THE loneliest place In the world is a great hotel. The greater the establishment, the more magnificent, the greater the sense of utter solitude to the stranger, if he be alone. He is an unknown unit in a maelstrom.

       Likewise your great hotel is the mecca of mysteries. It is the repository of strange secrets, of hidden tragedies — none the less tragical because they represent broken lives and not murdered bodies. I have often pictured the artificial gaiety of the modern hotel as a huge mask, and have found myself wondering at what would be revealed beneath if it should be stripped away. The secrets behind the mask, however, are seldom betrayed.

       On six different occasions I have served as special house defective of great hotels of the East and West. I have been in the position of observing both behind the scenes — and before, like the privileged inspector at the theater, who sees the painted scene on the stage, and with almost the same glance the concealed factors which make that scene.

       And as a result of my experience, I do not wonder why nearly every fresh newspaper gives us details of another hotel crime. My wonder is that there are not more. There is no more effective concealment for a criminal than a crowd, particularly a crowd that prides itself on taking no notice of its neighbor's affairs.

       In the prosperous hotel register may appear a hundred new names daily. Under its roof, five hundred guests may sleep, few knowing or caring to know the occupants of the next room. In the span of twenty-four hours, half of its guests may be bowed out by the liveried porters, to be replaced by more. They have gone — where? The world swallows them. Most of them may never have occasion to visit the hotel again. Every condition of your great hostelry lends itself to the man who wishes to vanish, who has that to do which he wishes to be hidden.

       All of which brings me to that early October evening whose gray shadows showed us the murdered body of Mrs. Anna Peck. She had been shot to death while her three hundred fellow guests of the Imperial were pursuing their various programs of pleasure or gain, oblivious of the tragedy in their midst.

       I chronicle the case for two reasons. First because of the character of its setting, which it seems to me has never been given its proper place in criminology. Secondly, because of the illustration it again gives us of the fallacy of circumstantial evidence. Had it not been for certain seemingly unimportant facts, each trivial in itself, young Morton Peck might have — but perhaps I had better present the chronology of the case in its logical sequence.

       My presence at the hotel was purely a matter of accident. The year before I had served on its detective staff during a large national convention. It was during his time that I had rendered the management a slight service for which it pleased to be grateful the unmasking of the fake robbery of the brewery salesman, Swartz, of Cincinnati. Since then the hotel had insisted that I make it my headquarters whenever in the city, a flourishing manufacturing center of one of our prominent Mid-western States.

 
I HAD arrived somewhat early in the afternoon and had returned for dinner with a half formed intention of an evening at the theater when Benson, the house detective, a little short, sparse-haired man, with a face as seemingly innocent as that of a child motioned me over to his side in a corner of the rotunda. With him was the day clerk, who had evidently just been preparing to leave his post for the night.

       Benson lowered his voice. "You are just in time! I am afraid we have stumbled on something queer, maybe something worse."

       The day clerk looked glum. He was a young man whose scheme of life seemed to put more stress upon an uninterrupted evening than the suspicion of a mystery. I could fancy that he was mentally fuming because the thing hadn't happened a half hour later when he was safe away. Benson led the way unostentatiously to the elevator.

       "The housekeeper," he explained as he touched the button "reports a revolver shot in 419. The door is locked and no answer. The key is missing from the office. The room is that of Mr. and Mrs. Morton Peck who registered this noon from Indianapolis."

       There was no time for more. The gate of the elevator clanged open and we entered the car. In a silent trio, we paused at a door, midway down the right central corridor of the fourth floor. Benson drew a skeleton key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. With a shrug he stepped briskly into the room ahead of us, and then paused with a quick breath. Over his shoulder, we could see on the floor the body of a young woman evidently in her middle-twenties with a thread of blood winding down from a bullet wound in her forehead. She was obviously quite dead. At her elbow was a thirty-two caliber revolver.

       As Benson kneeled on the carpet and went through the formality of examining her heart for life which he knew did not exist, we could see that the powder marks of the wound had scorched her hear and eyebrows. Evidently the revolver had been held very near the victim in the moment of its discharge.

       "Suicide?" asked the day clerk in a tone which he tried to make professionally bored. Benson rose and stepped to the telephone to summon the house physician.

       "If it was a man, I should say yes! But a woman, that is the average woman, does not end her life with a revolver. She turns on the gas or buys a ten-cent vial of drug-store poison."

       With a belated thought, the clerk closed the door.

       "Why is it," he asked sapiently, "that a suicide always selects either the river or a hotel?"

       I stooped and picked up the revolver. It was a common and inconspicuous variety, the kind purchased at any hardware store for three or four dollars. There were no distinguishing marks on it. This might have been the first occasion for its use. Five of its six chambers were still loaded.

       A discreet knock sounded at the door. Benson opened it to admit Dr. Tillinghast, the physician in charge of the hotel's medical practice. The doctor made a crispy professional examination and arose with a frown.

       "I should say she had been dead twenty minutes, certainly not over thirty. How did it happen?"

 
BENSON glanced at the revolver I handed Him.

       "The housekeeper heard the shot, found there was no answer when she called, and hunted me up. There were a few minutes' delay in locating me. From what you say, the bullet must have been instantly fatal."

       The doctor again leaned over the body.

       "You found the door locked?"

       Benson nodded. "You place it as — suicide?"

       Dr. Tillinghast frowned.

       "A good-looking woman, Benson, very good looking – blonde, blue eyes, young. I have known women to shoot themselves, but not that kind. Was she registered alone?"

       "Her husband was with her."

       "Where is he now?"

       "Benson turned to the clerk. "Suppose you find out, Joyce, and send the housekeeper up here."

       I was appraising the details of the room. Although it had been occupied only a few hours, there were abundant signs of its tenants presence. The dresser contained a woman's toilet Articles, all of a quiet silver design, obviously selected by a refined taste. Several articles of feminine wearing apparel were scattered over the chairs, of a well-chosen, high-grade material. Two black leather bags and a suit case were tossed into a corner. On the writing table stood a black morocco-framed photograph of a rather dissipated looking young man, with a small close-clipped moustache. Benson turned it over. On the back was the inscription, "To Morton with all love — Annie."

       "I guess this is the husband," he said, holding it up. "Probably Joyce can identify it. Here he is now."

       The clerk stepped in with the housekeeper a middle-aged woman with grayish hair, who, shrank back at the evidence of the tragedy.

       "The man seems to have gone, Benson," reported Joyce. "One of the bell boys recalled seeing him in the lobby around the middle of the afternoon. That is as far us we can trace him. The boy says Peck had his overcoat on."

 
BENSON extended the photograph and Joyce nodded.

       "That is the chap. I assigned him the room myself."

       "And now Mrs. Rolands," continued the detective, turning to the housekeeper, "give me your story."

       "There isn't much to tell, sir. I heard the shot, as I told you, from the other hall; Bennie Norris, the elevator boy, heard it, too. He was in the hall when I got here. I knocked at the door but there was no response, and Bennie told me I had better get you. That is all there is to it. And to think that she was lying in here dead all the time!" she said tragically.

       Benson shrugged. He was used to tragedy.

       "Did you see either Mr. Peck or his wife during the day?"

       "No, sir, but Jane, the second maid on this floor, did. She says that —–"

       "Well, let Jane give her own story," interrupted Benson. "Tell her to come up." He glanced at Joyce. "Has the news leaked yet?"

       The clerk shook his head.

       "Then see that it doesn't. And if Peck appears in the lobby before I get down tell him I want to talk to him at once. But don't let him know, under any circumstances, what's up."

       Joyce nodded and rather gloomily moved toward the door. His vision of an evening off had effectually disappeared.

       "And Joyce," Benson called after him, "'phone Ferguson at Headquarters to drop around. But mind, no inkling of what has happened. Ferguson plays to the newspaper gallery too strong to keep it quiet three minutes!"

 
JANE, the maid, stepped in as the clerk opened the door. The housekeeper had rather prepared her for the situation, but she stared at us with terror-widened eyes, evidently on the verge of hysterics. Benson stepped between her and the sight of the body.

       "I understand my girl that you saw Mrs. Peck and her husband this afternoon?"

       "Oh yes sir — saw them, and heard them. They was a quarreling dreadful, sir!"

       We all leaned forward. Insensibly the tension in the room had deepened.

       "Quarreling, did you say?" repeated Benson.

       "Yes, sir. They stopped when I came in. Mrs. Peck had been crying and he was pacing up and down, smoking a cigarette. I heard them at it again when I passed in the hall about ten minutes later."

       "And did you hear what they were saying?"

       "I couldn't help it, sir. It was about money matters. Mrs. Peck was objecting to something, and he was working himself into a powerful rage. Said, 'So if it has come to a point where you can't trust me, Annie —' That was all I heard distinct. When I came back, he was waiting for the elevator, with his hat and coat.

       Benson held out the revolver.

       "Did you see this in the room when you were here?"

       "No, sir." She drew back with a shudder.

       Benson pursed his lips.

       "That will do, Jane." He glanced at me. At the dresser I was fingering a silver mesh bag and a jewel case.

       "Found anything?" he asked.

       "Nothing," I answered. "That is the strange part of it." I extended the bag and the jewel case. Both were empty.

       Benson whistled as he met my eyes.

       "By George!" he muttered. His gaze narrowed again on the figure on the floor.

       "Exhibit No. 1 in discount of the suicide theory!" commented Dr. Tillinghast drily.

       Benson aroused himself.

       "I think," he said thoughtfully, "that our first step is to communicate with the absent Mr. Peck!"

       "At least, he should be able to tell us whether or not robbery has been committed!" I answered. With a sudden thought, I turned back as we reached the door and stepped again to the dresser.

       "What was it?" asked Benson.

       "I was wondering what became of the room key. I guess Mr. Peck must have taken it with him"

       I stepped toward the door at the end of the dresser. A torn corner of what I first judged to be a page of a newspaper had fallen to the carpet. But it was not a newspaper.

       "Someone must have had a peculiar taste in literature," I said. "This seems to have been torn from a nickel detective story!"

       Mechanically I thrust it into my bag. And yet there are those who say that the little things have no importance in life — or crime!

       The trend of Benson's next steps of investigation was at once plain. Eight members of the Imperial's staff were interrogated in crisp, incisive fashion and in each in turn shown the photograph of Morton Peck.

       "Have you noticed this man today?" Benson began. In three cases he was met by a decided negative, in two cases by a quick affirmative.

       "Have you seen him late this afternoon or this evening?" he continued.

 
TO this question, there was no doubt of the negative response. The absent Mr. Peck had been seen by no one since a comparatively early hour of the afternoon. Benson's effort to establish a hint of the man's return to the hotel since the period of his quarrel with the murdered woman met a stone wall. Porters, bell boys, elevator attendants, all shook their heads. It was easy enough to trace the vanished husband to the street. But here the trail ended. Benson gave it up with a frown.

       And yet we both knew that the man might have been only five minutes ahead of us — that in the throng of the Imperial's guests he could have come back to his room and gone again a half dozen times with no one the wiser, particularly if he had made use of the stairs instead of the elevator. Nowhere is a man's identity more quickly or more completely lost than in a great hotel.

       The elevator attendants had been detained a half an hour over the usual closing time of their shifts in order to permit Benson's immediate probe — all except Bennie Norris who had been with the housekeeper at the time of the first intimation of the tragedy. Norris had wrenched his wrist, and the captain of the bell squad, who also had charge of the elevators, had excused hint for the night while we were still engaged in our first examination of 419.

 
BEFORE Benson had completed his questioning of the servants Ferguson of Headquarters arrived and shortly after him the coroner, with the first detachment of reporters — the terror of a conservative hotel, shrinking at the notoriety of screaming head-lines.

       I seized my opportunity for my belated dinner. When I emerged from the dining-room at eight-thirty, Benson was putting in a long distance call for the Indianapolis chief of police. The missing Mr. Peck had not yet returned, and an ominous frown was beginning to trace itself across Benson's face.

       "I am going to find out what the Hoosier sleuths have to tell us," he declared. "The couple are registered from Indianapolis. If that is their correct address, they must be known there."

       He turned as a newsboy with a bundle of still wet papers darted across the lobby.

       "There's the first 'extra' of the affair! If Peck is anywhere in the business part of the town, that ought to bring him back in a hurry!"

       But it did not. Two hours passed. And then a telegram from Indianapolis brought us our first direct evidence.

       "Morton Peck is a broker here. Married six months ago to Anne Fay, daughter of Dr. Arden Fay, local physician. Peck left with his wife last night on what she told her parents was to be a short business trip. She was fairly well off through a legacy from an aunt. In business circles Peck was reported to be in financial difficulties. Wife's family objected to marriage. They leave tonight to make identification. Wire further instructions."

 
BENSON folded the message with a frown. And then on a telegraph blank wrote:

       "Ascertain if possible if Mrs. Peck made a will in favor of husband."

       He lighted a cigar.

       "And in the meantime," he continued, "Headquarters has sent out a general alarm. If Mr. Peck is in town we should have him by morning. Looks like a routine case after all, doesn't it?"

       "Looks like it!" I admitted, as I told him good night.

       The colored elevator attendant grinned as he opened the door for me.

       "I hope that Bennie Norris didn't hurt himself badly," I said.

       "Ah reckon he'll be back in the morning, ma'am!"

       I stepped toward the leather seat at the rear of the car.

       "Entertaining yourself between trips?" I laughed as I picked up a lurid nickel novel.

       "Dat am not my property, ma'am. Dat belongs to Bennie Norris."

       "Bennie Norris!" I repeated. And found myself turning over its leaves, hardly grasping the thought behind the impulse. I came to myself to realize that we had reached my floor, and that the colored attendant was staring at me.

       "Good night," I said tossing the book back.

       Of course I found no torn leaves; I shook myself rather impatiently. Was I trying to connect the elevator boy with the murder in 419?

       The morning newspapers told the last chapter in the tragedy with — a wealth of black head-lines, Morton Peck had been arrested at the Union Station with a ticket for Chicago. His appearance was that of a man on the verge of a nervous collapse. He had been taken to Headquarters, flushed, disheveled, and stammering incoherently.

       The newspapers accepted his story with only thinly veiled contempt. According to his statement, he had left his wife shortly before three o'clock in the afternoon after a violent quarrel, which he frankly admitted had to do with finances. Of his movements after that hour he could give no connected description. Racked by the thought of business troubles, and with a vague idea, as he expressed it of bringing his wife to his terms by worry over his continued absence, he had taken a long walk to the outskirts of the city returning in the evening to see the announcement of the tragedy in the early extras

 
THE statement that he was missing, and the inference caused by his absence had thrown him into a panic. Veering sharply away from the hotel, he had again paced the streets, finally making up his mind to flee.

       Coupled with the story was a dispatch from Indianapolis that Mrs. Peck had made a recent will in his favor by which he inherited fifty thousand dollars. It was also stated that she cashed a good-sized check just before her departure, and her relatives declared that she had taken with her jewels worth at least two thousand dollars. When searched, only a hundred dollars in medium-sized bills was found on the prisoner's person. It was assumed that he had disposed of the remainder of his wife's funds before his arrest.

       I found Benson in the dining-room when I descended to breakfast. He welcomed me with a grin.

       "Well, we've got our man!"

       "I see you have," I replied as I took a chair at his table.

       "Doesn't even attempt an alibi! But I suppose he'll get a shrewd lawyer who will remedy that fast enough!" Benson stirred his coffee thoughtfully. "For my part, I think the best thing to do now is to give him the third degree before an attorney has a chance to brace him up. Between you and me, that is what they should have done last night."

       Benson pushed back his chair .

       "I'm going up to Headquarters. I imagine the afternoon papers will give us the confession!"

       I turned to my grape-fruit. Certainly there was no imagination in Benson's make-up!

       Perhaps at this point an explanatory paragraph of my mental appraisal of the case should be given. As I look back now I am conscious that my viewpoint up to this period coincided with that of Benson's. This is not a detective romance. I do not possess the brilliant deductive facilities attributed to the detective of fiction. I am frank to confess that my mental processes deal with the obvious evidence at hand rather than with the fascinating theorizings which lend the popular interest to the modern mystery story. And the evidence which he had gathered in the crime of 419 admitted of but one logical conclusion in keeping with the facts — to date. This was the guilt of Morton Peck. He had killed his wife, perhaps in a fit of rage, perhaps in the lust of greed. More than likely both motives had entered into the crime. He had committed the deed and fled.

       There was only one weak link in the chain. Not that we lacked direct evidence of his presence on the scene at the time of the tragedy — but rather this fact plus the failure of the prisoner to take advantage of its possibilities of defense. The natural course of a guilty man would have been to attempt at once an alibi. Peck had not even suggested to find proof of his whereabouts. His whole attitude had been what you would naturally except from a vacillating character, dazed by unexpected circumstances. It was not that of a criminal seeking to find a defense. From a theoretical angle, true, but from a practical angle, I had to admit that the argument of the case supported the matter-of-fact police point of view. Your American jury wants logic — not imagination.

       The waiter who served my wants coughed discreetly.

       "Beg pardon, ma'am, but Jane the chambermaid would like to see you upstairs when you are quite finished."

       "Jane?" I said in surprise, recalling the girl we had interrogated the night before. "Very well. I'll see her now."

       I found the maid in a room at the end of the corridor that contained the chamber of the tragedy. The door of the room of death was locked by police orders pending the arrival of the victim's parents. Only the undertaker had been admitted. It was a significant illustration of the aloofness of the average hotel patron toward a subject which does not touch his own immediate interests that not even the occupants of the adjoining rooms had asked to have their apartments changed!

 
JANE laid down her broom and closed the door. From her apron pocket she drew a copy of one of the morning newspapers and pointed to the account of Peck's arrest.

       "Well, what is it?" I asked impatiently as she hesitated.

       "They have made a mistake, ma'am!"

       "A mistake! What do you mean?"

       "Mr. Peck did not do the murder! He was not in the room after three o'clock. From three until seven I was working in 401 at the end of the corridor. The housekeeper has been using that as a sewing room lately, and I have been helping her. The door was open and Mr. Peck could not have gone by without my seeing him. I left ten minutes before the shot was heard but if he had come back after I was gone Mrs. Rolands, the housekeeper, would have been certain to have seen him. She was in the other corridor but she was in plain view of the lower end of the hall."

       "Perhaps he came in from the other side?" I suggested.

       "He couldn't! The corridors on this end of the building give onto a blank wall. There is only one way into or out of them. Mr. Peck would have had to pass one of us."

 
I SHOOK my head dubiously, unwilling that she should sense the importance of her announcement. If her testimony was correct, the case of the police was riddled! Simultaneously with the realization came the second tingle of the girl's evidence. If there was a negative side to it there was also a positive side. If Peck was not in the corridor at the time of the murder, she or the housekeeper must know if there had been anyone else in the hall at the fateful hour! I put the question with an appearance of indifference.

       Jane frowned.

       "I know what you mean, ma'am. I was asking myself that very question. But there was no other person in this part of the floor from a half an hour before the murder until you and Mr. Benson and Mr. Joyce came up!"

       I stirred in earnest this time.

       The girl shook her head.

       "But it's the truth ma'am ! I'd take my oath on it. You see I got back just before the house-keeper went downstairs for Mr. Joyce, and I stayed here until she came up. There wasn't a soul in the hall except ourselves and Bennie Norris, of course. He is the elevator boy."

       "Bennie Norris?" I said steadily. "And just when was he here?"

       "Oh, he was outside the room when Mrs. Rolands got there. The porter has asked him to bring up a package that had come from one of the stores for 417. Bennie was just going back, he says, when he heard the shot."

       "Then there was some one in 417 at the time?"

       "Oh, no, Bennie had to ask Mrs. Rolands for her pass keys to get in."

       "Those keys would unlock any door in the corridor?"

       "Of course."

       I stepped back into the hall. In sober second thought, the idea seemed absurd. The elevator boy the murderer of Anna Peck! I could fancy Benson's guffaw at that hint. . . And yet if we were to accept the testimony of the hotel employes, which punctured the case against Morton Peck, the same evidence led just as conclusively to young Norris. He was the only person in the neighborhood of the crime at the time of its commission, the only person who possessed the opportunity for the deed. But what possible motive could be attributed to the untutored, undeveloped elevator boy? If robbery were the impetus for the crime how could we connect it with such a humble atom in the great hotel as Bennie Norris?

 
I PRESSED the button for a decending car, uncomfortably aware that I was in something of a mental quagmire. The middle car responded to my call and a red-haired, freckled youngster of perhaps seventeen, with his right wrist in a sling opened the door for me. I surveyed him curiously. Bennie Norris was scarcely the conventional type of a murderer! He was a mere boy, and a not overly bright-looking boy at that.

       And yet some of the most desperate crimes of modern criminology have been the work of youngsters not out of their middle teens. Witness the case of the car barn bandits in Chicago. In one year, the police records of that city have shown a dozen murders by boys not yet sixteen, in several instances not more than twelve years of age. Two-thirds of the inmates of American penitentiaries are under twenty-five and nearly half not yet of voting age!

       "I was talking tn Jane about the Peck case, Bennie," I said, as I stepped into the car.

       "Were you, ma'am?" he responded stolidly.

       I swerved the subject.

       "Too bad about your accident. It happened shortly after the murder, didn't it? Did Dr. Tillinghast dress your hand?"

       "No, ma'am. He was busy."

       The ear gave a wrench as it came to a stop, sufficient to unsetlle my balance. With a little gasp, I fell over against the boy, and we both sprawled against the door. He recovered himself on the instant, and I readjusted my hat.

       "I am afraid my carelessness must have hurt you," I said. "Take this." And I slipped a coin into his fingers. If there had been a suspicion in his mind that there was a purpose in my awkwardness, I think my tip allayed it.

       The chain against Bonnie Norris had been increased by another link. In the shock of my fall against him, it was not his uninjured left hand, but his bandaged right hand that had instinctively come to his assistance! And the freedom of its movement showed that the story of a sprained wrist was a fabrication.

 
FROM the hotel, I went at once to Police Headquarters, where I knew I would find Benson. It was a rather disgruntled Benson that greeted me. Peck had not yet confessed. In spite of the most rigorous gruellings of the third degree, in spite of the most ingenious traps set to catch him off his guard, he had not varied from his first story by a hair's breadth.

       "Can I see the prisoner?" I asked. "I'll take you down myself," offered Benson. "Oh, he'll talk fast enough," he explained as we descended the stairs to the tiers of cells. "He hasn't reached the sullen stage yet. But he doesn't say anything new. And the fool doesn't seem to have thought of an alibi!"

       I grinned rather maliciously, but kept my silence as I pictured Benson's face when he should discover that an alibi had already been supplied.

       Morton Peck was plainly on the thin edge of hysterics. He stared at us through a pair of blood-shot eyes, and we could see that his hands were clenched.

       "If you have come to torture me any more," he began, "I'll tell you now —"

       "We haven't come to torture you," I rejoined. The man did not present a preposessing picture — even if he were innocent! "I have come to ask you a question which may help your case. Did any person in the hotel except yourself know of the money and valuables that Mrs. Peck carried?"

       "Of course not. She was not a woman to make a parade of those things. And from the time we went up to our room, she never left it."

       "You are quite sure?" I persisted earnestly.

       "Certain! Mrs. Peck carried her money in a hand-bag. It was a rather large sum, seven or eight hundred dollars, and I wanted her to leave most of it in the office safe, but she refused. I remember that while going up in the elevator she dropped her bag and when the boy picked it up for her I told her again she ought to let me take it down to the safe."

       "He was a red-haired boy with freckles?" I asked eagerly.

       Peck nodded.

       "What of it?"

       "I can tell you more in an hour!" I said as I drew Benson aside.

       "Can you get the home address of Bennie Norris, the elevator boy, by telephone?" I demanded.

       "I suppose so. Why?"

       "I'll explain on the way! Hurry!"

 
WE stopped our taxicab on the corner below the unpretentious Norris cottage, which we located in the mill district of the city. Later we found that Bennie's father was employed in an iron foundry. Benson's face was a study in mingled emotions. I doubt if from the first he had allowed himself a doubt of Peck's guilt.

       A woman with ail the appearance of German birth opened the door at our knock. Benson introduced himself crisply as a detective from the hotel and stated bluntly that it was necessary for him to search young Norris' room without delay. The woman stared at us in a stupor of utter bewilderment and in a daze led us back to a small, sparsely furnished chamber in the rear.

       Benson turned to an overhauling of the apartment with swift hands. I will give him credit for as much zealousness on the new trail as he had displayed on the old one. At the end of a quarter of an hour, he stared across at me blankly.

       Absolutely nothing had rewarded our search.

       With a shrug, Benson returned a stack of paper-bound books and nickel novels to a cheap stand in the center of the room. I glanced at the gaily decorated covers with a vague remembrance stirring in the back of my mind. Quite mechanically I crossed the floor and turned the leaves.

       In the second dog-eared pamphlet a torn page stared at me. With a quick breath I reached in my bag and produced the fragment of lurid literature that I had found in 419 the night before. It was not until I saw that they fitted perfectly that I realized that I was trembling! . . . .

       No extended third degree was necessary to produce the confession from Bennie Norris.

       Announcing that he intended to obtain short-hand statements of the tragedy, Benson established himself in 421, after making sure that the connecting door between the apartment and the chamber of death had been unlocked. The elevator boy was the third summoned on the list. In the midst of his story, Benson suddenly stepped back and threw open the door of 419.

       "I want you to identify the body, Norris."

       Instantly the boy's face paled. Affecting not to notice his agitation, I caught his arm and drew him into the adjoining room. Benson drew the cover from the face of the sheeted form on the bed.

       "Where did you buy the gun you killed her with, Bennie?" he asked.

       The lad's story, after all, contained nothing startling. Fired by the thrilling exploits of the impossible characters of cheap fiction, he had longed to emulate their romantic careers, and share not only in their adventures but the golden wealth which always rewarded them. He had purchased a revolver with his savings. On the afternoon of the Pecks' arrival at the Imperial, the husband's chance remark to his wife, cautioning her to deposit her bag in the hotel safe, gave the youth an idea thoroughly in keeping with the exploits of which he had dreamed.

 
LATER we found that Bennie was under the impression that both of the couple had left their room when he visited it. His errand to 417 and the possession of the housekeeper's pass-keys seemed to thrust an opportunity into his grasp. He obtained an easy entrance, saw the coveted bag on the dresser, and had it in his hand when Mrs. Peck emerged from the bath-room. . . . It was an irony of fate that, as he sprang back, one of the prized detective novels in his pocket caught on the edge of the dresser, and in his haste to escape a page was torn asunder. He had not even noticed the fact when we confronted him with our evidence.

       Peck, of course, was at once released. Bennie Norris, after a trial in which strenuous efforts were made to have him sent to a reformatory was committed to the penitentiary. The booty of 419 was found buried in the Norris back yard after the most approved fashion of the nickel novel hero. The subterfuge of a sprained wrist had given the boy the opportunity for the concealment.

[THE END.]

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