LITMIR.BIZ

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it has a system of air-valve ejectors for mine-laying and a perfected mechanism for taking on fresh supplies along the sea-bottom. That gives it a ninety-day cruising radius without any need of returning to its base, in time of war. Dorgan got those plans. In the same bunch he also got the new Dupont magnetic detector, for indicating under water the approach of any ironclad. They were all plans and specifications ​from which decently qualified experts could finally work out models."

      "Then this guy Dorgan's a spy?"

      "Old man Sinclair contends Dorgan isn't a paid agent, but merely a sore-head who tried to get even with the company by sniping any office-papers he could grab while waiting round for his pay envelope, after being fired. Sinclair says he can't even know the value of those papers, for most of the work was done in bond and under government inspectors. That's a matter we can't be sure of. But there is one matter we can be sure of, and that is that for these papers Dorgan could get a quarter of a million in cold cash!"

      "Hold me up!" breathed out the amazed Sadie Wimpel.

      "Kestner's belief is that Dorgan was actually planted at the Sinclair Works. There's a kink or two in Dorgan's record. We know that he originally came from the government gun factories at Watervleit, that he was some six months at Newport News, and that he even did work on the new Arizona in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That doesn't look like a plant. But he may have been after something ​worth waiting a couple of years for. The worst kink in his record, though, is that Dorgan became a pool-room habitué."

      "Playin' the ponies?"

      "Yes; and through this he got to neglect his work and was finally discharged. It was this woman named Fatichiara who gave him track-return tips. That's about all we know, except one thing. And that one thing is that Keudell and his gang would cut this man's throat as quick as they'd strike a match once they thought those plans were within their reach !"

      "How d' yuh know he ain't gay-cattin' for Keudell right along?" demanded Sadie.

      "Because Keudell doesn't appear to have been on this trail two months, let alone two years. There may have been others, it's true. But Kestner wired me that he'd got enough tips from the Madame Garnier papers to show that Keudell himself had laid a number of ropes. And those are the things we've got to trace up!"

      The mention of Madame Garnier's name took his thoughts back to the letter which he still held unopened In his hand. Sadie Wimpel sat resentfully watching him as he tore the end from the envelope ​and unfolded a sheet of paper on which a clipping from a newspaper was pasted.

      "From the Los Angeles Times," he said aloud as he made note of a brief inscription at the bottom.

      But Sadie's thoughts, at the moment, were not concerned with that communication.

      "It's all right t' talk about tracin' up these things, but that kind o' tracin' takes yuh through a stack o' rough-neck work, and yuh know it as well as I do! The slooth-king who sits in a swivel-chair and rounds up the big crook by tappin' a two-story bean is all right for the movies, but it won't go in real life. And if yuh ain't ready to get your roof tore off yuh'd better can your hide-and-seek game wit' the Big House boys!"

      "Just a minute!" expostulated Wilsnach, preoccupied with his sheet of paper.

      "What's the dope, anyway?" demanded Sadie, blinking at the sudden solemnity of Wilsnach's face, as he stared abstractedly across the table at her.

      "Listen," he said, turning back to the clipping which he held in his hand. Then he read aloud:

      "To the long list of Pacific Coast aviation accidents must be added still another fatality. Early this morning Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Diehms, who had been cooperating with the Navy Aviation ​Corps at San Diego, together with Madame Theophile Garnier, the wife of a Continental inventor, met their death in the Pacific. The accident occurred while Colonel Diehms was experimenting with the new Garnier gyroscopic stabilizer for aircraft. The trial, which was under governmental supervision, involved an altitude-test with passenger. At an estimated height of about five thousand feet the machine was seen suddenly to dip and fall. As, unfortunately, both pilot and passenger had neglected to wear life-belts, neither body has been recovered … "

       It was Sadie who spoke up out of the silence.

      "Yuh don't mean to say that Kestner cooked up that end for 'em?"

      Wilsnach looked at her out of unseeing eyes. Then he slowly nodded his head.

      "I suppose it was the best way!" he meditated aloud.

      "Hully gee," Sadie cried, as she sat absorbing the significance of the words to which she had been listening, "ain't that just what I've been tryin' to tell yuh? Don't that show yuh it's just dog eat dog, and the Old Boy take the guy who's too good to sneak a chance?"

      Wilsnach, at the moment, was remembering what Kestner, only one short week before, had said to ​him about Service work. And it was with an effort that he pulled himself together.

      "Well, Sadie, no matter what kind of work it is, we're in it, and we've got to go through with it! And the sooner we get down to tin tacks the better!"

      "I ain't delayin' yuh!" announced the young woman beside the crystal-gazer's globe. But for the fraction of a moment a faint shadow hung about her face, a shadow of disappointment, apparently, at his calmly masculine eagerness to escape to the impersonal.

      "We've got to remember why you're here, and why I'm here. And the answer is, Keudell. And our hopes of finding Keudell seem to hang on just one thin thread: that somewhere in this city is a thief who's stolen papers which he can't unload, unless he unloads them on Keudell. And if we can't find the thief, we've got to find Keudell, or the people who are acting for Keudell."

      "Then why wasn't I give a description of this guy called Dorgan?"

      "Because there wasn't time, for one thing, and, for another, Romano's been covering your house and would never 've let him get away before I had a chance to get here. But I'm going to describe the ​man, in case any of us should miss him. Dorgan's a mechanic, remember, and he's about thirty years old. He's wide-shouldered and rather short, with curly black hair, cut close. His ears stick out a little, and one of them is mushroomed, for he worked in the prize-ring for a couple of winters. Then—"

      "Wait!" suddenly announced Sadie. The faint purr of a desk-buzzer had sounded behind her black-draped table. She bent her head and watched the quick play of the vari-colored electric globes of her tiny annunciator.

      "Hully gee," she murmured, as she hid away the end of her cigarette, "here's a hob-nail comin' for a readin'. And Zuleika's pushin' the double-green to say he's a guy worth watchin'!"

      Wilsnach, who was already on his feet, circled about the table and lifted the black velvet drapery of the cabinet.

      "I'll wait here until your man goes," he quietly announced.

      Sadie, reverting to her posture of esoteric impassivity, intoned a solemn "Ong-tray-voo!" in answer to the questioning knock on the door.

      That door promptly opened and a man stepped into the room. He carried his hat in his hand, and ​Sadie could see the black hair that curled about the edges of his outstanding ears. He was half-way across the room before he stopped, hesitated and then slowly advanced toward the vacant chair that faced the table, groping for it with an abstracted hand as he stared into the woman's heavily powdered face. Then he sat down in the chair.

      "You ain't Fannie Fatichiara!" he suddenly and deliberately announced.

      "Ain't I?" murmured the impassive-eyed Sadie.

      "You're a faker!" announced the stranger, suddenly leaning forward in his chair.

      Sadie's somnolent eye was languid with scorn.

      "If any she-cat's been crabbin' my name," she majestically proclaimed, "I'll put her outta business b'fore she kin squeal for help!"

      The man sniffed. "You smoke cigars?" he demanded.

      "No," was Sadie's languid

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