"You poor simp, you'd better get that family doctor of yours to
give you some ear medicine, and stop wasting time with the death
certificate. I told you that Cronin was over in Bellevue
Hospital with a fractured skull. Unless you drop this
investigating, you'll get one, too. Ta, ta! Old top!"

The receiver was hung up quickly at the other end of the line.

Shirley gave a quick call for "Information," and after several
minutes learned that the call came from a drug store pay-station
in Jersey City!

The melodious tones were unmistakably those of the speaker who
had used the wire from faraway Brooklyn where the house had been
burned down! It was a human impossibility for any one to have
covered the distance between the two points in this brief time,
except in an aeroplane!

Van Cleft wondered dumbly at his companion's excitement. Shirley
caught up the telephone again.

"Some one says that Cronin is at Bellevue Hospital, injured.
I'll find out."

It was true. Captain Cronin was lying at point of death, the
ward nurse said, in answer to his eager query. At first the
ambulance surgeon had supposed him to be drunk, for a patrolman
had pulled him out of a dark doorway, unconscious.

"Where was the doorway? This is his son speaking, so tell me