Part 26 (1/2)

”Never mind. I wouldn't know, after you did. Suppose you get me a book on magpies.”

The librarian fingered her files. ”Try Birds of England,” she suggested, coming from behind her desk and gliding like a pale shadow over to a book-case. ”Try this. It's complete. You'll find magpies and starlings and piemags and any number of plates of six colors in this splendid volume.”

”The one that interested me was black as a crow,” he said, as he turned toward his alcove. ”Perhaps there are white magpies as well as white crows. I never saw one, though. My bird's a deep one.”

The little librarian stared after Drew's vanis.h.i.+ng form with a slight pucker between her eyes. For a man of his solid respectability, the series of actions were strange indeed. She sat down and wondered if he was a moving picture editor trying to connect black magpies and telephones.

Drew appeared in two minutes. He leaned over the desk and startled the lady with a request for anything pertaining to guns and projectiles.

These she had in plenty. A great many war books had been purchased during the period which followed America's declaration.

The detective erected a breastwork with the books she brought. He conned them with understanding until he came to ballistics and trajectory. He stopped there. He rose. His brain was crammed with fact upon fact. He had the formulae of smokeless powder and the a.n.a.lysis of cup.r.o.nickel bullets. He had absorbed muzzle velocity and angle of fire.

He fairly bubbled over with good humor as he thrust his hands into his overcoat, caught up his hat and started out the door after glancing back and bowing to the librarian who smiled a good-by.

The street was dark save for the glow of the overhead arcs. He thrust out his arm and tested the snow fall. It was not as heavy as when he had entered the library. He went down the steps, turned toward the north and plowed along the sidewalk.

Suddenly the thought came to him to glance at his watch. He had forgotten time and place over the hours in the pursuit of knowledge which might and might not be applied to the case at hand. It was almost six o'clock.

”Lord,” he said in surprise. ”I'm going crazy. Two hours in a trance.

Now for work. I wonder what the operatives will have to report? They ought to have something. I wonder,” he added, peering under the fine drizzle of snow, ”I wonder where the nearest telephone is located?

Another block, I guess.”

His brain gathered up the skeins of the case as he hurried along.

Fingerprints, plaster-casts, smooth bullets, locked rooms and a raven-black magpie, trooped into their proper formation. He dwelt longest on the telephone information he had gathered in the library.

The case seemed bound up in whispering wires and broken connections which might be spliced together with patience and hard work.

The whole matter, from the call of the millionaire, down to the clew discovered in comparing the finger prints at Detective Headquarters, was a city-spread network of telephone connections which had to be traced back to an elusive individual who flitted like a shadow or a whirling dervish across the detective's vision.

He reached the drug-store, paused outside, glanced up and down the white-robed street, then pressed the door open and stamped inside. He found a nickel. Dropping this in the slot and closing the booth, he asked Central for his office phone.

The connection was made with Harrigan on the other end. ”What's new in the Stockbridge case?” asked Drew in a whisper.

He listened. He grew rigid as the faithful operative summed up the entire series of reports. There were six of them. The last was from Delaney.

”Hang up!” the detective almost shouted in his eagerness. ”Hang up, Harrigan, and let me get him.”

Finding a quarter instead of a nickel, Drew dropped it in the large slot and jiggled the receiver's hook until Central answered.

”Get me Gramercy Hill 9764!” he exclaimed. ”Quick! 9764 Gramercy Hill!”

”That's her number,” he said aloud. ”Loris Stockbridge's number. It must be her number. I haven't forgotten that, have I?”

The time consumed in getting the connection seemed endless. Drew lifted one damp sole from the floor of the booth and then the other. The receiver's diaphragm clicked finally. ”h.e.l.lo!” he snapped. ”h.e.l.lo, who's this?”

He waited a full second. ”This Delaney?” he asked. ”Who?” he added.

”Oh! you're the maid! Well get me Miss Stockbridge or Mr. Delaney. Yes, Delaney. D-e-l-a-n-e-y!”