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

“A client of mine,” hastily interposed the district attorney, “and I’ll do the talking — all of it, for my client, of course.”

“You are now speaking in your private capacity?” asked Clint Kale.

“Certainly,” snapped the district attorney.

“Where’s Boston Blackie?” smirked the chief.

Clint Kale spread his hands, palms out, in a deprecatory gesture.

“Gone.”

“Skipped,” said the chief.

Clint shrugged.

Thomas Jefferson Train cleared his throat.

“You lost a capsule of radium?”

“Yes.”

“That is very valuable?”

“Very.”

“You advertised, offering a reward and no questions asked?”

“Not exactly. I wanted to, but Rosamond advised against it. Therefore no formal offer of reward was ever made.”

The district attorney’s face twitched.

“You can’t get around it by no such technicality,” he said. “My client found that radium, or some radium.”

He gestured to Ezra Hickory. That individual took from his pocket a package. The package was undone. A gold capsule fell to the table.

“That’s it!” yelled Clint, and swooped toward the capsule.

Chief Hatcher’s hairy paw snapped down upon his wrist.

“No, ye don’t,” said the chief.

“You’ll have to identify it as yours first,” said the district attorney.

“But of course it’s mine. How else would any radium get to this community? Why not have your client tell how he got it?”

“That,” said Train, with dignity, “will come later. For the present we are inquiring into your title. The thing that makes me more suspicious than anything else is the small amount of the reward offered. According to your own declaration this radium is worth approximately one hundred thousand dollars. Yet the reward you offer is but a paltry thousand. That, in itself, is enough to indicate that it is not the same radium.

“As district attorney I could not allow this radium to be turned over to you until the circumstances convinced me it was the same radium.”

“Speaking officially?” asked Clint.

“Speaking officially!” rasped the district attorney.

“If the reward were increased it would convince you?”

“Yes.”

“Speaking officially?”

“Speaking officially!”

“Your client would get that reward?”

“Naturally.”

“And you would collect a percentage?”

“Of course.”

“Officially?”

“No, sir, speaking privately now, in my capacity of private attorney.”

Clint Kale rubbed a hand over the angle of his jaw.

“You seem to have me sort of sewed up!”

The lawyer said nothing.

Ezra Hickory’s features softened into a half smile.

The chief of police snickered audibly.

“What reward would you suggest?”

“As district attorney I should say a reward of ten thousand dollars would prove that you really felt the radium was yours.”

“Speaking officially?”

“Yes!”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“My client would be willing to accept it in full as a reward.”

“Speaking privately now, Mr. Train, I take it.”

“Speaking privately, sir.”

Clint sighed.

“Guess I’m hooked,” he admitted. “But first I’ll have to make certain scientific tests to determine that this is really the radium.”

“You have my permission.”

“Officially?”

“Both official and private. The chief will keep an eye on you and see there’s no funny business.”

Clint picked the capsule up with a pair of forceps, weighed it carefully, noted the weight.

“I shall require a bit of blued steel to rub it over,” he said.

“Blued steel?”

“Yes.”

The chief of police tugged at his holster, produced a six-shooter.

“Ah! Thank you, chief. Set it down there, right by Mr. Hickory, if you will. That’s fine. Now watch the barrel.”

He took the forceps, ran the capsule over the steel.

“Leave it there for a moment or two and see if the oxidation brings out any apparent change in the barrel. Now, one more thing. I have to tell where this radium was stored while it was absent from me. If radium is stored for any length of time in an electrical field it tends to lose its energy.

“However, fortunately, radium is sufficiently active to impress a photographic plate with its environment. Let me place the capsule between two plate holders. Fine. Now we’ll put them in this developing box, put on the top, pour developer in the opening. Now there’s nothing else to do while we wait for the plates to develop.

“Tell me, since we’re all here, gentlemen, how about that Sam Pixley case?”

“That what you came down here to investigate?” asked Chief Hatcher.

“Yes. I might as well admit it. It is.”

“The case is closed,” said the district attorney.

Ezra Hickory said nothing.

“I always felt,” said Clint Kale, speaking in a reflective monotone, “that the woman wasn’t guilty. Her testimony is too utterly incredible to have been fabricated, the telephone call to go see Pixley, the finding of the package of currency in the exact amount required to pay off the mortgage. Only a fool would have told such a story if it were the truth. Not even a fool would have made up such a yarn as a lie.