“Smell that stuff! Smell it!” Drew thrust his fingers under Delaney’s wrinkled nose. “Smell it, good and strong!” he snapped bitterly. “What is it?”
“By God, Chief, it’s powder, I smell! Gunpowder, it is!”
“Umph! I must have gotten it from that gat!”
“You couldn’t, Chief. That gun was polished up like a whistle. Besides, how would the spot come to be under your left ear?”
Drew furrowed his brow. He swung in the snow with new decision. “Come on!” he said. “We’ll think this over! I didn’t see any soot on that gat. I don’t know where I got it either. Could it have been there for some time?”
“Sure, Chief. I just happened to notice it. Light’s bright.” Delaney nodded toward the arc.
“Did you get a good look at my face in Stockbridge’s?”
“Can’t say that I did, Chief. I was too busy with that howler thing and that magpie and that murder, to see anything. You might of got it there without me noticing it. It wasn’t there in the taxicab. I’ll swear to that.”
Drew passed his fingers across his nostrils like a man sampling perfume. He repeated the motion. He scraped some of the powder from his nails with a pocket knife and dropped the sample into the crease of an envelope which he carefully folded and crammed into his pocket.
“I’ll have that analyzed,” he said, as they turned toward Fifth Avenue. “Another trifle in a chain of circumstance. Think it over, Delaney. It resembles and smells like powder which has been burnt. You hurry along home. Be at the office no later than nine. I’ll keep on down Fifth Avenue to the Flatiron Building. I want to walk and clear my head. I’ll get some coffee, pie and rolls, at an all-night restaurant. I’ll take time for a shave, shine and shampoo. Perhaps I’ll jump into a Turkish bath to finish up and get ready for work.”