I was flattered by his confidence.  More than that, the idea appealed to me, in fact was exactly in line with some plans I had already made for the “World,” since our first acquaintance.

And so it came about that the case brought to him by McBirney and young Warrington was responsible for clearing our ideas as to our mutual relationship and thus forming this strange partnership that has existed ever since.

“Tom,” he remarked, as we left the office quite late, after he had arranged affairs as if he expected to have no time to devote to his other work for several days, “come along and stay with me at my apartment to-night.  It’s too late to do anything now until to-morrow.”

I accepted his invitation without demur, for I knew that he meant it, but I doubt whether he slept much during the night.  Certainly he was up and about early enough the following morning.

“That’s curious,” I heard him remark, as he ran his eye hastily over the first page of the morning paper, “but I rather expected something of the sort.  Read that in the first column, Tom.”

The story that he indicated had all the marks of having been dropped into place at the last moment as the city edition went to press in the small hours of the night.

It was headed: 

GIRL’S BODY FOUND IN THICKET

The despatch was from a little town in New Jersey, and, when I saw the date line, it at once suggested to me, as it had to Guy, that this was in the vicinity that must have been traversed in order to reach the point from which had come the report of the bloody car that had seemed to tally with the description of that which Warrington had lost.  It read: 

“Hidden in the underbrush, not ten feet from one of the most travelled automobile roads in this section of the state, the body of a murdered girl was discovered late yesterday afternoon by a gang of Italian labourers employed on an estate nearby.

“Suspicion was at first directed by the local authorities at the labourers, but the manner of the finding of the body renders it improbable.  Most of them are housed in some rough shacks up the road toward Tuxedo and were able to prove themselves of good character.  Indeed, the trampled condition of the thicket plainly indicates, according to the local coroner, that the girl was brought there, probably already dead, in an automobile which drew up off the road as far as possible.  The body then must have been thrown where it would be screened from sight by the thick growth of trees and shrubbery.

“There was only one wound, in the chest.  It is, however, a most peculiar wound, and shows that a terrific force must have been exerted in order to make it.  A blow could hardly have accomplished it, so jagged were its edges, and if the girl had been struck by a passing high-speed car, as was at first suggested, there is no way to account for the entire lack of other wounds which must naturally have been inflicted by such an accident.