But his calm statement got him an instant audience with a slender man of thirty-five or so, whose hair was prematurely gray at the temples, and whose eyes were shrewd and far-seeing.
“My name’s Thomas Tyler,” said the detective. He certainly didn’t look the conventional detective, but Bentley knew instantly that he wasn’t the conventional detective. “I work on the unusual cases. If you hadn’t sent in your name I wouldn’t have seen you, which means that as soon as you leave here you are to forget my name and how I look.”
He motioned Bentley to a seat. Bentley sat back. Suddenly Thomas Tyler was around his desk and had pushed back the hair from Bentley’s temples. He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss when he saw the white line which circled Bentley’s skull.
“It’s not exactly proof,” he said, as though he and Bentley had been in the midst of a discussion of that awful operation Barter had performed on Bentley, “but I’d take your word for it.”
“The story, in the main, was true,” said Bentley.
“I thought so. What made you come here?”
“I saw that naked man run across Fifth Avenue from the door of the Flatiron Building. I saw the officer subdue him, helped him do it in fact, and saw the man die. Since there was no detective there, I took 34 the liberty of removing these from the fingers of the dead man.”
Bentley gave Tyler the coarse hair, stained with blood. Tyler looked at it grimly for a moment or two.
“Not human hair,” he said, as though talking to himself. “Not like any I know of. But ... ah, you know what sort of hair, eh? That’s what sent you here!”