suite in the fashionable restaurant I knew would make interesting
reading, if the walls had ears.

"Apparently he must have found out about the eavesdropping in time
and nipped it," pursued Kennedy.

"What do you mean?" I asked, for I had not been able to gather
much from the one-sided conversation over the telephone, and the
lightning change from the case of Betty Blackwell to this had left
me somewhat bewildered. "What has he done?"

"Smashed the transmitter of the machine," replied Kennedy tersely.
"Cut the wires."

"Where did it lead?" I asked. "How do you know?"

Kennedy shook his head. Either he did not know, yet, or he felt
that the subway was no place in which to continue the conversation
beyond the mere skeleton that he had given me.

We finished the ride in comparative silence and hurried into
Carton's office down in the Criminal Courts Building.

Carton greeted us cordially, with an air of intense relief, as if
he were glad to have been able to turn to Kennedy in the growing
perplexities that beset him.

What surprised me most, however, was that, seated beside his desk,
in an easy chair, was a striking looking woman, not exactly young,
but of an age that is perhaps more interesting than youth,