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of famished wolves with all this learned talk."
3
"Trowbridge, mon vieux, they are at their devil's work again—have you seen the evening papers?" de Grandin exclaimed as he burst into the office several days later.
"Eh—what?" I demanded, putting aside the copy of Corwin's monograph on Multiple Neuritis and staring at him. "Who are 'they,' and what have 'they' been up to?"
"Who? Name of a little green man, those devils of the mountains, those Tibetan priests, those seiwants of the Pi Yü Stone!" he responded. "Peruse le journal, if you please." He thrust a copy of the afternoon paper into my hand, seated himself on the corner of the desk and regarded his brightly polished nails with an air of deep solicitude. I read:
Gangland Suspected in Beauty's Death
Police believe it was to put the seal of eternal silence on her rouged lips that pretty Lillian Conover was "taken for a ride" late last night or early this morning. The young woman's body, terribly beaten and almost denuded of clothing, was found lying in one of the bunkers of the Sedgemoor Country Club's golf course near the Albemarle Pike shortly after 6 o'clock this morning by an employee of the club. From the fact that no blood was found near the body, despite the terrible mauling it had received, police believe the young woman had been "put on the spot" somewhere else, then brought to the deserted links and left there by the slayers or their accomplices.
The Conover girl was known to have been intimate with a number of questionable characters, and had been arrested several times for shoplifting and petty thefts. It is thought she might have learned something of the secrets of a gang of bootleggers or hijackers and threatened to betray them to rival gangsters, necessitating her silencing by the approved methods of gangland.
The body, when found, was clothed in the remnants of a gray ensemble with a gray fox neck-piece and a silver mesh bag was still looped about one of her wrists. In the purse were four ten-dollar bills and some silver, showing conclusively that robbery was not the motive for the crime.
The authorities are checking up the girl's movements on the day before her death, and an arrest is promised within twenty-four hours.
"U'm?" I remarked, laying down the paper,
"U'm?" he mocked. "May the devil's choicest imps fly away with your 'u'ms', Friend Trowbridge. Come, get the car; we must be off."
"Off where?"
"Beard of a small blue pig, where, indeed, but to the spot where this so unfortunate girl's dead corpse was discovered? Delay not, we must utilize what little light remains!"
The bunker where poor Lillian Conover's broken body had been found was a banked sand-trap in the golf course about twenty-five yards from the highway. Throngs of morbidly curious sightseers had trampled the smoothly kept fairways all day, brazenly defying the "Private Property—No Trespassing" signs with which the links were posted.
To my surprize, de Grandin showed little annoyance at the multitude of footprints about, but turned at once to the business of surveying the terrain. After half an hour's crawling back and forth across the turf, he rose and dusted his trouser knees with a satisfied sigh.
"Succès!" he exclaimed, raising his hand, thumb and forefinger clasped together on something which reflected the last rays of the sinking sun with an ominous red glow. "Behold, mon ami, I have found it; it is even as I suspected."
Looking closely, I saw he held a red bead, about the size of a small hazelnut, the exact duplicate of the little globule Haroldine Arkright had discovered in her reticule.
"Well?" I asked.
"Barbe d'un lièvre, yes; it is very well, indeed," he assented with a vigorous nod. "I was certain I should find it here, but had I not, I should have been greatly worried. Let us return, good friend; our quest is done."