This time it was Kahn whom he called up, and he had some difficulty locating him, for Kahn had two offices and was busily engaged in preparing a defence to the charges preferred against him for the jury fixing episode.

Among others whom he called up was Langhorne, and the conversation with him was as perfunctory as possible, consisting merely in repeating his name, followed by an apology from Kennedy for “calling the wrong number.”

In each case, Craig was careful to have his little recording instrument working, taking down every word that was uttered and when he had finished he detached it, looking at the cylinder with unconcealed satisfaction.

“I’m going up to the laboratory again,” he announced, as Carton looked at him inquiringly.  “The investigation that I have in mind will take time, but I shall hurry it along as fast as I possibly can.  I don’t want any question about the accuracy of my conclusions.”

We left Carton, who promised to meet us late in the afternoon at the laboratory, and started uptown.  Instead, however, of going up directly, Craig telephoned first to Clare Kendall to shadow Mrs. Ogleby.

The rest of the day he spent in making microphotographs of the phonograph cylinder and studying them very attentively under his high-powered lens.

Toward the close of the afternoon the first report of Miss Kendall, who had been “trailing” Mrs. Ogleby, came in.  We were not surprised to learn that she had met Langhorne in the Futurist Tea Room in the middle of the afternoon and that they had talked long and earnestly.  What did surprise us, though, was her suspicion that she had crossed the trail of someone else who was shadowing Mrs. Ogleby.

Kennedy made no comment, though I could see that he was vitally interested.  What was the significance of the added mystery?  Someone else had an interest in watching her movements.  At once I thought of Dorgan.  Could he have known of the intimacy of his guest at the Gastron dinner with Langhorne, rather than with Murtha, with whom she had gone?  Suddenly another explanation occurred to me.  What was more likely than that Martin Ogleby should have heard of his wife’s escapade?  He would certainly learn now to his surprise of her meeting with Langhorne.  What would happen then?

Kennedy had about finished with his microphotographic work and was checking it over to satisfy himself of the results, when Carton, as he had promised, dropped in on us.

“What are you doing now?” he asked curiously, looking at the prints and paraphernalia scattered about.  “By the way, I’ve been inquiring into the commitment of Murtha to that sanitarium for the insane.  On the surface it all seems perfectly regular.  It appears that, unknown even to many of his most intimate friends, he has been suffering from a complication of diseases, the result of his high life, and they have at last affected his brain, as they were bound to do in time.  Still, I don’t like his ‘next friends’ in the case.  One is his personal physician—­I don’t know much about him.  But Dorgan is one of the others.”