“Yet under its influence, just as with his lobbygow and lieutenant, Brodie, he found power and inspiration.  With him it took the form of bombs to protect himself in his graft.”

“He can’t—­escape this time—­Loraine.  We’ll leave it—­at his house—­you know—­Carton—­”

We looked quickly at the work-table.  On it was a gigantic bomb of clockwork over which Haddon had been working.  The cocaine which was to have given him inspiration had, thanks to Kennedy, overcome him.

Beside Loraine Keith were a suit-case and a Gladstone.  She had evidently been stuffing the corners full of their favourite nepenthe, for, as Kennedy reached down and turned over the closely packed woman’s finery and the few articles belonging to Haddon, innumerable packets from the cabinet dropped out.

“Hulloa—­what’s this?” he exclaimed, as he came to a huge roll of bills and a mass of silver and gold coin.  “Trying to double-cross us all the time.  That was her clever game—­to give him the hours he needed to gather what money he could save and make a clean getaway.  Even cocaine doesn’t destroy the interest of men and women in that,” he concluded, turning over to Carton the wealth which Haddon had amassed as one of the meanest grafters of the city of graft.

Here was a case which I could not help letting the Star have immediately.  Notes or no notes, it was local news of the first order.  Besides, anything that concerned Carton was of the highest political significance.

It kept me late at the office and I overslept.  Consequently I did not see much of Craig the next morning, especially as he told me he had nothing special, having turned down a case of a robbery of a safe, on the ground that the police were much better fitted to catch ordinary yeggmen than he was.  During the day, therefore, I helped in directing the following up of the Haddon case for the Star.

Then, suddenly, a new front page story crowded this one of the main headlines.  With a sigh of relief, I glanced at the new thriller, found it had something to do with the Navy Department, and that it came from as far away as Washington.  There was no reason now why others could not carry on the graft story, and I left, not unwillingly.  My special work just now was keeping on the trail of Kennedy, and I was glad to go back to the apartment and wait for him.

“I suppose you saw that despatch from Washington in this afternoon’s papers?” he queried, as he came in, tossing a late edition of the Record down on my desk.

Across the front page extended a huge black scare-head:  “Navy’s most vital secret stolen.”

“Yes,” I shrugged, “but you can’t get me much excited by what the rewrite men on the Record say.”

“Why?” he asked, going directly into his own room.

“Well,” I replied, glancing through the text of the story, “the actual facts are practically the same as in the other papers.  Take this, for instance, ’On the night of the celebration of the anniversary of the battle of Manila there were stolen from the Navy Department plans which the Record learns exclusively represent the greatest naval secret in the world.’  So much for that paragraph—­written in the office.  Then it goes on: