"I can handle the police," Broderick affirmed.
"That goes without saying; but we're up against something more than the police."
"If Tom Martin or Sam Apgar was the prosecutor now," wailed Broderick, "we'd have no trouble. They used to come to me regularly for instructions——"
Thorne rose slowly, paced the entire length of his long private office, treading noiselessly the thick, green carpet like a cat.
"But," he protested, "Martin isn't prosecutor, neither is Apgar. Murgatroyd is prosecutor, and——"
"Confound the man!" interrupted Broderick. "He's so straight that he leans over backwards. It was he who said six weeks ago that the Tweedale suicide was the last straw; that if another fracas occurred inside of Cradlebaugh's it would be good-bye to Cradlebaugh's. And now there's this blamed murder!"
Thorne looked Broderick in the eye for a moment and asked:—
"Do you know that this murder happened inside of Cradlebaugh's?"
"No; but I'm satisfied it did."
"Have you talked to Pemmican?"