B-flat trombone."

Along with several million other readers, Average Jones followed the
Linder "bomb outrage" through the scandalized head-lines of the
local press. The perpetrator, declared the excited journals, had
been skilful. No clue was left. The explosion had taken care of
that. The police (with the characteristic stupidity of a corps of
former truck-drivers and bartenders, decorated with brass buttons
and shields and without further qualification dubbed "detectives")
vacillated from theory to theory. Their putty-and-pasteboard
fantasies did not long survive the Honorable William Linder's return
to consciousness and coherence. An "inside job," they had said.
The door was locked and bolted, Mr. Linder declared, and there was
no possible place for an intruder to conceal himself. Clock-work,
then.

"How would any human being guess what time to set it for," demanded
the politician in disgust, "when I never know, myself, where I'm
going to be at any given hour of any given day?"

"Then that Dutch horn-player threw the bomb," propounded the head of
the "Detective Bureau" ponderously.

"Of course; tossed it right up, three stories, and kept playing his
infernal trombone with the other hand all the time. You ought to be
carrying a hod!"

Nevertheless, the police hung tenaciously to the theory that the
musician was involved, chiefly because they had nothing else to hang
to. The explosion had been very localized, the room not generally