under-reckoned the charge of explosive."

"They let the musician go, didn't they?"

"Yes. There was absolutely no proof against him, except that he was
in the street below. Besides, he seemed quite lacking mentally."

"Mightn't that have been a sham?"

"Alienists, of good standing examined him. They reported him just a
shade better than half-witted. He was like a one-ideaed child, his
whole being comprised in his ability, and ambition to play his
B-flat trombone."

"Well, if I needed an accomplice," said Average Jones thoughtfully,
"I wouldn't want any better one than a half-witted man. Did he play
well?"

"Atrociously. And if you know what a soul-shattering blare exudes
from a B-flat trombone--" Mr. Waldemar lifted expressive hands.

Within Average Jones' overstocked mind something stirred at the
repetition of the words "B-flat trombone." Somewhere they had
attracted his notice in print; and somehow they were connected with
Waldemar. Then from amidst the hundreds of advertisements with
which, in the past weeks, he had crowded his brain, one stood out
clear. It voiced the desire of an unknown gentleman on the near
border of Harlem for the services of a performer upon that
semi-exotic instrument. One among several, it had been cut from the
columns of the Universal, on the evening which had launched him upon