“Not a bit of it, inspector!” McCarty exclaimed earnestly. “It’s just like I was saying to Denny; we’re up against the worst case and the cleverest murdering devil in the history of the department and we’ll not be laying him by the heels by working along behind him. It’s from what he’s going to pull in the future that we’ll get him, and then only through out-guessing him. Who’ll be the next? That’s the question we’ve got to answer.”
When, after threshing the situation over thoroughly once more, the inspector finally took his departure, McCarty put in a long hour studying the papers taken from Parsons’ filing case. The collection of reports, evidently transcriptions from court and police records, besides the names of Jennie Malone, Chris Porter and the boy Danny Sayre, comprised those of Bert Ferris, Hannah Cray and Bessie Dillon. Ferris had been convicted of insurance fraud, but Parsons had annotated the report: “Great provocation through need for dependents.” Hannah Cray was a shoplifter and Bessie Dillon a confidence worker and after the names of both women had been written: “Reform assured.”
The manuscript proved to be a compilation of scattered and disconnected notes, relative to various methods employed in modern warfare, together with lengthy diatribes against the sin of organized killing. McCarty had little patience to peruse it. The references to fluorine gas gave merely the formula and effect.
Without glancing again at the article on Calabar bean, McCarty put the torn page away with the other papers but slipped the odd, silvery bookmark in his pocket. A violent rainstorm was raging and taking a stout umbrella he clapped on his hat, locked the door behind him and descended to the street. Here he was pounced upon by a young man with a shock of very red hair, who had been lying in wait for him in Monsieur Girard’s shop doorway.
“Hey, Mac, got you at last! What brought Inspector Druet to you so early this morning? Anything new turned up in that merry little three-ring circus of crime that is giving a continuous performance under your noses over at the New Queen’s Mall?”
The taunt was a shrewdly calculated one, but McCarty grinned affably.
“I see your Bulletin this morning has only the story of the girl’s death yesterday afternoon, Jimmie; that’s old stuff, now.”
Jimmie Ballard opened his eyes and ducked confidentially under the shelter of McCarty’s umbrella.
“For the love of Pete, has there been more doing?” he gasped. “Come across, Mac! You know I’m always ready to do you a good turn! What’s up now?”
“We-ell,” McCarty assumed an air of troubled indecision. “Of course there’s no one between those gates would breathe a word of it to you newspaper guys and if I was to tell you about the two robberies it might get back to me. Not being regularly on the Force any more I’d not want the inspector to think—”