, or had been

  doing some robbery. Here’s his wallet, stripped of dough. There’s a card, automobile driver’s license. Name’s Harry Dupree, 1641 Dinsmore Drive. Here’s a letter. It’s old. Telephone numbers scribbled on the back of the envelope. A bunch of keys. Here, this card mentions that he’s a jewelry salesman for Huntley & Cobb. Bet he had some samples and got stuck up.”

  The ambulance man said:

  “Well, he’s coming around. He can tell us for himself what happened.”

  One of the officers said: “You better telephone in a report, Frank. I’ll stick around and listen to the radio and see if anything breaks.”

  The inert figure shivered, stretched, turned and was gripped with nausea. “Okay,” said the ambulance man, “let him alone for a minute. Okay. Now give him this. Here, brother, swallow. No, no, swallow!”

  The man gulped, retched, sat up, supported by the stretcher men. He stared about him with wide, bloodshot eyes and groaned. “We’re officers,” said the man from the radio patrol car. “Tell us what happened.”

  “I was robbed,” groaned the man. “See who did it?”

  “Somebody who was hiding in the alley … I walked past … He socked me.”

  “What’d he get?”

  “I don’t know … Had some money … Not much, about eighteen bucks.”

  “It’s gone,” said the officer. “Your name’s Dupree?”

  “Yeah … Oh my head!”

  “That’s okay, Buddy. You’ll be all right in a little while. How about the jewelry?”

  “What jewelry?”

  “Didn’t you have some gems, some samples or somethin’?”

  The man started to shake his head, then gave a deep groan with the pain. One of the stretcher men said: “Don’t shake your head, Buddy. Don’t move any more than you have to. Think you can walk to the ambulance?”

  The groaning man leaned far to one side and retched again. The officer who had gone to telephone came back and said: “Report’s just come in of a robbery at Huntley & Cobb’s place. Guy had keys and got in, laid in wait for the watchman, socked him and tied him up. When he didn’t turn in his box they sent out to investigate. Found the watchman tied up and the safe looted.”

  “How come?” asked the other officer.

  “That’s all I know. They gave me the dope on the telephone. Car fifty-seven’s out there now. I reported this bird as being employed there. We better checkup. They said to hold him and follow the ambulance in. Looks like he had something to do with it.” There was a moment of silence, then the officer who had telephoned crouched down so that his eyes were on a level with those of the man who was propped up by

  the stretcher men.

  “Look here, Dupree, had you been to Huntley & Cobb’s tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have any samples on you?”

  “No.”

  The officer produced the articles of jewelry he had found near the unconscious man. He held them cupped in his hand, flashed the beam of the light on them and said: “How about these? Ever see ’em before.”

  Once more the man tried to shake his head, and once more the effort brought on nausea.

  The officers exchanged glances.

  “Okay, Buddy,” said Frank. “You better take a nice ride to the hospital. They’ll shoot you some dope there that’ll make that head of yours feel better.”

  He motioned to the stretcher men.

  “Better boost him, boys. He’s wanted for questioning. We’ll follow you in. Them’s orders. There’s something phony here.”

  The men lifted the half limp figure. He struggled to rise. “There, there, lie back.”

  He stretched out on the canvas. They raised him and slid him into the ambulance. The door clicked shut. The ambulance motor whirred into speed. The officers climbed in their car and drove away. The radio was whirring its demand for attention as they rounded the corner.

  Sidney Zoom got in his roadster and turned it toward the place where Huntley & Cobb had their jewelry store and warehouse. He was scowling and he kept the throttle well depressed.

  GEORGE DIKE enjoyed the notoriety. He had a welt over his left eye, and there was a thin bit of dried blood which had stained a dark red stream from the corner of his left nostril, down his chin.

  The police had finished with him, temporarily, but Dike was relating to anyone who was curious enough to ask, or, for that matter to listen, exactly how it had all happened.

  “I thought there was sumpin’ behind that bale of stuff, and I turned to get the flashlight on it then I seen him jump up. I seen he had sumpin’ in his hand, and I made a swing. I don’t even know whether I connected or not. I can’t remember that far. It seemed like somebody’d set off a firecracker inside my dome, and the next thing I knew the cops were bendin’ over me.

  “I can just remember seein’ sumpin’ red. I think it was his necktie. It musta been his necktie. I bet I’d know the guy if I seen him again, though. There was a way he had of throwin’ his shoulders when he raised his arm, that I won’t forget. An’ he had a funny sort of neck, kind of short and thick like.

  “I guess I musta got an awful sock, because it was just like the fourth o’ July. Sock, an’ I got it! A whale of a lam. Lookit the ridge it made. But it didn’t bust the skin. A regular slung-shot.”

  There was a little knot of spectators in front of the place. A uniformed officer prevented them from crowding too close. Every once in a while he muttered a mechanical: “Move on, move on! Don’t be blockin’ the sidewalk!”

  Some of the men who had drifted to the door of the robbed company remained. For the most part, however, the crowd was formed of straggling units who drifted up to the place, paused to listen to Dike’s story, saw the welt over his eye, and then drifted away into the night. They were couples for the most part, young men with attractive young women who remained only long enough to find out what it was all about. Then the night claimed them.

  Sidney Zoom heard the story of the watchman.

  He saw the chauffeur pilot the big limousine to the curb, saw the very portly gentleman with the white face and flabby lips get laboriously from the car and plunge into the entrance of the storeroom.

  He paused only long enough to give a name to the uniformed officer who guarded the place, and those who were near enough to hear that name sent the whispered gossip to the outskirts of the little group of spectators.

  “Frank Huntley, the senior partner. Just got the call.”

  There was another interval of silence. Then a whispered rumor sprang up from nowhere like a breath of wind in the desert, and seeped through the crowd, passing from man to man.

  “They’ve inventoried the loss. It’s more than twenty thousand dollars. They’ve got the man that did it. They’re bringing him out here. Going to confront him with the watchman and the scene of the crime. He had the combination of the safe. They say he worked here. He had an accomplice, and the accomplice got away with all the loot. Tough when a guy has to stick a place up and then gets stuck up himself.”

  Sidney Zoom heard that rumor, also. He waited, standing there gaunt and grim, six feet odd of unsmiling efficiency, staring with eyes that took in every single detail.

  A police car came shrieking from the boulevard. It skidded to the curb. Men jumped out. A white-faced young man with slumped shoulders was in the car. His wrists were handcuffed. They pulled him to the pavement and hustled him into the store. The crowd surged and swayed as its members sought to obtain a glimpse of the man.

  A taxicab honked its horn persistently, crawled through the tangle of vehicles, discharged a lone passenger.

  She was white-haired. Her eyes were blue. Her face gave indications of serene age. The lips smiled placidly. But the depths of the blue eyes contained a trace of panic. She spoke in a throaty voice.

  “Has my boy come yet? Have they brought Harry? They said they were bringing the boy here.”

  No one answered her. They stared with heartless, expressionless curiosity. Sidney Zoom inched his way toward her and lifted his hat.

  “You mean Harry Dupree?” he asked. “Yes, they have taken him inside.” She sighed. “I’m his mother. I wonder if they’d let me in?”

  Sidney Zoom saw that those nearest him were taking in the conversation. He took the woman by the arm.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “it would be wise to talk matters over first. They might make things a little disagreeable for you.”

  “But it’s all a mistake. He didn’t do it. He couldn’t have done it. They wouldn’t have charged him with it if it hadn’t been that they didn’t understand!”

  Zoom soothed her, led her to his car, sat her in the cushioned seat beside him. “Do you know how your son happened to be out tonight?” he asked.

  “He had a date,” she said. “I don’t inquire too closely into his dates. I don’t think mothers should pry into their sons’ affairs. He’s a good boy. Someday he’ll marry and leave me. I don’t know who he was going to see tonight. It was a girl. I heard her voice over the telephone. I heard him say he was to wait for her somewhere.”

  Sidney Zoom nodded thoughtfully.

  “Would you mind waiting here?” he asked. “You’re going to see Harry?”

  “I don’t know. I want to talk with the officers for a moment. If you’ll just wait here, I may be able to get you some good news. Do you drive a car?”

  “I can,” she said.

  Zoom nodded, said crisply: “Then wait right here. I won’t be long.”

  He left the car and strode toward the store. With the advent of the gray-haired woman upon the scene, his manner had undergone a change. He was no longer the bystander, but an aggressive individual, moving purposefully.

  The uniformed officer barred his path. Zoom spoke briefly and to the point. “I’ve got to see Huntley,” he said. “If I see him I may be able to help in solving this case. If I don’t, the police may lose a clew.”

  The officer beckoned to one of the detectives. “This guy wants to see Huntley,” he said.

  The detective glared at Sidney Zoom. “About what?” he asked.

  “Important business,” said Sidney Zoom.