“The crooks!”
“Where?”
“At the radio station.”
“Why?”
“No one knows. A wire was cut. The private wire of the police. She was shot. No one was seen by anyone but Rosy.”
For one distressing moment they stood there silent. Then a voice came from the half darkness of the house door.
“The bullet!” that voice said. “Have they found the bullet?”
No one answered. They were too greatly astonished. Standing there in the doorway, before Johnny and Herman, looking like a ghost, dressed in a white bathrobe as he was, and with white hair flying, stood Newton Mills, the derelict detective.
“I say!” his voice rose shrilly insistent. “Have they saved the bullet?”
“Here!” said Herman McCarthey a trifle shakily, “let’s have a light.”