“Who was I speaking with?”

“The most brilliant criminal it has ever been my pleasure to run across,” and his eyes snapped with joy, the huntsman instinct rising to the surface at last, “I will call him the voice until I know his better name.  He is the most scientific crook of the age.”

“What do you know about criminals?” was the incredulous question.

“I’ll know a hundred times as much as I do now, when I know all about this one, Van.  You’d better have Cleary send an armed guard along with you, and get home for a good rest.  Get a man who can drive a car, and bring back the empty auto three houses away from your residence:  it will bear looking into!  I’m going up to have a revival meeting with that girl now, for I am convinced that she is not a whit more implicated in the conception or execution of this crime than you are.  Good-night.”

Van Cleft left the house, with a pitying shake of the head.  He was not quite certain that he had done wisely, after all, in bringing his eccentric friend into the affair.  He little reckoned how much more peculiarly Montague Shirley was to act for the remainder of the night.

CHAPTER VI

An experiment with the “Movies”

The cross-examination of Polly Marion resulted in little advantage.  She had known of the sudden departure of two other songbirds, well equipped with funds for the land of Somewhere Else.  Their absence had been the subject of some quiet jesting among the dragon flies who flitted over the pond of pleasure.  A suggestion, from some unrecalled source, that their disappearance had been connected with the deaths of the two aged suitors was revitalized in her memory by the words of the elderly detective.  Familiar with the strange life of this jeweled half-world Shirley’s keenness brought forth nothing to convince him that the girl had been more culpable than in the following of her class, known to the initiate as the “gentle art of gold digging.”

“Polly, go home now, and stay away from these parties:  that’s my honest advice, if you want to be on the ‘outside looking in,’ when some one is sent to prison for this.  I am in favor of hushing up this affair, and want to ease it up for you.  Are you wise?”

Polly was wise, beyond her years.  Her equipoise was regained, and with a coquettish interest in this handsome interviewer—­such girls always have an eye for future business—­he returned to her theatrical lodging house, in which at least dwelt her wardrobe and makeup box when she was “trouping” in some spangled chorus.  Of recent months she had not been subjected to the Hurculean rigors of bearing the spear, thanks to the gratuities of the open-handed Van Cleft, Senior.  She pleaded to remain out of the white lights, meaning it as she spoke.  But Shirley wisely felt that the butterfly would emerge from the chrysalis, shortly, to flutter into certain gardens where he would fain cull rare blossoms!  Pat Cleary deputized a “shadow” to diarize her exits and entrances.