“That’s about right, Harry!” declared Drew, reaching for the cartridge. “It was clamped down with small screws. It was ignited or set off by heat. It forms part of a home-made pistol which conforms, to a hair, with Fosdick’s statement that the bullet never went through a barrel that was rifled.”
“That’s your own statement!” blurted Delaney. “Fosdick never had brains enough to figure a thing out like that. All he knows is pinch everybody two or three times. I’ve seen him do it.”
Drew eyed the prisoner. “So you see,” he said softly, cuttingly, “crime does not pay. The net has closed over your head. You erred a score of times. You couldn’t afford to make one little mistake. I could—I did! I’ve made a hundred in this case already! It’s the hound and the hare. The hound loses the scent and brays on blunderingly till he picks it up again. You lost me time and again. You fooled me in that lineman’s guise when you came into the library. Your make-up was perfect. You said just the right things.”
The prisoner’s lips curled in a thin cruel line. He rattled the cuffs defiantly. His shoulders lifted then fell back upon the rug.
“Bert!” snapped Drew. “Bert!” he repeated with awakening thought. “Delaney,” he said, turning and glancing up at the operative’s broad, flushed face. “I got this fellow located. What was the name of the man we tried to find in the Morphy failure? The one we had a bench-warrant for? He was indicted. The indictment was sealed. You know! It’s a name you didn’t like. The fellow who escaped to Rio or South America? Who afterwards went to Antofagasta. Ah, Cuthbert!”
“That’s it, Chief! Cutbert! Cutbert Morphy—the old devil’s brother. This is him!”
Drew rubbed his hands vigorously. “It is!” he exclaimed, with his eyes swinging over the prisoner’s drawn features. “Cuthbert Morphy—a brother’s tool and confederate. We’re getting on!”
The detective rose and faced Loris and Nichols. “Captain,” he said, “a firing squad at sunrise would be the Army’s answer to this man’s deviltry. Consider what he has done. He’s worked back to New York after a year as a fugitive. He connected in some manner with Morphy at Sing Sing. Perhaps he went there as a visitor under the pretext of business connected with Morphy’s affairs. This scheme was hatched there in the prison. It was financed by Morphy. It succeeded in so far as Mr. Stockbridge was concerned. First the telephone call to the cemetery superintendent. Then followed his visit to this house for the purpose of fixing some fiendish device. Or––”
“He might have fixed the windows, Chief,” suggested Delaney. “He might have opened a catch and climbed in afterwards.”
“He wasn’t near the windows,” said Drew. “He had something else in the back of his crafty, twisted brain. He came and went out, with Mr. Stockbridge and I watching him. He called up, then, and threatened the death. He probably looped the library ’phone up with Sing Sing at or about midnight. We have a record of both calls.”