Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/82

60 "The News."

"And Caylis—what did he never read?"

"The News," the detective answered.

"Well, what have you for that now, son?" Crowley swung back.

"Only thanks, Captain Crowley, for that additional help. Inspector Walker, I am willing to rest my case against Caylis upon the fact that he was with Crowley at two o'clock. That alone is enough to hang him, and not as an accessory, but as the principal who himself struck the blow. But as there obviously was an accessory—and what Crowley has just said makes it more certain—perhaps I had better make as sure of that accessory, and also get a better answer for the real mystery, which is why and how Bronson left his house and went in that direction at that time in the morning, before I give Miss Allison the news for which she is waiting."

He took his hat and left them staring after him.

An hour later Trant jumped from a North Side car and hurried down Superior Street. Two blocks east of the car line he recognized from the familiar pictures in the newspapers the frescoed and once fashionable front of the Mitchell boarding house, where Bronson had lived. He was seeing it for the first time, but with barely more than a curious glance, he went on toward the place, a block east, where the attorney's body had been found. He noted carefully the character of the buildings on both sides of the street.

There was a grocery between two old mansions;