LITMIR.BIZ

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retained, out of sentiment—and which had been, moreover, the night just gone, the scene of robbery—and murder!

      But his study of the names of those witnesses who would, he felt, make the State’s case tonight a two-hour affair at most, was interrupted by the entrance into his private sanctum of Miss Jason, the thin-necked and very elderly female who saw to it rigorously that no one was allowed to disturb the State’s Attorney unless he himself first passed upon that matter.

      “Mr. Vann—” she began.

      “Yes?” And he looked up impatiently from his roster of witnesses.

      “Special Investigator August Bardell—of your staff—wishes to see you.”

      “Who? Oh—Bardell? Oh, I’m awfully busy, Miss Jason. Tell him to come by tomorrow, will you?”

      “But he wants only, Mr. Vann, 3 minutes.”

      “But—”

      “And he says it is rather important.”

      “Yes, but I can’t aff—only 3 minutes, eh?—well tell him if he’ll say what he has to say in 2—he can come in!”

      Miss Jason essayed one of those smileless smiles for which she was noted in the City Hall. And melted noiselessly out of the picture.

      Evidently Investigator Bardell—one-time plainclothesman on the Detective Bureau—but now transferred to Vann’s own State-paid staff—was willing to say what he had to say in 2 minutes. For he entered a moment later, a stocky individual in a brown suit, with the thick-soled shoes of the true detective, and wearing a voluminous black Windsor tie indicating some sort of weird disguise.

      “For—for God’s sake, Bardell!” ejaculated Vann. “Since when?” And he made a gesture to his own law-abiding and conservative tie.

      Bardell flushed a brick-red.

      “That’s—that’s what I wanted to see you about.”

      “That tie? Then for Heaven’s sake keep it till tomorrow, and—”

      “But wait, Mr. Vann—it’s not so much the tie, as the matter of how I wore it—and the place. You know?”

      “Oh—the meeting of those bloody fire-eaters? I ought to have guessed!” Vann paused expectantly. “Well—whom did they plot to blow up?”

      Bardell, now standing at Vann’s desk, made answer.

      “Nobody, Mr. Vann. ’Twas a regular legitimate party, from A to Izzard, that meeting off Bughouse Square. All men—no wimmen!—but strict—well—fun.” And Bardell made a grimace as indicating that fun was a thing of many definitions.

      “Fun? Well, that’s odd, to say the least. Considering that Hugo Schletmar, who’s practically known to have been mixed up in bombings in 4 different cities, was to be there. And Andrew Brosnatch, who served time on Alcatraz for assassinating Millionaire Lovewell of San Francisco—the same. Are you dead sure nothing was slipped over on you?”

      “Listen, Mr. Vann, I tell you that even anarchists have to unlax now and then. Koncil and I were present in that big studio room o’ young van der Zook’s, from 7:40 in the evening, right after the first of the invited guests had arrived—till 5 this morning, when the affair broke up, and the last guest—inc’dentally he was the first one, too!—including us—departed. And there wasn’t a word of anarchistic talk. No blowing up of anybody. No—no bumping off the President. Or sowing a pineapple in the First National Bank. Nothing but drink red wine—knock editors—and—”

      “Knock editors?”

      “Yeah, Editors, Mr. Vann. For there were literary lights amongst ’em. A regular Bohemian bunch—no fooling. And a spaghetti dinner served at—what time was it, now?—yes—10 p.m. sharp. With everybody putting on colored tissue-paper hats—pulling snapperjacks—and drinking red wine.”

      “My God! Schletmar and Brosnatch—putting on tissue paper hats! For of course they were there. Otherwise—”

      “Oh yes, Mr. Vann, sure they were there. Otherwise I’d have reported right off the bat that the cover was a fizzle.”

      “Well—that’s that, I guess. From the source and nature of the tip I had, I did think that Schletmar and Brosnatch must be up to something. And which of course is why I wangled invites for you and Koncil out of that very source. As ex-movie actor—and big game hunter—respectively.” Vann gazed down at Bardell’s thick-soled shoes.

      “I hope you didn’t wear those shoes?”

      “God no, Mr. Vann! I wore my—my freak shoes. And I haven’t adjusted Kleig lights in the studios there in Hollywood for two long years without being able to spout the studio lingo. Nor was Koncil found wanting, either, in view of his having gone, with President Kattins, of the Second National Bank, to Africa.”

      “I don’t suppose,” asked Vann ironically, “that the host’s father, Buford van der Zook Senior, was amongst that bunch?”

      “I’ll say no! From conversation around the table I gathered he was a real artist—and makes real money. While van der Zook the younger is a—a futurist. His canvases, so I thought, were awful! And they explained why he lives in a garret room off Bughouse Square, with not even a telephone, and has to serve spaghetti and red wine at a party, instead of capons and champagne, as his old man is said to do.”

      “But which verdict as to van der Zook Junior’s canvases,” Vann commented, “you no doubt kept to yourself? As did the rest! Well, was there anybody there at all suspicious acting, or looking?”

      “Sorry, Mr. Vann—but positively not. In the way, that is, that you mean. A bunch of Bohemians—if ever there were any—and I don’t believe anybody there knew that Schletmar and Brosnatch were the dangerous birds they really are. Fact is, I don’t think anybody there had the least idea that Brosnatch had served time on Alcatraz.”

      “But, suspicious or not, I presume you made a mental listing of the guests?”

      “A mental listing? Why, say, Mr. Vann, I got a written listing—with them signing their own signatures to it.”

      “Oh come, come, Bardell—you didn’t arouse Schletmar’s suspicions—nor Brosnatch’s—by asking either of them to sign anything?”

      “Why, I didn’t have to, Mr. Vann, for when the first feed was over—you see there were two feeds during the night, the first being regular, and served around a big table—the later one being buffet—and God, but the wine was rank at that second one!—but anyway, as I started to say, there was an early main feed put on to—to sort of oil up the hungry geniuses, I guess!—and when that feed was over, which was at 10:40, everybody signed everybody else’s paper napkin—clear around the table. And with addresses, to boot—in case anybody wanted to get in touch later with anybody else.”

      And Bardell, fishing in his breast pocket, brought up a rectangularly folded paper napkin, which, as he unfolded it, showed that it contained a list of signatures in ink, or in pencil, and, in one place, red crayon—bold and flourishing, all of them, as done by such as had drunk red wine—and deeply!

      “Well, I’ll certainly say,” Vann commented, “that you brought home the roster! And—how!” He took the napkin, and laid it on his desk, signatures uppermost. “And who’ve we got here? Oh—Harman Ochs, the cubistic sculptor? That fellow has something new—but the world will never admit it. And—well, well, well, here’s Schletmar himself—and I note he even sets down the address on Portage Park where he’s rooming. That shows conclusively, Bardell, that you and Koncil got across okay. And who else have we? Lon Annyman. Now where on earth have I hear—”

      “Oh,” put in Bardell helpfully, “he’s—”

      “Right!” said Vann, the answer coming suddenly to him. “The inside-page cartoonist who got bounced off the Tribune because he was found inserting hidden caricatures of

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