“Very well.  Then we might open the door and invite in Miss Harriman.  There are others who should be along soon that have a claim also to be present.”

“What others?” asked Jack Cunningham.

“The other suspects in the case.  I prefer to have them all here.”

“Any one else?”

“The Chief of Police.”

James looked at him hard.  “This is not a private conference, then?”

“That’s a matter of definitions.  I have invited only those who have a claim to be present,” Kirby answered.

“To my office, I think.”

“If you prefer the Chief’s office we’ll adjourn an’ go there.”

The broker shrugged.  “Oh, very well.”

Kirby stepped to the door connecting with an outer office and threw it open.  Mr. and Mrs. Hull, Olson, and the Chief of Police followed Phyllis Harriman into the room.  More chairs were brought in.

The Chief sat nearest the door, one leg thrown lazily across the other.  He had a fat brown cigar in his hand.  Sometimes he chewed on the end of it, but he was not smoking.  He was an Irishman, and as it happened open-minded.  He liked this brown-faced young fellow from Wyoming—­never had believed him guilty from the first.  Moreover, he was willing his detective bureau should get a jolt from an outsider.  It might spur them up in future.

“Chief, is there anything you want to say?” Kirby asked.

“Not a wor-rd.  I’m sittin’ in a parquet seat.  It’s your show, son.”

Kirby’s disarming smile won the Chief’s heart.  “I want to say now that I’ve talked with the Chief several times.  He’s given me a lot of good tips an’ I’ve worked under his direction.”

The head of the police force grinned.  The tips he had given Lane had been of no value, but he was quite willing to take any public credit there might be.  He sat back and listened now while Kirby told his story.

“Outside of the Chief every one here is connected closely with this case an’ is involved in it.  It happens that every man an’ woman of us were in my uncle’s apartments either at the time of his death or just before or after.”  Kirby raised a hand to meet Olson’s protest.  “Oh, I know.  You weren’t in the rooms, but you were on the fire escape outside.  From the angle of the police you may have been in.  All you had to do was to pass through an open window.”

There was a moment’s silence, while Kirby hesitated in what order to tell his facts.  Hull mopped the back of his overflowing neck.  Phyllis Cunningham moistened her dry lips.  A chord in her throat ached tensely.