The criminologist arose and walked into the deserted studio, from whence the company had long since departed for belated slumbers.  He picked up three bricks which lay in a corner of the big studio, and placed them gently into his grip.  The manager and the camera man observed this with blank amazement, as he locked it and put the key into his pocket.  Then he handed each of them a large-sized bill.

“I’m very grateful, gentlemen, for your assistance.  Pleasant dreams.”

Shirley abstractedly walked out of the studio, one hand comfortably in his overcoat pocket, swinging the grip in the other.

“Say, Lou,” confided the manager, “he’s the craziest guy I’ve ever seen in the movies.  And that’s going some, after ten years of it.”

Lou treated himself to a generous bite of plug tobacco, and spat philosophically, before replying.

“Sure, he’s crazy.  Crazy, like the grandfather of all foxes!”

CHAPTER VII

ENTER A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

A reddening zone in the East silhouetted the serrated line of the distant elevated structure, as Shirley walked along the gray street, his thoughts busy with the possibilities of applying his new certainty.

He had reached Sixth Avenue, and was just passing one of the elevated pillars when a black touring car crept up behind him.  The clanging bell and the grinding motors of an early surface car drowned the sound of the automobile in his rear.  Suddenly the big machine sprang forward at highest speed.  A man leaned from the driver’s seat, and snatched the grip from his hand.

The motorman, cursing, threw on the emergency brake, in time to barely graze the machine with his fender as it shot across the street before him.

Shirley’s view was cut off, until he had run around the street-car—­then he beheld the big automobile skidding in a half-circle, as it turned down Fifth Avenue.  It was too far away to distinguish the number of the singing license tag.

“Much good may the bricks do them!  Perhaps they will help to build the annex necessary up the river, when these gentry go there for a long visit.”

Shirley laughed at the joke on his pursuers, and turned into a little all-night grill for a comforting mutton chop of gargantuan proportions, with an equally huge baked potato.  He was a healthy brute, after all his morbid line of activities!  Later, at the Club, he submitted to the amenities of the barber, whose fine Italian hand smoothed away, in a skilful massage, the haggard lines of his long vigil.  As he left the club house for William Grimsby’s residence he looked as fresh and bouyant as though he had enjoyed the conventional eight hours’ sleep.

“You are this Montague Shirley?” was the querulous greeting from the old gentleman, when he was admitted to the drawing-room.  “You kept me in anguish the entire night, with your silly words.  The telephone bell rang at intervals of half an hour until dawn:  I may have missed some important business deal by not replying What do you mean?  Is this some blackmail game?”