"You mean," he queried, "that you ascribe this whole affair to some West Side Black Hand band, and that this car proves your theory?"
"Sure thing!" assented Cahill. "O'Connor and me have been working on this case for months. Sometimes we thought we had a clue, and then again we didn't. We have suspected Black Handers from the first, but we couldn't exactly get a line on them. That tip you gave us Tuesday night started things right. Now we know where we're at. There's three detectives in overalls in that garage right now, and if those guys come back for their car the whole thing'll be cleared up in a jiffy."
"What makes you think that this is the car you wanted?" persisted Forrester, still doubting the correctness of the detectives' theories.
"Headquarters has no report of any other car being shot at by the police. And this car was left late Tuesday night. Get the idea?"
Forrester pulled reflectively at his cigar. He was overwhelmed. The suspicions he had entertained regarding the weird negress, the girl on the horse and her colored servant, were knocked flat. The half-formed theories he had been building up around them were completely shattered. The growing pride he had felt in his own detective talents was crushed, and the discoveries in which he had exulted were rendered valueless. After all, the hard-headed, plodding, unimaginative city detectives knew their business best. There was really no mystery or romance to crime; no clever men pitting their brains against those of astute detectives. The criminal class was nothing more than the police claimed it to be—just a stunted, unnatural, evil-smelling plant, with its roots buried deep in the sordid, filthy dives and foreign settlements of the West Side. Forrester was disappointed; deeply disappointed. In spite of the danger, worry and uncertainty, the thing had gotten into his blood during the last few days. It had fired his imagination, stirred his latent energies, and awakened his brain. And now the whole elaborate structure which had been slowly building up toward the skies collapsed in one moment to reveal nothing save a few murderous thugs concealed in the cellar.
Forrester heaved a sigh.
"Relieved, eh?" chuckled Cahill. "Thought the police were no good, and that you had to kiss ten thousand bucks good-by?"
Forrester laughed. Now the humor of the situation struck him. Green's long study of the problem, his careful tabulation of information and secretly developed theories, were in the same class with Humphrey's suggested scientific solution, and Forrester's own investigations and conjectures. No wonder the Chief of Detectives had said, "Novices only hamper us."
"No," explained Forrester, in answer to Cahill's comment, "I hadn't exactly lost faith in the police. But I will say this: I have recently made some peculiar and interesting discoveries on my own account, and now you have practically knocked the foundation from under them with your very matter of fact solution of the mystery."
"We ain't solved it yet, remember," objected Cahill. "We've simply got a line on the right people, and in due time we'll get our hands on them. We may still have to ask you to help us. That's what we dropped in for this evening."