Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

“There’s one in the fifth to-day at Saratoga, that if I had three centuries on his nose... God, it would put me all in the clear, inspector,” he ended feverishly.

A knock came on the door, then.

“Come in,” called Frayne.

It was Grady, the coroner.

“Where’s the body, Frayne?” he asked his friend.

“Second bedroom down the hall. Bring me a report right away, will you, old man?”

Frayne followed Grady out of the room. He did not stop in the death chamber. Grady would get everything that he wanted there, he knew. Instead, the manhunter examined the other rooms.

He went to the unoccupied bedroom. To the dining room. To the bathroom. To the kitchen. He didn’t spend much time in any of these rooms, for it was said that Frayne, in a single glance, could take in more details than the average man would absorb in minutes of close scrutiny.

The kitchen seemed to interest him. At least, he stood there in the center of the room, frowning, his cold blue eyes going to triangular slits.

Suddenly he walked over to the dumb-waiter. He peered down the shaft, his body stiffening. He began to pull on the ropes, presently. All at once he stopped.

Then he leaped back and called out sharply.

“Don!”

“Sir?” replied Haggerty, coming like a flash.

“Cut out those dumb-waiter ropes. There’s our evidence!”

Frayne, instantly, was back in the living room. He was standing over Lamont.

“Take off those gloves, you rat,” he snarled.

“I like to keep my gloves on, Frayne,” said Lamont, his voice and his eyes defiant.

“And I want ’em off, damn you,” snapped the manhunter. “Peel them off, Lamont.”

Slowly, his eyes on Frayne’s, the race track tout obeyed. He had to. He knew they would have been torn off, otherwise.

“I thought so,” Frayne exulted, as he saw the bruises and blood blisters on the palms of Lamont’s hands.

“Whaddaya mean, you thought so?” said Lamont, his voice ugly. “Hell, can’t a guy go rowin’ an’ get blisters on his hands?”

“Sure he can,” agreed Frayne, “but they’re not rowing blisters.”

He turned, then, and beckoned to the finger-print expert.

“Got your magnifying glass with you, Denham?”

“Yes, inspector.”

“Examine Lamont’s hands. Examine those bruises and blisters. Examine them for particles of hemp.”

“You can’t hang nothin’ on me, Frayne,” Vince Lamont was now snarling. “I got my alibi. I got—”

“Take him, Don,” said Frayne, as Haggerty came to the doormat and stood ready for orders.

Lamont started to bound from his chair, but Haggerty was across the room like a leaping panther, the race track tout’s wrists gripped between his fingers.

Denham was a painstaking workman, and he was an exceedingly efficient workman. It took him three or four minutes — maybe five — to study those blistered hands.

When he straightened up and faced his superior his face had a contented look.

“Seven particles, sir,” he said. “Five on the right hand, two on the left. There may be more, on closer examination. I’m certain about the seven, though.”

“Good,” said Frayne.

“Say, I heard a lot about somethin’ bein’ Greek to a guy,” smiled Lamont, trying to bluster, “and now I know what it means. Put it in plain American, will you?”

“Glad to oblige,” said Frayne. “You’re arrested for the murder of Baa-Baa Jackson!”

Vince Lamont looked at his hands. Looked about the room.

Suddenly hope blazed up in his face and he cried out loudly:

“How in hell can you hang that on me when Baa-Baa was alive when Bethenia come in at nine-somethin’ o’clock? She spoke to her, didn’t she? And wasn’t I drinkin’ over at Jerry Spino’s all mornin’?”

Frayne didn’t answer. Frayne, instead, called out:

“Finished, Grady?”

“Right, Frayne, coming.”

“What’s the report?” asked the manhunter, when the coroner showed up in the doorway.

“She was killed somewhere in the vicinity of four o’clock this morning, Frayne.”

“I knew the maid was wrong when she said Baa-Baa called through the door at nine o’clock,” Frayne said. “The body had already stiffened when I got here. The answer to that is — somebody was imitating her voice.”

Frayne, then, faced Vince Lamont. His voice, now, came in a drawl.

“Still Greek to you, Lamont?”

“Worse than ever, inspector,” laughed Lamont, his own eyes not doing such a bad job of bluffing.

“When Mr. Haggerty slips the handcuffs on you, as the murderer of Baa-Baa Jackson, I’ll explain.”

The handcuffs clicked.

“I’ll try to reconstruct the crime for you as nearly as I can,” said the man-hunter. “You and Baa-Baa did have a fight, of course, but I don’t think it was about any little cabaret girl. I think it was because she wouldn’t come across with as much money as you asked for. Right on that, Lamont?”

“Aw—”