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that I would ever be privileged to make them public; but Markham, after being defeated, as you remember, on a hopelessly split ticket at the next election, withdrew from politics; and last year Vance went abroad to live, declaring he would never return to America. As a result, I obtained permission from both of them to publish my notes in full. Vance stipulated only that I should not reveal his name; but otherwise no restrictions were placed upon me.

      A curious set of circumstances was accountable for the way in which Vance was shouldered with this new investigation. Markham for weeks had been badgered by the anti-administration newspapers for the signal failures of his office in obtaining convictions against certain underworld offenders whom the police had turned over to him for prosecution. As a result of prohibition a new and dangerous, and wholly undesirable, kind of night life had sprung up in New York. A large number of well-financed cabarets, calling themselves night clubs, had made their appearance along Broadway and in its side streets; and already there had been an appalling number of serious crimes, both passional and monetary, which, it was said, had had their inception in these unsavory resorts.

      At last, when a case of murder accompanying a hold-up and jewel robbery in one of the family hotels up-town was traced directly to plans and preparations made in one of the night clubs, and when two detectives of the Homicide Bureau investigating the case were found dead one morning in the neighborhood of the club, with bullet wounds in their backs, Markham decided to pigeonhole the other affairs of his office and take a hand personally in the intolerable criminal conditions that had arisen.5

      CHAPTER II

       FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

       Table of Contents

      (Sunday, September 9)

      “It’s bad enough to have half the people in this city under the impression that the District Attorney’s office is a kind of high-class collection agency,” he remarked that night, “without being necessitated to turn detective because I’m not given sufficient evidence, or the right kind of evidence, with which to secure convictions.”

      Vance looked up with a slow smile, and regarded him quizzically.

      “The difficulty would seem to be,” he returned, with an indolent drawl, “that the police, being unversed in the exquisite abracadabra of legal procedure, labor under the notion that evidence which would convince a man of ordin’ry intelligence, would also convince a court of law. A silly notion, don’t y’ know. Lawyers don’t really want evidence: they want erudite technicalities. And the average policeman’s brain is too forthright to cope with the pedantic demands of jurisprudence.”

      “It’s not as bad as that,” Markham retorted, with an attempt at good nature, although the strain of the past few weeks had tended to upset his habitual equanimity. “If there weren’t rules of evidence, grave injustice would too often be done innocent persons. And even a criminal is entitled to protection in our courts.”

      Vance yawned mildly.

      “Why this academic dissertation?” asked Markham, this time a bit irritably.

      “It seems to touch rather vitally on the source of your present predicament,” Vance explained equably. “The police, not being lawyers, have apparently got you into hot water, what? . . . Why not start an agitation to send all detectives to law school?”

      “You’re a great help,” retorted Markham.

      Vance raised his eyebrows slightly.

      “Why disparage my suggestion? Surely you must perceive that it has merit. A man without legal training, when he knows a thing to be true, ignores all incompetent testimony to the contr’ry, and clings to the facts. A court of law listens solemnly to a mass of worthless testimony, and renders a decision not on the facts but according to a complicated set of rules. The result, d’ ye see, is that a court often acquits a prisoner, realizing full well that he is guilty. Many a judge has said, in effect, to a culprit: ‘I know, and the jury knows, that you committed the crime, but in view of the legally admissible evidence, I declare you innocent. Go and sin again.’ ”

      Markham grunted. “I’d hardly endear myself to the people of this county if I answered the current

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