“Say, Mac, do you know what that was you handed me to-day? A silver leaf!”
“It looked kind of like a leaf and there was a silvery tinge to it Jimmie, but I thought it was made of flat plush!” McCarty replied. “I’m no wiser than I was before. What is it?”
“A leaf from an African silver-tree, of a species that grows most plentifully on Table Mountain, just back of Cape Town; no telling how old it is, for they last forever if they’re not handled too much. Where did you get it and what has it to do with that little affair you and I were talking about this morning?”
“Not a thing in the world!” McCarty avowed hastily. “’Tis just something I picked up. I’ll be thankful if you’ll put it in an envelope and mail it to me special delivery, though.”
“All right!” Jimmie laughed. “Of course it isn’t important when you’ve got to have it by ‘special,’ and you were willing to trade the best beat of the year for information about it, but give me the dope on it one jump ahead of the other boys and I won’t ask any more. Did you see our extra?”
McCarty cut short the youthful Jimmie’s enthusiasm. He had to stand with his back squarely to the door to talk into the ’phone and he didn’t know when his mysterious visitor might return. That shot had miraculously not aroused the neighborhood but undoubtedly that was because of the noise of wind and rain. Would the author of his little surprise have sufficient strength of mind to remain away and wait to see if the morning papers held any account of the possible tragedy?
He would, if he was one and the same with the human fiend who had brought all those horrors to pass in the Mall, and of that McCarty was morally convinced. He had told Dennis and the inspector, too, that it would be only by out-guessing him and anticipating who his next victim was scheduled to be that they could hope to solve the mystery. Now he grinned to himself; little had he thought then who was elected!
But the event of the evening made one fact manifest; the man was afraid! He was beginning to show weakness, his armor was cracking, his nerve was giving way! The desperate chance he had taken of being discovered at his work, the very elaborateness of the scheme itself, told of the effort made in a frenzy of guilty apprehension to wipe out one of those who represented the law.
Yet the brain which had conceived and carried to a successful conclusion two such strange crimes as the murders, to say nothing of the making away with the child Horace, would be more than a match for the present situation. Having learned of his first failure he would be doubly on the alert and wary. McCarty had drawn his fire and in all probability there would be a cessation of crimes in the Mall while he gave his attention to those who threatened to thwart his hideous activities.
The storm raged even more fiercely, as the hour grew late, and for more reasons than one McCarty was reluctant to venture forth for his forgotten dinner. He unearthed a battered percolator, tinned meat and crackers and made a light meal, retiring to bed at last with his revolver beneath the pillow.