She sighed. “I don’t want to use your name, and I don’t want a new car. I want one that’s limbered up. I’m taking a long trip. Here’s your price. Let’s deliver the car.”

  CHAPTER XI

  Scuttle Sees Daylight

  She flipped up a casual skirt, took a wallet from the top of her stocking. Her slender fingers, the nails manicured a bright red, started counting out bank notes of hundred-dollar denominations. When she had a considerable pile spread upon her lap she paused, glanced at Lester Leith and folded up the pile.

  “I’ve gotta be sure the car’s in good condition,” she said.

  “Condition guaranteed,” remarked Lester Leith.

  “Nope. I’ve gotta be certain it’s okay. I want to look at it.”

  Lester Leith arose. “Scuttle, I am going down to my garage. Perhaps you had better come along.”

  The valet looked puzzled.

  “Miss Morgan might feel better if she were chaperoned,” added Lester Leith.

  The girl looked at him with lips that were parted to show the sagging jaw. “Who, me?” demanded the girl.

  Lester Leith closed one eye slightly. “Come, Scuttle,” he said. And the police spy, sighing reluctantly, followed them to the hall, down the elevator and to the garage.

  The method used by Miss Morgan for examining a car was highly original. She looked in the radiator, peered in the flap of the side pocket on the door, walked to the gasoline tank, took a coiled wire from her vanity case, unscrewed the cap, and started fishing around.

  “Looking for leaks,” she explained. “There’s leaks in ‘em so often.”

  The valet fairly danced from one foot to the other in his eager anxiety.

  “All right,” proclaimed the young woman, “sold! Get your dog out of there, and I’ll drive the car out.”

  “First,” said Lester Leith, “we have to make out the necessary papers of transfer.”

  “To heck with papers of transfer,” promptly observed the young woman. “I want the car. You want the coin. We’re both satisfied.”

  “No,” commented Lester Leith, “the papers have to be in order. Scuttle, run up to the apartment and get the registration slips, and better bring a pen and ink.”

  The valet needed no second invitation. He oozed his bulk through the door of the garage with all the eager haste of a bowl of jelly sliding off a greased plate.

  He rang frantically for the elevator, gained the apartment of Lester Leith and made a dive for the closet.

  His finger frantically jiggled the receiver hook on the telephone. His eyes fairly glittered as he put through a call to Sergeant Ackley at police headquarters.

  “Hello, hello, sergeant, this is Beaver talking. We’ve overlooked the bets on that Riggers’s robbery case. Yes.. .yes.. .now get this.

  “The string of diamonds was in the gasoline tank on the stolen car.. .Sure.. .It’s a cinch. The thief was standing by the gasoline tank with the hose in his hand when the police car came up, see? And he thought it was a pinch with no get-away. So he slipped the sparklers into the gasoline tank figuring the police would never look there, and wouldn’t find the ice on him, see?

  “Well, he made a get-away, and wanted the stonesback. He tried to steal the car; but Leith beat him to it. He’s got a frail here now who’s paying ten prices for the heap. She took a wire and fished around in the gasoline tank and something rattled in there.

  “Get the sketch? He’s busted the tank on the car after he bought it and taken out the diamonds. Then he’s stuck the string of dice he’d been working on into the new gasoline tank to fool the people that were trying to get back the diamonds. He’s got her to pay about three times what the car is worth, and she wouldn’t do it until she fished around in the gasoline tank.”

  The undercover man stopped, breathing heavily, exhausted by the very vehemence of his harangue. There was a dead silence over the telephone while Sergeant Ackley digested the information he had received.

  “Listen,” said Sergeant Ackley, at length. “He’s already pulled it too slick for us to nab him. He’s taken that old gasoline tank to every crook junk dealer in town. If we should try to pinch him he could show a jury that twenty-live people had handled that tank. Any one of the twenty-five might have copped the sparklers.

  “Now the only thing for us to do is to nab him with the goods, and I’ve got a scheme for doing that. Here’s something you didn’t know. Samuel Riggers has offered a reward of seven thousand dollars for the stones, and no questions asked. I have a hunch Leith may try to claim that reward. He rang up Riggers this afternoon and promised to have the stones delivered to him if Riggers would be ready to pay over the reward in cash.

  “There are two men out front. Split ‘em. Get one to tail Leith and turn the other on the broad. I’m rushing two more men out there. I guess you’ve got the right hunch on that gasoline tank-business. It explains a lot of things.

  “Now get busy there and stall around until the extra men can get there.”

  And Edward H. Beaver, invariably called “Scuttle” by Lester Leith because of a fancied resemblance to a pirate, proceeded to get busy as instructed. He passed on Ackley’s instructions to the shadows, carried a bottle of ink and a pen to Lester Leith in the garage, and managed to drop the ink just as he was setting the bottle on the running board of the car.

  He went for another bottle of ink, returned with it, only to find that he had misplaced the pen. By one expedient after another, he managed to prolong the execution of the papers for some fifteen minutes.

  At the end of that time the girl lost patience. The words that came from her lips were words that would have blistered asbestos eardrums, and they had the desired effect. Scuttle became a model of efficiency. The documents of transfer were signed.

  “You’ll have to take me to my other car. It’s parked in front of the agency.”

  The girl made some pointed comments to the effect that Lester Leith had secured a sufficient profit on the deal to get himself a taxicab for his errands, but Leith was obdurate. He must be taken to the place where his roadster was parked, and the girl finally gave in with very poor grace.

  That break gave Scuttle another opportunity to telephone Sergeant Ackley where the couple were going. Hence, by the time they arrived at the agency, the neighborhood fairly seethed with plainclothes men.

  Lester Leith transferred his dog to his roadster, raised his hat in polite token of farewell, and drove his roadster directly to his apartment.

  His every move was observed by two shadows.

  On the other hand, the red-striped car was followed by no less than three police cars, one of which contained Sergeant Ackley himself. For Sergeant Ackley had suddenly got an idea.

  Lester Leith parked his roadster in his garage, took his dog out for a stroll, eventually sought his apartment. His manner was that of a man who is at utter peace with the world.

  “Scuttle,” he said, his eyes twinkling with lazy-lidded humor, “get Miss Bromley on the line and ask her if she can come over here right away. Tell her I feel certain the police are about to clear up the Riggers robbery. I think her brother will be exonerated.”

  The valet would have liked to discuss the matter, but Leith silenced him with a gesture, and smoked a cigarette, blowing a series of smoke rings, watching them drift toward the ceiling. From time to time he chuckled.

  CHAPTER XII

  Sergeant Ackley Arrives

  Fifteen minutes passed and the buzzer sounded a swift summons, two long notes and two shorts. “Let her in, Scuttle,” said Leith. And he took Bobo the bulldog in his lap, soothed his ears, and admonished him against growling at the newcomer.

  Rhoda Bromley was radiant. “Really, have you solved the case?”

  Lester Leith shook his head.

  “Remember, I am but an amateur. I think Sergeant Ackley is the one to solve the case. I have merely given him certain clews to work on.”

  Scuttle cleared his throat. “You mentioned, sir, I believe, sir, that the clews in the Riggers robbery were cold clews, did you not?”

  Lester Leith nodded. “Permit me to remind you. Scuttle, that I also warmed them up.”

  “With a cooking stove, sir?”

  “With a cooking stove, Scuttle.”

  The valet fidgeted. “But I don’t see, sir—”

  “You wouldn’t,” interrupted Lester Leith with a frown.

  Rhoda Bromley squirmed into a comfortable position in her chair like a cat rolling into a ball before a friendly fire. “But I don’t see!” she said, petulantly.

  “You will,” said Lester Leith. “Ah, I believe you are about to see now!”

  As he spoke, there sounded authoritative steps outside the door. There was a rattling of the doorknob, the bang of the door being thrown open, and half a dozen men came trooping into the room, their faces scowling.

  Lester Leith grabbed the collar of his dog, held him back in the chair, silenced his excited barking. “Do come in, sergeant! Do come in. Do you know I rather expected you. Please pardon my not getting up, but I have to hold the dog, you know.”

  Sergeant Ackley strode forward, and stopped. He had intended to grab Lester Leith by the shoulder in a dramatic and none too gentle gesture of arrest. But the presence of the dog made him suddenly decide it might be better to go about the affair in a little more orderly fashion.

  “He’s quite all right as long as I hold him and talk to him,” said Lester Leith.

  Sergeant Ackley glared at the dog, and the dog returned the glare. The canine lips curled back and the white fangs glinted. Sergeant Ackley turned toward the door. “Bring ‘em in,” he said.

  There came two uniformed police officers. With them came three persons, Edna Morgan, the flashy girl who had purchased the car, a cringing youth with pale countenance and a trembling mouth that made him appear ready to cry, and a white-haired man who stooped forward slightly, and whose lined face was gray with despair.

  “Know these people?” asked Sergeant Ackley.

  Lester Leith smiled at them.

  “Pardon my not arising, folks; but I must hold my dog…Yes, sergeant, I know some of them. Two of the men are shadows who have been dogging my footsteps for the last few days, and the girl is a Miss Edna Morgan to whom I have recently sold a car. Nothing wrong with the title, I hope?”

  Sergeant Ackley grunted.

  “This here,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the white-haired man, “is Samuel Riggers, the jeweler. The other one is Harry Morley, his butler.”

  Lester Leith smiled.

  “Scuttle, find chairs as best you can. You’ll pardon me not getting up, folks. You can see for yourself how the dog is acting.”

  The white-haired jeweler dropped into a chair. “I’m ruined,” he said, “a leak from my own house! I will never live it down. The profession will scorn me, laugh at me, refuse to deal with me. The big gem exporters will go elsewhere—”

  His voice trailed off into a mournful silence, and that silence was punctuated by Sergeant Ackley who ripped a string of dice from his pocket, dice that had had the comers rubbed down on an emery wheel, had been drilled and joined with silken cord.

  “Ever see these before?” he demanded of Lester Leith in his best third-degree manner.

  And, as he spoke, one of the members of the party dropped into a chair, took out a notebook and began a series of pothooks and lines—a shorthand reporter, under oath to take down every word Lester Leith might say, that any damaging admissions might be used against that dapper suspect.

  Lester Leith yawned.

  “Of course,” he admitted. “They’re mine.”

  “They were in the gasoline tank of the automobile you sold Edna Morgan!” snapped Ackley.

  Leith yawned again.

  “They should have been,” he said. “I put them there.”

  “You did? You admit it?”

  “Yes, yes, sergeant. Of course I admit it.”

  “Why,” demanded Sergeant Ackley, “did you put them there?”

  “I was reconstructing the scene of a criminal about to be apprehended by the police,” said Lester Leith, almost dreamily. “I pretended I was standing by the gasoline tank of my car, the hose in my hand, the cap unscrewed from the tank. And I pretended these dice were valuable diamonds, and that a police car was suddenly approaching; that the police didn’t have anything definite on me, but that they would search me, and that I must not let the diamonds be found.

  “Do you know, sergeant, my hand moved almost automatically and shot the dice into the open gasoline tank, and then I ran.”

  Sergeant Ackley gazed apprehensively at the shorthand reporter. “Get it?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. The man nodded his head.

  Sergeant Ackley heaved a sigh of relief. “That admission,” he said, “will send you to jail.”

  “Dear, dear,” remarked Lester Leith in the tone of a woman who has just found that a quart of milk has turned sour.

  Sergeant Ackley glared at him.

  “But—” Miss Bromley started to protest.

  “Shut up!” yelled Ackley. “I’m running this show.”

  He turned to Lester Leith again, his close-set eyes burning with emotion. “So then you knew the stolen diamonds were in the gasoline tank?”

  Lester Leith shook his head vigorously, smiling. “No, no, sergeant. Of course not. I only made a little experiment to determine what I would have done had I been the thief and the police had been coming for me. I didn’t say that was what the thief would have done. He probably would have done something entirely different.

  “But I was interested in the case. You’ll remember it was you, yourself, my dear sergeant, who got me interested. I merely mention the incident of the gasoline tank to account for the manner in which the string of dice happened to get in there.

  “I made that string of dice, and said to myself that I would pretend they were the stolen gems. And, do you know, sergeant, I felt almost certain the thief was some member of Mr. Riggers’s domestic staff?”

  Sergeant Ackley’s frown deepened. “Yes?” he said. “Tell us why.”

  It was a part of the policy of the police department to get a witness talking and to keep him talking. As long as Lester Leith chose to keep on with his talk, he was very likely to make admissions, and Sergeant Ackley felt that he needed but very, very few admissions to give him a perfect case.

  Lester Leith beamed upon them. “You’ll notice,” he said, “that the thief was not known to any man in the store, yet he was well known to Mr. Riggers.”

  “How,” demanded Sergeant Ackley, interested in spite of himself, “do you figure that out?”

  “Simple,” beamed Lester Leith, “very simple. The thief wasn’t masked when he entered the store or when he left it. Yet he wasn’t recognized by any of those who saw him. But he deemed it necessary to don a mask when he was holding up the two men. That meant he was known to at least one of those men. Now Senor Jose Camulos had arrived on a boat unmolested. He knew no one in the city. Had the thief been someone who had followed him from South America, there would have been countless better opportunities for robbery on the boat or while going from the boat to his destination than existed while the parties were negotiating in Mr. Riggers’s private office.

  “Therefore, the thief must have been well known to Mr. Riggers—so well known, in fact, that Riggers had discussed the prospective arrival of the gems in his presence, yet be unknown to every member of the store.

  “That almost forces us to suspect the servants, doesn’t it, sergeant? But, of course, the idea must have occurred to you much sooner than it did to me, since you are a professional investigator and I am merely an amateur.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  “Lester Leith, I Arrest You!”

  Sergeant Ackley flushed, and lost his temper.

  “All right,” he stormed. “Now I’ll do some talking. You figured out where the stolen necklace was. You even had your valet telephone to Mr. Petterman to find out if someone had been hanging around his garage, or trying to get the car. You found out such was the case, and immediately bought the car.

  “And you doped out what had happened. Harry Morley is an ex-con. He did a stretch for automobile stealing. He got out and went to work for Riggers. But he wanted to joy ride. He had Edna Morgan, the moll with the champagne appetite. So he started stealing, or rather borrowing, Petterman’s car. He had been able to find the keys in the car one day, and had had duplicates made. Petterman lived within a few blocks of where Riggers lived, and it was all simple.

  “Morley used the car a dozen times without Petterman even knowing the car had been taken and returned. Then, when he had to pull a theft and wanted a car, what more natural than that he steal the car again?

  “He had heard Riggers discussing this necklace over the telephone, and thought how slick it would be to rush in, grab the stones, and rush out, jump in his stolen car, return it to where he had found it, lock it all up with his duplicate key, and duck into Riggers’s house and go back to work, the same as though nothing had happened.

  “But the police stumbled on him. He tossed the gems in the gasoline and escaped. Then he wanted the car. He tried to steal it again and couldn’t.

  “Then Lester Leith, the super crook enters the picture. He dopes out where the gems are, buys the car, gets a watchdog so no one can sneak up and empty the gasoline tank and fish out the sparklers without his being there.

  “Then he gets a big stove, parks it where he can stave in the automobile tank on it, and goes ahead and does it, takes the old tank off and puts a new-one on. Then he works a little slick confidence game to make the thief loosen up with a fancy price for the car and get some more easy money. He drops the dice into the gas tank — the new one he’s put on the car.

  “Morley sends his frail to buy the car. She runs a wire around inside the gasoline tank, catches onto the dice and so thinks it’s safe to pay a fancy price for the car. Leith sells it to her, has the diamonds, the big price for a used car, and thinks he’s covered his tracks.