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 him at lunch time; and I may have some news for you by to-night."

"Right," assented Heath. "I'm going to stick around here a while and see if there's anything I overlooked. I'll arrange for a guard outside and also for a man inside to keep an eye on the Platz woman. Then I'll see the reporters and let them in on the disappearing Cadillac and Mr. Vance's mysterious revolver in the secret drawer. I guess that ought to hold 'em. If I find out anything, I'll 'phone you."

When he had shaken hands with the District Attorney, he turned to Vance.

"Good-bye, sir," he said pleasantly, much to my surprise, and to Markham's too, I imagine. "I hope you learned something this morning."

"You'd be pos'tively dumfoundeddumbfounded [sic], Sergeant, at all I did learn," Vance answered carelessly.

Again I noted the look of shrewd scrutiny in Heath's eyes; but in a second it was gone.

"Well, I'm glad of that," was his perfunctory reply.

Markham, Vance and I went out, and the patrolman on duty hailed a taxicab for us.

"So that's the way our lofty gendarmerie approaches the mysterious wherefores of criminal enterprise—eh?" mused Vance, as we started on our way across town. "Markham, old dear, how do those robust lads ever succeed in running down a culprit?"

"You have witnessed only the barest preliminaries," Markham explained. "There are certain things that must be done as a matter of routine—ex abundantia cautelæ, as we lawyers say."