“Of course; tossed it right up, three stories, and kept playing his infernal trombone with the other hand all the time. You ought to be carrying a hod!”
Nevertheless, the police hung tenaciously to the theory that the musician was involved, chiefly because they had nothing else to hang to. The explosion had been very localized, the room not generally wrecked; but the chair which seemed to be the center of disturbance, and from which the Honorable William Linder had risen just in time to save his life, was blown to pieces, and a portion of the floor beneath it was much shattered. The force of the explosion had been from above the floor downward; not up through the flooring. As to murderously inclined foes, Mr. Linder disclaimed knowledge of any. The notion that the trombonist had given a signal he derided as an “Old Sleuth pipe-dream.”
As time went on and “clues” came to nothing, the police had no greater concern than quietly to forget, according to custom, a problem beyond their limited powers. With the release of the German musician, who was found to be simple-minded to the verge of half-wittedness, public interest waned, and the case faded out of current print.
Average Jones, who was much occupied with a pair of blackmailers operating through faked photographs, about that time, had almost forgotten the Linder case, when, one day, a month after the explosion, Waldemar dropped in at the Astor Court offices. He found a changed Jones; much thinner and “finer” than when, eight weeks before, he had embarked on his new career, at the newspaper owner’s instance. The young man’s color was less pronounced, and his eyes, though alert and eager, showed rings under them.
“You have found the work interesting, I take it,” remarked the visitor.
“Ra—ather,” drawled Average Jones appreciatively.
“That was a good initial effort, running down the opium pill mail-order enterprise.”
“It was simple enough as soon as I saw the catchword in the ‘Wanted’ line.”
“Anything is easy to a man who sees,” returned the older man sententiously. “The open eye of the open mind—that has more to do with real detective work than all the deduction and induction and analysis ever devised.”
“It is the detective part that interests me most in the game, but I haven’t had much of it, yet. You haven’t run across any promising ads lately, have you?”