“Look up Tony Skeel—Dude Skeel—pronto, and bring him in as soon as you find him,” were his orders to Snitkin. “Get his address from the files, and take Burke and Emery with you. If he’s hopped it, send out a general alarm and have him picked up—some of the boys’ll have a line on him. Lock him up without booking him, see? . . . And, listen. Search his room for burglar tools: he probably won’t have any laying around, but I specially want a one-and-three-eighths-inch chisel with a nick in the blade. . . . I’ll be at Headquarters in half an hour.”
He hung up the receiver and rubbed his hands together.
“Now we’re sailing,” he rejoiced.
Vance had gone to the window, and stood staring down on the “Bridge of Sighs,” his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Slowly he turned, and fixed Heath with a contemplative eye.
“It simply won’t do, don’t y’ know,” he asserted. “Your friend, the Dude, may have ripped open that bally box, but his head isn’t the right shape for the rest of last evening’s performance.”
Heath was contemptuous.
“Not being a phrenologist, I’m going by the shape of his finger-prints.”
“A woeful error in the technic of criminal approach, sergente mio,” replied Vance dulcetly. “The question of culpability in this case isn’t so simple as you imagine. It’s deuced complicated. And this glass of fashion and mould of form whose portrait you’re carryin’ next to your heart has merely added to its intricacy.”
CHAPTER X.
A Forced Interview
(Tuesday, September 11; 8 p. m.)