It was a sort of sitting-room, or den, cosily furnished with deep, comfortable lounging chairs. There was a flat-topped desk in the centre, a telephone on the desk; and at the rear of the room a connecting door, leading presumably to the bedroom, was open. A clean-shaven, dark-eyed man of perhaps thirty-five, Kenleigh obviously, was pacing nervously up and down. His face was pale, his hair ruffled; and, in his distraction, apparently, he had forgotten to remove the cloak which he was wearing over his evening clothes. In the far corner of the room, Meighan, the detective, knelt upon the floor amidst a scene of grotesque disorder. The door of a very small safe had been “souped,” and now sagged open. Books and papers littered the floor, and were strewn over a mattress that, evidently dragged from the inner room, had been swaddled around the safe to deaden the sound of the explosion.
“You don’t understand!” Kenleigh burst out, with a groan. “This means absolute ruin to me! A hundred thousand dollars in bonds—payable to bearer—and—and, God help me, they weren’t mine!”
“Say”—Meighan, still busily occupied with the fractured safe, spoke gruffly, though not unkindly, over his shoulder—“I understand all right, but don’t lose your nerve, Mr. Kenleigh. It won’t get you anywhere, and it doesn’t follow because the swag is gone that we can’t get it back. I know the guy that pulled this job.”
“You—what!” Kenleigh, his face lighting up as though with a sudden hope, stepped quickly toward the detective. “What did you say? You know who did it!”
“Don’t get excited!” advised Meighan coolly. “Sure, I know! That is, it’s a toss-up between one of two, and that’s easy. We’ll round ‘em both up before morning, and then I guess it won’t be much of a trick to pick the winner. They won’t be looking for trouble as quick as this. We’ll get ‘em, all right. It’s a toss-up between Mug Garretty and the Magpie.”
Kenleigh was staring incredulously at the detective.
“How do you know?” he gasped out. “I—I don’t—”
“I daresay you don’t.” Meighan was chuckling now. “It’s like this, Mr. Kenleigh. A crook’s like any one else, like an artist, say—you get to know ‘em, get to spot ‘em, especially safe workers, from certain peculiarities about their work. They can’t any more help it than stop breathing. Here, for instance, the way he—” Meighan stopped suddenly. He had been pulling the mattress away from the front of the safe, and now, with a sharp, exultant exclamation, he stooped quickly and picked up a small object from the floor. He held it out, twirling It between thumb and forefinger, for Kenleigh’s inspection—a flashy scarf pin, horseshoe-shaped, of blatantly imitation diamonds.
Kenleigh shook his head bewilderingly.
“I suppose you mean that you recognise it?” he ventured.