The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-01-29

iStCI. lHe w no W no naU been terked almost out of Dundee's hand before he had lifted the heavy vol ume many inches from the shelf Coincidental with the disappear ance of a bit of white string which had been pinned to a thin page of the book was metallic chatter, followed swiftly by the faint sound of bump far below.
 Dropping Who's Who to the room door and raced down three flights of stairs. He brought up, panting, at the door of the base ment. It was not locked and in another minute he was standing before the big hot-air furnace. Above the fire box was n big metal | compartment-the reservoir for the heated air. And set into the reser- voir. to conduct the heat to the | regions above, were three huge pipes.
 With strength augmented by ex- l citement, Dundee tugged and tore at one of the pipes until he had dislodged it. Then. thrusting his | hand into the heat reservoir, he groped until he had found what he l had known must be tnere-Judge Marshalrs automatic, with the Maxim silencer screwed upon the end of its short nose.
 At last ne held in his hands the weapon with which Nita Leigh Selim and Dexter Sprague had been murdered.
 The ingeniousness of his own at tempted murder moved him to such profound admiration that he could scarcely feel resentment. If in the excitement of hunting for a prom ised clue, he had gone directly to the shelf. standing in front. of the hole in the register into which the end of the silencer had been jammed, so that it showed scarcely at all, even to eyes looking for it, he would now have been dead. And the gun and silencer, after hurtling down the big hOt-air pipe behind the register, could have lain hidden for months. even years. in the heat reservoir of the furnace.
 With the weapon carefully wrapped n his handkerchief, Dun- dee went up the stairs almost as swiftly as he had gone down them,
 meeting no one on the way to his rooms on the top floor.
 My most heartfelt thanks to you, Cap'n" he greeted his parrot. "If you had not squawked last night and so frightened the murderer that he made the vital error of covering your cage, l should never have annoyed you again with my Sherlock nominations on cases which do not interest you in the slightest"
 
 The parrot cackled hOarsely, but Dundee paid him scant attention. He picked up the now harmless Who's Who" and turned to page peared with the string which was still fastened to the hair-trigger hammer of the Colts .32. Very clever and very simple. The mur- derer of two people and the would | be murdered of a third had had only to unHcrew the metal covering of the register, wedge the end of the silencer into one of the many holes replace the screws. and paste inc end of the string to page of the book he had selected as the one most likely to appeal to a detective as clue source
 No. wait. He had mad to q, more. Dundee bent and examined the metal cover of the register. Tho circumference of the hole the mur- derer had chosen as the one which would be directly in front of Dun- dee's heart gleamed brightly. II had been necessary 10 enlarge il considerably. The murderer had left trace after all.
 But the book was open in Dun dee's hands and his eyes rapidly scanned page 40. And he found what the murderer had not ex- pected him to live to read, but which he had counted on as an ex- planation of the note which the po- lice would have puzzled over. if all had gone well with his scheme |.
 Gro be COntinucd)