"The red-haired person--she must be an actress. Don't you remember the
auburn-haired leading lady in the Follies'--the girl who sings that
song about 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary'? Her stage name, you know, is
Phoebe La Neige. Well, if it's she who is concerned in this case
I don't think she'll be playing to-night. Let's inquire at the
box-office."

She wasn't playing, but just what it had to do with anything in
particular I couldn't see, and I said as much.

"Why, Walter, you'd never do as a detective. You lack intuition.
Sometimes I think I haven't quite enough of it, either. Why didn't
I think of that sooner? Don't you know she is the wife of Adolphus
Hesse, the most inveterate gambler in stocks in the System? Why, I had
only to put two and two together and the whole thing flashed on me
in an instant. Isn't it a good hypothesis that she is the red haired
woman in the case, the tool of the System in which her husband is so
heavily involved? I'll have to add her to my list of suspects."

"Why, you don't think she did the shooting?" I asked, half hoping, I
must admit, for an assenting nod from him.

"Well," he answered dryly, "one shouldn't let any preconceived
hypothesis stand between him and the truth. I've made a guess at the
whole thing already. It may or it may not be right. Anyhow she will
fit into it. And if it's not right, I've got to be prepared to make a
new guess, that's all."

When we reached the laboratory on our return, the inspector's man
Riley was there, waiting impatiently for Kennedy.