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226 first name. It seemed to bring the detective closer to his goal. During the daytime at headquarters, however, their relations were scarcely altered. Garth often suffered from lack of work there, probably because the inspector didn't care to send him out on unimportant matters that the least imaginative of his men could handle. When he had to assign him to an unpromising task, either to spare him too prolonged idleness, or because no other detective was available, the big man always assumed an apologetic air. It was so when he started him on the mystifying Taylor case.

"Nothing doing these days," he grumbled. "City must be turning pure, Garth. Anyway I got to give it something for its money. Run up and take a look at this suicide. Seems Taylor was a recluse. Alone with his mother-in-law and the servants. Wife's in California. Suppose you had other plans, but I don't see why the city should pay you to talk moonshine to Nora."

He grinned understandingly, encouragingly.

So the detective nodded, strolled up town, and with a bored air stepped into that curious house.

Garth for a long time stared at the pallid features of the dead man. Abruptly his interest quickened. Between the thumb and forefinger of the clenched left hand, which drooped from the side of the bed, a speck of white protruded. The detective stooped swiftly. The hand, he saw, secreted a rough sheet of paper. He drew it free, smoothed the crumpled