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Rh the avenue Porter observed with grudging admiration in his tones:

"I thought that Gene was just a willie-boy but I had the wrong dope; he's about as slick as they come. I thought at first that he was too blamed affable when he invited me into his room, but he seemed so anxious to tell me all about how that picture nearly fell on him the night before and ready to offer a hundred different suggestions that he threw me off the track; and boy! how he can play cards! Not that I took my hand off my number for a minute until just at the last," he added hastily. "But you yourself might have been taken in by the way he worked that, Sergeant."

"Possibly," Odell assented dryly. "I tried to get word to you before I left the house to warn you against that very thing; but you didn't come down to report and I let you alone to handle the case your own way. How did he manage to give you the slip?"

"It was after dinner and he wanted a drink; said that his stepfather had some private stock locked away in the cellar, but he had a duplicate key which the old man had given him. I had my suspicions as to how he had come by that key; but it was none of my business so I went down cellar with him. There were stone steps and a flat door bolted on the inside leading up into the back yard, and a small room partitioned off where he said the liquor was stored.

"He turned on the electric light by a switch in the wall near the staircase, took a key from his pocket, and opened the door of the store-room. I strolled after him to take a peep inside when he called to me to look on one of the banging shelves that were full of preserve-jars and find a