The Diamond Bullet Murder Case
A Gillian Hazeltine Courtroom Mystery
By
George F. Worts
A Deerstalker Classic – Selected and Introduced by Jean Marie Stine
Copyright © 1933 – reprinted by arrangement with an agent for the author's estate.
A Renaissance E Books publication
ISBN 1-929670-91-5
All rights reserved
Special Contents Copyright © 2001 by Jean Marie Stine
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
For information contact:
Renaissance E Books
P. O. Box 494
Clemmons, NC 27012-0494
USA

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CAUTION – MAY CONTAIN OFFENSIVE MATERIAL:  This book is presented for the entertainment of contemporary readers.  The text is reproduced as originally published and written.  It contains material that may be offensive to some.  Like all books, it reflects the cultural, racial and gender assumptions of its time.  Thus, while it can be read for entertainment, it can also be read as cultural text and a window on the worldview of a vanished era.  The editors are convinced that the author was not personally bigoted and did not intend disrespect to any group or ideology.  Such views do not in any represent the views or beliefs of the current editors or publisher.

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Mystery Woman
Hot Water
The Whited Sepulcher
The Diamond Bullet
The Spotlight
In the Steamroller's Path
Mysterious Stranger
Second Murder
The $150,000 Bet
Opening Shot
Outside the Law
Political Warfare
Life on Trial
Trickery!
The X-Ray
Nettie Jarvis' Bogy Man

The Gillian Hazeltine Court Room Mysteries

INTRODUCTION

The Diamond Bullet Murder Case is the first of a series of electronic editions of the Gillian Hazeltine courtroom murder mysteries which Deerstalker Classics is proud to make available for the first time in nearly seventy years.  Although Gillian Hazeltine was the most popular lawyer-sleuth of his time, he is practically unknown today.  That's in part because his adventures, while wildly successful in magazine form, were for some reason only published in book form by an obscure Canadian company.  As a result, Gillian Hazeltine became increasingly forgotten over the years.
However, while forgotten, the Gillian Hazeltine courtroom mysteries were not without influence.  Indirectly they are responsible for providing hundreds of millions of mystery fans with countless hours of pleasure through the existence of one of the most successful book, motion picture and television series of all time.  For George F. Worts lawyer-sleuth inspired Earl Stanley Gardner to create the most famous fictional detective after Sherlock Holmes, crime-solving defense attorney Perry Mason.
It came about this way.  Hazeltine appeared frequently in magazines that Gardner, a struggling young writer, was just beginning to crack.  Gardner, an attorney himself, couldn't help noticing the high praise readers heaped on Worts' character.  Seeking the formula for his own literary success, Gardner had already created more half a dozen detective heroes–including Lester Leith, Gramp Wiggins, and Sidney Zoom–but not had really clicked with the public.
As an attorney, Gardner occasionally caught errors of law and procedure in the Gillian Hazeltine stories that had slipped past Worts (a former journalist who had to rely on legal friends for pointers).  Gardner became convinced he could devise plots just as ingenuous the Hazeltine stories, but truer to courtroom procedure and with significantly fewer legal boners.  If there was room for one crusading defense attorney in mystery fiction, Gardner reasoned, there ought to be room for another, especially one imbued with the kind of authentic courtroom background his own legal experience could provide.
Of course Gardner couldn't have his lead character be an exact copy of Gillian Hazeltine, so he made a few changes.  Where Gillian is married, Mason is single.  Where Gilligan's secretary is older, plain and sharp-tongued, Mason's secretary is young, comely, with a kind word for everyone.  Where Hazeltine relies on a loyal bootlegger cum gang leader (who owes the attorney his freedom) for counsel and legwork on difficult cases, Mason relies on a loyal private detective.  Where Gillian frequently finds himself fighting corrupt district attorneys determined to railroad innocent defendants into the electric chair for personal, financial or political gain, the district attorneys Mason finds himself up against are indefatigably honest, merely mistaken in their belief that his innocent clients are guilty.
Despite these cosmetics, however, fans of the Mason books are guaranteed to experience a strong case of deja vu while reading the Gillian Hazeltine mysteries.  The exchanges between Gillian and District Attorney Elton Dawbridge, who accuses him of "bribing juries," "buying judges" and "courtroom trickery" will have a familiar ring.  So will the moment before the trial when his secretary points out that if Gillian lets his client take the stand his case is lost, then asks, "What are you going to do?" and Gillian replies, "That's what I'm working on now!"  Even those fiery courtroom cross-examinations that unmask the real villain just in the nick-of-time were all hallmarks of Worts' Gillian Hazeltine stories first.
The Diamond Bullet Murder Case showcases Gillian at the height of his powers, up against crooked politicians, while defending a client who is indisputably guilty of murder.  As the magazine's editors described this story on its original publication: "Never had Gillian Hazeltine defended a man he knew was guilty – and much as the strangeness and pathos of this murder case tugged at his mind and his heartstrings, he was determined to keep out of it.  Doomed to be convicted by the reluctant testimony of the orphan girl who loves him, a young farmer is being sacrificed to gangster's political ambitions – nor does the great criminal attorney see any scheme to save him.  Then the only defense witnesses is murdered…" It's a case even Perry Mason couldn't win – can Gillian?
Gillian' creator, George F. Worts was a successful writer for the pulps, the slicks and the movies in the 1920s and 1930s.  A graduate of Columbia University, he began writing seriously after a tour duty as a ships' radio officer on a South American run and later saw service in World War I.  By 1935, the date of the final Gillian Hazeltine novel, the justly celebrated The "Mr. Hazeltine – Murderer" Murder Case (in which the lawyer-sleuth himself is cunningly framed by an old political foe), Worts was a high paid movie scenarist, far too busy to devote further attention to his attorney-detective character.  (Coincidentally, the first Perry Mason book, The case of the Velvet Claws was published the following year,)
In addition to Gillian Hazeltine, Worts was the creator of two other series that were destined to prove equally popular with readers of the time.  One, set in China featured Peter the Brazen, a wireless (radio) operator for a large steamship, and Susan O'Gilvie, a plucky heiress who plunges herself and Peter into one adventure after another until their inevitable nuptials in the penultimate tale.  The second series set in the South Seas chronicled the exploits of two-fisted Irish schooner captain, Singapore Sammy, whose pugnacious temperament led him into deadlier dangers than any Susan O'Gilvie ever embroiled Peter the Brazen in.  
A historical note: Contemporary readers may find it difficult to credit that a district attorney, judge and other local officials would be involved with the local mob and in graft, stealing money literally out of the mouths of the children at the county orphanage.  But, sadly, such were the sober facts of much small town life in the early years of the 1900s.  In those days, when states' rights and local option were more than by-words, they were inflexible legal standards–and the right of appeal to the Supreme Court applied only to federal cases – towns, counties and states were all but independent political fiefdoms, whose citizens had no recourse when their rights were violated or their local officials corrupt.  A mayor could award the contract for the new high school to his brother-in-law, who would line both their pockets with the cash skimmed by using substandard materials that leaked and cracked at the first rain.  The offspring of a town's ruling class could break any law with impunity, even murder; while any innocent foreigner or vagrant could be railroaded into jail for the crime without the right of appeal.  Lynchings were common, and Southern states were allowed to determine who could and couldn't vote within their borders – disenfranchising citizens of African descent.  
All this began to change in 1906 with the Ed Johnson case.  Johnson, a black man, was wrongly sentenced to death in Tennessee by a jury of inflamed white males, for the rape of a white woman, despite overwhelming evidence he was many miles away at the time.  U. S.  Supreme Court Justice John Marshall intervened, ruling that the federal government has a mandated right to intervene that when constitutionally guaranteed rights are violated at the state or local level.  (The ending of this story is sad, for doubting the intentions of the local police chief, the Supreme Court issued an injunction holding him personally responsible for Johnson while appeals were considered.  These concerns turned out to be only too well founded.  Knowing a lynch mob was gathering, the police chief gave all his deputies the night off and absented himself from the jail so the mob could storm it and exercise their right to local option with hemp in the time-tested traditional manner.)  The result has been called "one hundred years of federalism" and relief for U. S. citizens from uncontested oppression by their local officials.  
To tilt lances with the windmills of local prejudices and entrenched interests, America had evolved a series of the greatest defense attorneys ever seen.  Among them, Clarence Darrow, Earl Rogers, and Samuel Liebowitz.  These men were involved in some landmark trials, fighting for unpopular figures and causes who were otherwise likely to receive anything but a fair trial and, at that, one prosecuted with the full power of the local aristocracy and bureaucracy behind it.  The most notable of these is undoubtedly the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, but not to be forgotten are the Scottsboro Boys Trial, the Sweet Trial and the Bill Haywood Trial.  The result of their efforts according to constitutional law scholar Doug Linder, Professor of Law at University of Missouri, was that "years of government abuse of process and denials of liberties spilled into the national headlines."  (Remarks that should provide a sufficient point-of-entry for those interested in learning more about theses fascinating populist heroes, their accomplishments and the legal conditions of the times.)
According to Worts, Hazeltine was inspired by these men and the courtroom wizardry that allowed them to win "not guilty" verdicts in cases where the cards were so heavily stacked against their clients that other attorneys considered them unwinable.  Abraham Lincoln, himself an attorney for the defense on many an occasion, is another obvious source.  Throughout the series, Worts emphasizes Lincolnesque characteristics in Hazeltine's attitudes and demeanor.  For instance, Gillian sees himself as awkward and ill-favored – his hands and elbows too big, his features coarse and unprepossessing – feeling he shows up poorly in contrast to the looks and polish of his opponents.  The very way Lincoln is said to have seen himself.  And, although Worts never explicitly identifies the middle-American state where his character lives, he underscores the connection each time he describes Gillian as staring down from his offices at the "Sangamo" river.  (There, but for one letter, as everyone familiar with Honest Abe's life knows, goes Lincoln.)
(Aficionados of L. Frank Baum's Oz books will be interested to learn that one of their greatest heroes, the supreme delineator of things Ozzy, John R.  Neil provided three charming illustrations for the U.S.  serial publication of The Diamond Bullet Murder Case.  To see these, and other illustrations from some of the Gillian Hazeltine stories, read a complete list of the Hazeltine stories, and learn more about author George F.  Worts, visit: URL: http://www.hometown.aol.com/pulplady/GILLIAN.html/) 

Jean Marie Stine
March 23, 2001

Watch for the next Deerstalker Gillian Hazeltine release, The Gold Coffin Murder Case, and be sure to visit the Deerstalker Classics Home Page for free stories, articles, interviews, movie stills, rare book and magazine covers, and news of our forthcoming e-books.  URL: http://www.hometown.aol.com/pulplady/DEERSTALKER.html/ 

CHAPTER 1 
THE MYSTERY WOMAN

THE whiteness of the girl's face was so startling that Gillian Hazeltine almost dropped his newspaper.  The express elevator was slowing for the floor where his law offices were located.  The girl's eyes, as black as two spots of night, were staring at him as if some shutter behind them had been tripped, letting him see her naked, terrified soul.
Gillian thought she was ill, perhaps on the verge of fainting.  Then he recognized her as the girl who had been following him.  It had been going on for days.  He had first seen her, in his waiting room; white and tense and terrified, sitting stiffly in a chair with her hands clasped and pressed between her knees in a fold of her dress.
It was a cheap blue dress and showed signs of wear.  Her small black, hat looked cheap.  So did her shoes.  And Gillian had noticed that her silk stockings were darned and that a run in the back of one of them had been painstakingly studied.
The mysterious, frightened unknown had sat in his outer office for two hours.  Gillian's secretary, questioning her, had reported that the girl said she wanted to see no one, but merely, wanted to rest.  She wasn't feeling well.  At the end of two hours, the girl went away.
Gillian had seen her again, later the same day he had almost collided with her when he had left the building for the night.  The white-faced girl was standing on the sidewalk, just around the turn of the wall.  She had flattened herself against the wall and stared up at him with trembling lips.
Two evenings later, Gillian saw a white face at one of his dining room windows as he sat dining alone.  Vee, his wife, was visiting some friends in Chicago.  Glancing up, he had seen the white face, the terrified eyes, of some one staring in at him.  But the afternoon light had faded.  It was dusk.  He could not be sure that it had been this girl.
It was altogether very disturbing.  Gillian had countless enemies. Plots had been laid against his life. Unscrupulous women had tried to blackmail him.  But he could not believe that this girl was bent upon such an enterprise.
She did not look like the blackmailing kind.  She looked to him like a country girl – her hat, dress, stockings, shoes – all carried out that impression.  He concluded that she was in some kind of difficulty, but for certain reasons, was reluctant to approach him.
As the elevator stopped and the heavy bronze doors silently shot open, Gillian thrust the Greenfield Times under one arm and, on the point of leaving the car, turned quickly to the girl.
"You were in my office the other morning," he said.  "Did you have something to say to me?"
The girl looked up at him with terror and dismay.  She shrank back against the side of the elevator.  He had evidently taken her so by surprise that she was speechless.  A small, work roughened hand flew to her trembling mouth.  The fingers opened and moved down her chin to her throat.  She gulped, choked, shrank away.  Her eyes were glittering with fright.
Gillian sniffed faintly.  He was more than ever convinced that she had some problem to lay before him, but was afraid to talk about it.
He walked out into the corridor.  From the tail of his eye he saw the girl's hand dart out in a fluttering gesture to detain him.  Then the doors clanged.
Gillian proceeded thoughtfully through his outer offices and on through his law library into his private office.  He was disturbed by the girl's obvious terror.  And he was curious to know why she was following him.
He opened the golden humidor on his desk – a gift from a grateful client whom Gillian had saved from the electric chair – extracted a long blond perfecto and, walking to the window which overlooked a reach of the Sangamo River, lighted it.
His brisk and efficient secretary, Miss Walsh, came in with an open notebook and a determined air.  It was her private opinion that, without her, her famous employer would never get a stroke of work done, but would devote all of his time to gazing dreamily out that window, pondering heaven only knew what attractive but unproductive visions.
"Come back in an hour," Gillian said, without turning from the view.  "I want to do some thinking."
"But you promised Mr. Kelly–"
"Kelly can wait.  Miss Walsh," Gillian turned to look at her, "do you remember that little derelict who sat in the waiting room for two hours the other morning, looking as if she were scared to death?"
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine."
"That girl has been on my trail for days.  I'll swear she was staring through the window at me the other night at dinner.  I bump into her on the street.  I find her staring at me from the sidewalk when I get out of my car.  Just now she rode up in the elevator with me, staring as if I were something in a zoo.  I asked her if she had something on her mind.  She said she hadn't.  What do you make of that girl, Miss Walsh?"
His competent secretary lifted her expressive eyebrows.  She uttered what sounded like a sniff.
"Mr. Hazeltine, if I showed you a fraction of the letters that come to you from hero-worshiping girls you'd be positively ill.  You are the idol of the masses.  These silly girls must have some hero to worship.  And you," added Miss Walsh, with an impish twinkle in her eyes, "are the romantic type – strong, handsome, fearless."
"Rubbish," Gillian snorted.  "Do you think this girl is one of – um – those?"
"I shovel them off the doorstep every morning, Mr. Hazeltine!  Have you forgotten the girl who used to bake a chocolate layer cake every week and send it to you?  Have you forgotten the flapper who sent you the platinum cigar lighter with your initials and hers woven together in a diamond monogram?"
Gillian was blushing.
Miss Walsh said, "If you'll dictate the rough draft of that brief for Mr. Kelly–"
"Damn Kelly," Gillian barked.  "I want to know more about this girl." 
Miss Walsh groaned.  "Won't you rely on my feminine intuition?"
"No!  Why is she so terrified?"
"Because she adores you and must be near you, but is terrified at the thought of your discovering it."
"But–" Gillian grunted.  "You would never make a detective.  I'll give you that brief for Kelly in an hour," he said with finality.
Miss Walsh briskly withdrew.  Gillian sat down at his desk and opened his Times.  His real reason for dismissing Miss Walsh was not to reflect at his leisure upon the mystery of the girl with terrified eyes, but to give that agile mind of his the recreation of probing about in an absorbing murder mystery.
It was known to the newspapers as the Diamond Bullet Murder Case.
The press, with its propensity for summing up any situation in capsule form, had so described an absorbing tragedy that had occurred near the agricultural community of Clinton, about forty miles north of Greenfield.
Gillian loved a good mystery, and this promised to be an exciting and absorbing one – the kind that brings forth some fresh and shocking development each day.
It had begun modestly, as most good mysteries do, with a small item on the back page which briefly mentioned that a wealthy farmer named Amos Grundle had mysteriously vanished and that his wife, Sarah, had committed suicide by cutting her wrist arteries, both events coinciding with the disappearance of the Grundle servant, a girl named Nellie Hearthstone.
Gillian had at first drawn the obvious conclusion.  The wealthy farmer had run off with Nellie Hearthstone, and his wife, rather than face public humiliation, had committed suicide.
That had been about a week ago.  The next development had taken the story to the front pages.  Several people had seen the Hearthstone girl board an interurban street car for Greenfield – alone.  She had been seen in Greenfield twice since – always alone.  Foul play was hinted at.
A search was instituted for Farmer Grundle.  In the course of the search, the flooded pit of an old quarry a half mile from his house cooperated with certain laws of nature and gave up Farmer Grundle's swollen body.  A rifle was found in the bushes near by.
The Grundle case now acquired a sensational note.  The tabloid press, always hungry for lurid details, pieced together a story of a strong man's lust and a helpless girl's revenge.
Nellie Hearthstone was, it appeared, an orphan.  She had been found one bitter winter morning eighteen years ago bundled up in a ragged old blanket on the hearthstone in the parlor of the Clinton Orphan Asylum.  That was how she had come by her name.  She had been taken from the asylum a year ago and employed as a maid of all work in the Grundle household, which consisted only of her and Mrs. Grundle.
The girl was said to be very pretty and a hard little worker.  Prominent men in the village vigorously denied that Amos Grundle had tired of his aging wife to become infatuated with the lovely orphan.
They pointed out that Amos Grundle was a man of flawless character; was a prominent churchgoer and a power for good in the civic life of the township.  They condemned as vicious gossip the theory that a love-making scene between Grundle and the girl on the edge of the old rock quarry had resulted in the murder.  And they hotly resented the implication that Mrs. Grundle, aware of impending scandal, had committed suicide.  She had committed suicide, they declared, because of ill health.  She had been a sick woman for years.
These various explanations were slightly complicated by the discovery that the rifle, which was identified as Grundle's, was a modern United States Army rifle – loaded with blank cartridges.
The case was given an exotic touch by the statement of an elderly spinster named Nettie Jarvis, who declared she had seen a tall man with a black beard follow Grundle into the woods toward the old quarry on the morning of his disappearance.  Nettie Jarvis was a seamstress.
Gillian accepted this with a grunt of skepticism.  Old women were always seeing tall men with black beards at or near the scene of murders.  A murder would be incomplete without a mysterious stranger.
A new batch of rumors next brought a handsome young farmer, one James Truman, into the spotlight.  Truman's farm adjoined Amos Grundle's.  It was asserted by village gossips that young Truman was himself infatuated with the lovely orphan and had been seen kissing her in a motion picture theater,
James Truman, Gillian guessed, knew more about the murder than he was admitting.
This morning's development capped the climax – sent the story shrieking to the front pages of the press of the nation and made the sleepy town of Clinton the Mecca of long lines of automobiles.
Even the sedate Times gave the new development a seven-column screamer:

DIAMOND FOUND IN GRUNDLE'S HEART!

A diamond weighing approximately four and one-half carats had been found by the Clinton coroner embedded in Amos Grundle's heart.  The leading jeweler of Clinton gave his testimony.  Diamond, said he was nothing but white coal, and, given the opportunity, would burn like coal.  The flash of rifle powder had started to ignite the diamond, as its scorched edges proved, but before it could burn, the diamond had plunged into Amos Grundle's astonished heart.
Who owned a diamond of such value?  Why had it been used as a bullet?  What connection could there possibly be between such a fine stone and a poor but beautiful orphan?  The old woman who had seen the blackbearded stranger was interviewed again.  She stuck to her story.  He was a giant of a man with a sinister, foreign air.
Further down the pages was another sensational development.  The county prosecutor, a man named Elton Dawbridge, had brought charges against the elderly superintendent of the Clinton Orphan Asylum, accusing him of flagrant misuse of his office; charging him, in so many words, with nothing less than white slavery.
The asylum superintendent, declared the county prosecutor, was empowered to let his orphans, go to work in respectable homes as servants when they were old enough; but it was now unearthed that he was disposing of the most beautiful of the orphans to those farmers who paid him the highest premium.
A fiery denunciation of this distressing practice was quoted in the Times in Mr. Dawbridge's eloquent words.  And Gillian, who seldom believed what he read, was of the opinion that Mr. Dawbridge had selected this opportunity to thrust himself into the limelight with a bright and eager eye on political advancement.
Mr. Dawbridge promised startling disclosures in the Grundle mystery before to-morrow morning.  It was now tomorrow morning, and Gillian's interest in the Diamond Bullet Murder Case was so feverish that he was tempted to drop all work and drive out to Clinton and do a little investigating for the fun of it.
Gillian's efficient secretary drove this whimsical notion from his mind.  She was standing before him now, with an opened notebook, a poised pencil, a grim expression about her pretty lips and the word Kelly fairly snapping in her eyes.
And Miss Walsh saw to it that Gillian was so busy the rest of the day that his lunch had to be sent in.  He did not have another moment to spare for the Grundle Diamond Case until it was time to go home for dinner.
His favorite newsboy met him with a copy of the Evening Bulletin.  Gillian, seating himself in his coupe, glanced at the headline.

TRUMAN HELD AS GRUNDLE DIAMOND OWNER!

A glance at the opening lines of the, story assured him that his yesterday's guess was correct – James Truman had been arrested.  It had been proved beyond doubt that he was the diamond's owner.
There was still another startling disclosure.  On the afternoon of the murder he and Nellie Hearthstone had applied for a marriage license at the county clerk's office.  The State law required that an avowal of matrimonial intentions be filed a week prior to the marriage.
Gillian read no further.  He wanted to digest the story at his leisure, while he was digesting his dinner.
He drove to his home on the hill overlooking the river, and drove on into the garage.  He opened the newspaper to steal another glance at the Grundle story before going into the house.
Now the Hazeltine garage was a somewhat spacious affair, with ample room for Gillian's coupe, his wife's roadster and her limousine.  It was a two-story building.  Upstairs was a loft for the storage of odds and ends – gardening tools, discarded furniture and the miscellany which will be found in such a catch-all.
As Gillian glanced again at the headline, he distinctly heard a thump overhead.  He knew that today was the gardener's day off, so he presumed that the thump had been caused by his Japanese servant, Toro.
"Toro?" he called.
There was no answer.  Gillian, listening, heard further sounds, as of some one moving about.
He climbed out of his coupe and called firmly: "Who is up there?"
Still no answer.
A little irritated at receiving no answer, Gillian shouted: "Come down out of there!"
A pair of slim, silk-clad legs appeared at the top of the narrow stairs.  Gillian next saw the hem of a blue serge dress.  The feet began to descend.  He now observed that the stockings were darned in several places.
He waited, with suddenly accelerating pulses.
The white-faced girl, who had so mystified him during the past few days, climbed down and into the light of the opened garage doors.
Her eyes, as she stared at him, were dark with terror.  Her mouth was quivering.  For some unaccountable reason, she selected this moment to snatch off her small black hat, and her hair came tumbling out and down almost to her shoulders.  It was thick, rich, curly, brown hair.  Her eyes seemed to swim.
In the cool light of evening, her face was beautiful.  It had the pallor of some martyred saint, and considerably more beauty.
There was a newspaper in her hand a copy of the same edition that Gillian had been reading a moment before.
"What," Gillian asked in astonishment, "were you doing up there?"
The girl caught her hand to her heart.
"Please," she whimpered; "don't you know who I am – now?"
Gillian's eyes grew suddenly dark with understanding.
"One guess," he said crisply.  "Nellie Hearthstone."
The girl pitched forward unconscious; would have fallen on the cement floor if Gillian had not swooped down and caught her by the elbows.

CHAPTER 2
HOT WATER

HAZELTINE lifted the limp orphan in his arms, dismayed at her lightness – the poor little thing was hardly more than bones and carried her into the house, fervently wishing that his wife were at home.  Fainting women terrified him.  He never could remember whether you elevated the head or the feet.
He transported Miss Hearthstone into the comfortable living room, arranged her on a settee and shouted for Toro.  As he had come in by the side-door, he had missed Toro, who was busy in the kitchen preparing his master's dinner.
Toro came noiselessly in, gazed with Buddhist gravity at the tableau, and inquired in his impeccable English:
"Did you call, Mr. Hazeltine?"
"Bring some water!" Gillian said hoarsely.  "Bring some brandy!  Bring a bowl of ice!  Bring a towel!  Bring some smelling salts!  Do something Get busy!  Act!  Don't stand there like a stalled car!"
Toro fled, to return promptly with a decanter of brandy and a liqueur glass.  Gillian filled the glass and forced its contents between Nellie Hearthstone's gray lips.
She quickly revived.  Eyelids trembled and lifted.  Gillian pulled up a chair and began to rub her hands.
The beautiful orphan gazed up at him with the dim, vague eyes of semiconsciousness; then intelligence fully returned and, with it, the black, stark look of terror.  She shrank away from him.
"You're better now, Miss Hearthstone?"
She gasped: "You – you aren't going to have me arrested?"
"Have you done anything for which I should have you arrested?"
"No!"
"Then stop worrying."
She looked at him gratefully.  Some of the terror in her eyes vanished.
"I'm glad it's over," she said faintly.  "I couldn't have stood another hour of it.  I couldn't have endured another night with those rats."
"What rats?"
"The ones in your garage.  One of them ran across my face last night.  I thought I'd die.  And the night before–"
"I'll get a cat to look after those rats," Gillian interrupted.  "Have you been living in my garage?"
"Yes.  I didn't know where else to go.  I was afraid they'd find me."
"How long have you been there?"
"Almost a week.  I came right here.  I wanted to talk to you.  Then I lost my nerve.  I-I didn't dare.  Every day since I've tried to work up enough courage.  I went to your office.  I waited for you outside.  Every night I tried to make myself come in and tell you.  This morning I intended following you into your office.  But when you spoke to me – I almost fainted."
"What," Gillian asked, "have you been doing about food?"
"Oh, I'm not hungry.  I can't stand the sight of food.  I'm too nervous to eat."
Gillian glanced up at Toro.  "Dinner for two," he said.  "Hurry it."
"Yes, sir."
"I can't eat here," the girl said.
"Nonsense.  We'll talk while we eat.  Or would you like to talk now – get some of it off our mind?"
She looked at him dubiously.  "I didn't kill Amos Grundle," she blurted.
"Of course you didn't.  You came to me because you thought they would accuse you."
"No.  I thought they would accuse Jim Truman."
"They finally did.  They arrested him this morning.  It's in tonight's papers."
The girl nodded.  "I knew they would.  I knew they'd find that diamond.  That's why I've been hiding here.  That's what I wanted to talk to you about."
"Are you in love with Jim Truman?" Gillian asked gently.
The girl began beating on the edge of the settee with one small clenched fist.  She burst out hysterically:
"I can't explain it.  It goes deeper than that.  I'd do anything for him, I love him so.  He's the only man I've ever known who's been kind and decent to me, and respected me.  All the others have tried to take advantage of the fact that I'm an orphanage girl – a nameless nobody.  They don't care how hard I've worked to improve myself.
"Until I met Jim Truman I hated the very word love.  It meant nothing but men pawing me and saying ugly things.  Jim was the first decent man I knew.  If anything happened to him, I'd die.  I mean it.  I wouldn't want to live.  I'd kill myself.  If I could save him by confessing that I'd killed Mr. Grundle I would.  But I can't lie."
"I understand," Gillian said.
"You don't understand," she said fiercely.  "Nobody understands.  I literally cannot tell a lie."
Gillian was frowning.  "You mean you have certain standards which won't permit your telling lies?"
"No.  You don't understand.  You can't understand."
The criminal lawyer shook his head.
"I'm afraid it's too deep for me, Miss Hearthstone.  I've never met a person like you in my life.  My dealings are chiefly, with men and women who literally cannot tell the truth.  They will take the witness stand and lie about the most unimportant details – where a lie or truth wouldn't make the slightest difference.  Most crooks are congenital liars.  If the sun was shining yesterday, they will say it rained hard.  They can't help lying."
"I can't help telling the truth," the girl said.  "Lies simply won't come out of my mouth.  It may have something to do with pride.  Perhaps you don't appreciate what a foundling, a supposedly illegitimate child, faces in this world.  I've known girls to kill themselves because they didn't know who their fathers and mothers were.  They could not stand the shame.  Heaven only knows who my parents were.  And even when I was a little girl I was jealous of other little girls who were regular orphans – not foundlings.  I was terribly ashamed for years.
"I made up my mind that I would be so good, so decent, so honest that people would have to respect me.  I wouldn't steal.  I wouldn't be a sneak.  I wouldn't lie; I thought lying for any reason was weak and cowardly.  I wouldn't be a coward.  I wouldn't lie.  Now, I can't lie – not even to save the man I'd willingly give my life for.  Even when I think of lying, I feel faint and sick.  Something horrible happens inside of me.  I can't lie."
Gillian was beginning to understand, and he was beginning to have the greatest admiration and respect for this shabby girl.
"This Jim Truman," he said thoughtfully, "must be an exceptional young man.  Tell me something about him."
"He is a farmer," said the beautiful orphan.  "He has the most successful farm in this part of the State.  He is the only scientific farmer in the region.  A great many of the neighboring farmers are jealous of him.  They disapprove of what they call his newfangled notions.  They envy him; therefore they hate him.
"For example, Jim has been planning for some time to install a small hydroelectric plant so that electricity will cost him nothing.  He built an artificial lake for water storage.  It happened that this lake was full at the beginning of the recent drought.  When the drought became really serious Jim simply used his storage water for irrigation – and saved practically all of his crops.  He was the only farmer in that district who had the forethought – or the luck.
"Naturally, the others were jealous.  They had all been telling him what a fool he was to waste his time on these newfangled notions – and Jim calmly went ahead and showed them they were wrong.  People don't like being shown they're wrong.  They don't like his quietness, either.  They call it secretiveness.  He isn't secretive; he simply minds his own business, works hard – and makes good.  He is the most modest man I ever knew, and very unselfish and kind."
"How old is Jim?"
"Twenty-seven."
"Parents living?"
"No.  He's an orphan, too.  He met me at a party where a young farmer – Tom Lenk – was trying to make love to me.  I asked Jim to make Tom stop.  The two men had a quarrel about it, and Jim knocked Tom down, then he said to me, 'We orphans have got to stick together.'  We've been sticking together ever since."
Nellie Hearthstone was smiling.  It seemed to brighten her whole being.  Watching her, Gillian wondered how any orphanage could produce a young woman of such refinement.  If it had not been for her toil-roughened hands and her shabby clothing she might easily have been mistaken for one of the season's prettiest debutantes.
"How did Amos Grundle like the attachment of you and Jim?" 
"Mr. Grundle hated Jim."
"How about Jim?"
The blackness of terror returned to the girl's eyes.
"He–" She hesitated.
Gillian bent closer.  "You can talk to me in perfect confidence, Miss Hearthstone.  Let's face the truth about this.  Did Jim Truman kill Amos Grundle?"
The answer came from her lips as though she were an automaton.
"Yes."
"Did you see the murder?"
"Yes."
"Any other witnesses?"
"No."  Her voice was no louder than a whisper.
Gillian looked thoughtful.  He was beginning to realize why this girl had been too terrified to come to him,
"There were extenuating circumstances, of course," he suggested.  "Grundle attacked your lover, and he killed Grundle in self-defense."
"No.  Mr. Grundle didn't attack Jim."
"I see.  Grundle was shot by your lover because your honor was involved – the so-called unwritten law."
"No.  He did hate Mr. Grundle because Mr. Grundle was constantly making improper proposals to me.  But Mr. Grundle never did anything more than kiss me.  No man ever has."
"But there was a quarrel which led up to the killing," Gillian said desperately.  "In the course of the quarrel, Grundle made threatening remarks to Jim?"
"No," the girl said dully.  "Nothing of any kind happened that would make a case for Jim in a courtroom.  He killed Mr. Grundle as you would kill a snake."
There was no longer any question in Gillian's mind that this unfortunate girl was telling the truth.  And there was no longer any question that the young farmer she loved was in very hot water indeed.
"Tell me the story from the beginning," he requested.

CHAPTER 3
A WHITED SEPULCHRE

THE girl's mouth was trembling.  She made a helpless little gesture with her hands, and began to talk in a low but clear voice.
"The newspapers have told only one side of it," she said.  "I went to work a little over a year ago for the Grundles, and the first night I was there he came into the kitchen and tried to kiss me.  His wife was in the next room.  It made me so mad I cried and it made me sick, too.  I was glad to be working at the Grundles,' because it was so near Jim's farm.  I hadn't given Grundle himself a thought, except that when he came to the orphanage, I didn't like his looks.
"He was a big, heavy man – the kind that looks fat but isn't.  He had heavy shoulders, and heavy hands and large feet.  His hands were thick and ugly and covered with reddish hair.  He had mean eyes, too.  One of them was injured when he was a boy, and had a cast in it.  It made him look just as mean as he was.
"Mrs. Grundle was an invalid.  For years she had done all the housework, including all the washing, wood chopping and water pumping.  There was no running water in the house – no conveniences.  Grundle was one of the farmers who hated newfangled ideas.  His nearest approach to a modern convenience was an old, broken-down Ford he had bought for thirty dollars.
"I thought, naturally that he had taken me from the orphanage because Mrs. Grundle was rheumatic and really needed help.  That wasn't the idea at all.  He had seen me and, according to what he whispered in the kitchen that first night, had fallen in love with me.
"He was going to get rid of his wife somehow and marry me.  But he wanted me to show him first that I really loved him.  I told him I loathed him.  I told him I was in love with Jim Truman and that we were going to marry when I was nineteen.
"When I told him I loathed him, he hit me with his fist across the muscles of my upper arm-here – and the pain was so great that I bawled.  I couldn't help it.  My arm was almost paralyzed all the next day.  Mrs. Grundle came hobbling out into the kitchen, and he told her he had just given me a little disciplining so I'd know my place.
That was what he always called it – 'disciplining'.  He was cruel to people and animals.  I've seen him beat a horse that was too tired to do any more work.  He kicked one dog, an old setter, in the stomach for no reason whatever.  It caused some internal injury, for the setter died a few days later."
"How often did he have these rages?" Gillian asked.
"He didn't have rages at all.  I mean he never got red-faced.  His eyes would narrow and he would reach out and strike.  He reached across the supper table once and struck Mrs. Grundle because she didn't answer a question quickly enough.  And whenever he tried to paw me or kiss me, and I told him how I detested him, he would strike me.
"Once he kicked me in the knee.  I limped for a week.  Another time, when I was milking, he came behind me and grabbed me and kissed me.  I told him if he did it again I'd hit him with the nearest thing handy.  He went away and came back in a moment with an old buggy whip.  He brought it down just once across my shoulders. I can still hear that whip whistle.  It was so painful and I was so furious that I cried all night."
"Why didn't you report him?" Gillian indignantly asked.
The girl's eyes narrowed.  "No one would believe me.  I never knew what a real hypocrite was before I knew Amos Grundle.  He saved his meanness for his home.  In Clinton, he was a pillar of the community prominent in charity work and in politics – a big talker."
"Why didn't you tell Jim – or did you?"
"At first my pride wouldn't let me.  I'd always fought my own battles.  Jim likes people who are self-reliant.  He hates women who are clinging vines.  We were going to be married when I was nineteen…"
"Whose idea was that?" 
"Mine.  I wanted those two years for studying and improving myself.  I wanted to be worthy of Jim.  He is a college graduate.  I wanted him to be proud of me.  You see, in marrying him, I wanted to be able to face people who would say that I married him to elevate myself.  Jim didn't want to wait.  But I insisted. I wanted to give him plenty of time to think it over."
"So you didn't tell Jim about Grundle?"
"Not until the night before he killed Grundle.  I had to tell him then.  I was frantic.  Mrs. Grundle had had one of her sick attacks – and had gone to bed.  That was just before supper.  While Mr. Grundle and I were eating supper, he pulled his chair around close to mine and took both my hands and held them.  He said he had made a new will that afternoon, bequeathing everything he owned to me.  And he said we were going to get married as soon as his wife was dead.
"It was horrible.  There she was, sick in bed at the top of the stairs and he was pawing me and telling me we'd be married soon – as soon as she was dead.  He made some reference to the fact that if she didn't die soon, he knew ways to hasten it.  I can't recall his exact words.  He was trying to kiss me when he said them, and I was fighting him off.
"It scared me stiff.  I could stand his pawing and clumsy lovemaking and his cruelty, but this was serious.  I didn't want him to will his estate to me, and I was terrified at what he had muttered about hastening his wife's death.  I had to tell some one.  And I knew no one but Jim would believe me.
"After supper, I-I hurried over to Jim's house and told him.  Everything. I wanted him to advise me.  At first he said he would go down and tell the sheriff, or Judge Lindley.  He acted awful queer.  He was so white that I was scared stiff.  I didn't know what he was going to do, but I made him promise he wouldn't do anything drastic.  And he said he would do nothing until the next morning.  He wanted to think it over.  He told me to meet him at the old quarry at ten o'clock the next morning.  He wanted to show me something he had for me, he said, and we would talk over what we had better do."
Nellie Hearthstone paused.  Her eyes had the soft glow of one who sees a vividly remembered scene.
"Jim kissed me good night and I hurried back home.  I event to bed and locked my door.  But I couldn't sleep.
"I heard Mrs. Grundle breathing in the next room, and I heard Mr. Grundle walking about downstairs.  He didn't go to bed until long after midnight.
"Next morning, Mrs. Grundle was well enough to get up and have breakfast, but she looked at me strangely.  Every few minutes I'd find her eyes on me, with that queer, probing look.  But she didn't say anything.  And Mr. Grundle kept looking at her in a queer way, too.  His eyes ran over her coldly.  I can't describe it.  It was something in his face.  I knew he was thinking of ways to kill her.
"When I had my work done, I was so glad to be out of that house that I ran all the way to the quarry.  Now before I go on, are there any questions you 'd like to ask?"
"I'm very curious to know," Gillian replied, "if any one except you and Mrs. Grundle was ever present when Grundle was striking you, his wife or any of the animals?"
One man," the girl said.  "A farmer named Jeff Pavlitch.  He is an old man, a Lithuanian, and speaks rather broken English.  He owed Mr. Grundle some money, and he often came over to the house to do odd jobs.  He was so meek and cowering that Mr. Grundle hardly noticed him."
"Was this Jeff Pavlitch present when Grundle struck you or his wife?"
"Often.  Why?"
"If he will testify in court, it will be helpful.  He will make a very valuable witness.  Now, tell me about the diamond bullet."

CHAPTER 4
THE DIAMOND BULLET

NELLIE Hearthstone ran her hand nervously through her thick dark hair.  Gillian, waiting for her to begin, could understand why men lost their senses over her.
"Jim was waiting for me at the quarry.  We sat down on a log and he took a little square white box out of his pocket and showed me the diamond.  It had been his mother's.  It was an heirloom.  I don't know how many generations it had been in his family.  It had been set in a brooch of gold filigree.  Jim had had Mr. Beckwith, the Clinton jeweler, take it out of the brooch.  He was going to have it set in a ring for me – my engagement ring.
"He put the diamond in my hand and I held it up on the tips of my fingers.  It flashed and sparkled like a little ball of white fire.  We didn't hear Mr. Grundle walk up behind us.  We didn't know we weren't alone until a hand reached down and took the diamond.
"Jim turned and looked up at him.  Mr. Grundle had a rifle in one hand and a navy rifle he had bought from a soldier.  I suppose the soldier had stolen it.  Mr. Grundle never used it until last year.  After the Memorial Day exercises at Evergreen Cemetery, he found a case of blank cartridges which the soldiers had brought, but hadn't used.  He loaded the case into his car.
"After that, he used the cartridges in his rifle for shooting small game.  He carried birdshot in his pocket.  When he wanted to shoot anything, he would pour some of this shot down the barrel.  He loved to kill.  I've seen him kill robins and wild canaries and orioles.  He pretended he was only shooting crows and hawks."
"Didn't he threaten Jim in any way with that rifle?" Gillian asked hopefully.
"No.  He stood there, scowling, with the diamond in his hand.  He looked at it and then at Jim.  Finally he said, 'This stone would make a good bullet, Truman.  How far do you s'pose it would go into that tree over there?'  He pointed to a tall pine tree.  'I've a good mind to try and see,' he said.  It wouldn't hurt the diamond, because a diamond is harder than flint.  You could dig out the diamond and it would still be as good as ever."
"What did Jim say to that?"
"Nothing.  He just looked up at Mr. Grundle.  He was white and there was the same funny look about his mouth that had scared me the night before.  But he didn't say a word.  He looked up at Mr. Grundle.  Mr. Grundle put a cartridge into the chamber and dropped the diamond down the barrel.  Jim stood up slowly, took the rifle out of his hands and shot him."
"Grundle had pointed the rifle at him and Jim thought he meant to kill him," Gillian said.
"No.  Mr. Grundle wasn't pointing the rifle anywhere near him.  He hadn't threatened Jim in any way.  Jim just took the rifle away from him and killed him."
"What happened then?"
"Mr. Grundle slumped down and rolled over the edge of the pit into the water and sank out of sight."
"What did Jim say then?"
"He said, 'I couldn't help it, honey.'  He said it over and over.  He said they would electrocute him for doing it, but that he couldn't help it.  He said that he would do the same thing to any other man who laid a hand on me.  But that he had spoiled everything.  He said I should go away, start life some place else.  Then he went all to pieces.  He put his head in my lap and cried like a baby.  He said over and over he couldn't help it.  No man had ever lived who laid a hand on a Truman woman – and I was the same as a Truman woman.  And he said that it had been his mother's diamond that Grundle was defiling.
"I told him I loved him as much as ever.  I made him go with me to the county clerk's office for an application for marriage.  Of course, we can't get married.  I took a streetcar to Greenfield.  I made him promise to say nothing until he heard from me.  I haven't been in touch with him."
Gillian stood up and began stalking up and down the room.  He turned suddenly and said: "But what can I do?"
Nellie Hearthstone's large eyes seemed to shine in the growing dusk.
"You're famous for helping people out of trouble," she said simply.  "Certainly no two people were ever in greater trouble than Jim and I are."
"Are you sure," Gillian asked, that you've omitted nothing important?"
"Quite sure.  And you'll take the case, won't you?"
"What case is there, my dear?" Gillian asked.  "Your lover hated a man and killed him.  We admit his hatred was justifiable.  We admit it was excusable for him to kill Grundle, who was pawing you and robbing him.  Jim was almost out of his mind.  But can you make a jury of Grundle's friends believe that?  We all hate people, but we don't go around murdering them, do we?"
"I've got to save him," said the girl simply.  "I love him.  There must be some way.  I'll do anything."
"There is a way," Gillian told her.
"Go on the witness stand and swear you saw Grundle murderously attack Jim.  If you told such a story, with plenty of realistic embroidery, you would sway a jury.  Your beauty would help.  It's a slim chance, the only, one."
The dark eyes were staining at him hopelessly.  "I can't tell that story.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't: The truth would come out in spite of me."
"If you can't lie," Gillian said, you can't save him."
The telephone at the other end of the room rang.  Gillian answered it.  A reporter on the Bulletin, a tabloid, wanted to know if he was interested in the Grundle murder case.
"Why should I be?" Gillian cautiously answered.
"A girl, whose description tallies pretty closely with the Hearthstone girl has been seen coming out of your office," the reporter informed him.  "Grundle's will has just been read and that foxy little Jane comes into an estate of over a hundred thousand bucks in farm lands, real estate and bank bonds.  The county prosecutor says it was her sweetie's motive for killing Grundle.  He has a warrant out for her as a material witness.  What can you tell me about it, Mr. Hazeltine?"
"Not a thing," Gillian replied.
"Will you take the case if they ask you to?"
"No."  Gillian hung up the receiver.
Toro came in to announce dinner.  Nellie Hearthstone was looking expectantly at the criminal lawyer.
"We'll have dinner," he said, "then I'll drive you out to Clinton." He waited until Toro was gone, then added: "Dawbridge has a warrant out for your arrest.  It always looks better to give yourself up than to be captured.  Grundle's will leaves you an estate of a hundred thousand."
"I won't touch a penny of it!" the girl exclaimed; then: "Yes, I will!" she cried.  "I'll give you all of it for defending Jim."
"I don't want it," Gillian said.  "I'm not taking the case, because there isn't a case.  If you were a congenital liar like Nettie Jarvis, the seamstress, and could invent black-bearded strangers with an exotic air, there might be hope.  As things stand, Jim Truman must pay for making a foolish mistake."
Nellie Hearthstone stood up.  Her mouth was firm with determination.
"Mr. Hazeltine, I know how hopeless the case is.  But I also know how brilliant you are.  You've used amazing tricks to save men from the electric chair.  You could save Jim if you would."
"I've never yet defended a man," Gillian answered, "guilty of deliberate murder.  I'll talk to Jim if you wish.  Have you told this story to any one else?"
"Not a soul.  Only three of us know – you, Jim, and I."
"Don't let Dawbridge trap you into talking," Gillian advised her.  "He will try to make you talk.  He will realize that you are his star witness."
"I won't say a word or answer a question."
"Has Jim a lawyer?"
Yes.  His name is Seth Peters.  He has been out of college only a couple of years."
"Is Peters in with the Clinton political gang?"
"No.  He won't go in with them.  They've all but driven him out of town."
"Is he a fighter?"
"Yes, but not at all clever."
"I'll talk to Peters, too," Gillian promised.

CHAPTER 5
THE SPOTLIGHT

CLINTON, a town of some five thousand population, had the air of a town which has successfully, resisted the inroads of modern civilization.  Its streets were narrow and badly lighted.  The Randainaii River which threaded its way through the town was flanked on both sides by old-fashioned red brick buildings.
The county jail was one of these.  Its small windows were thickly barred.  It was a grim and somehow sinister structure.
Gillian entered the town by way of a covered bridge and drove into a lot beside the jail.  The lot was packed with cars.  A large talking picture truck was parked in front of the jail entrance.  Cables as thick as pythons went from the truck, up the steps and into the entrance ball.
The large entrance hall was crowded with men and glaring with high-powered lights.  For a moment, no one took notice of Gillian or the pale girl with him.
A tall, dark-eyed man with wavy black hair and the look of an actor, a ham actor, Gillian had always thought, was addressing remarks to a microphone held on a pole.  He was waving his arms.  His eyes were flashing.
"I would like to say to the great American motion picture audiences," he was saying, "that the man who sent that strange missile, that diamond bullet, into the heart of my fellow townsman, is safely behind the bars of this jail.  I have dropped all other work and shall prosecute this case without rest until that monster has paid the penalty he so richly deserves!"
They sounded to Gillian like the words of a cheap politician; but Gillian knew that Elton Dawbridge was more than a cheap politician; he was ambitious and clever and vicious.  This was the county prosecutor's golden opportunity.  A diamond bullet had shot him to the front pages of the nation and onto the screens of fifty thousand motion picture houses – and he was going to stay there.
A thickset man with small blue eyes and carrot-colored hair who stood beside the county prosecutor with a hard grin was presumably Sheriff Ranse.
A reporter cried: "Hey!  Here's Gillian Hazeltine!"  And another yelled: "There's Hearthstone!"
The next moment a flashlight powder went off with a, soft boom and a puff of smoke mushroomed against the ceiling.  The sheriff and the county prosecutor were fighting their way through the newspapermen who crowded about Gillian and the frightened girl.
Gillian felt uncomfortable.  He hadn't wanted to step into the limelight, and he wanted to avoid Elton Dawbridge.  They were political enemies, and nothing was to be gained by a public quarrel. A tabloid reporter was plucking at his sleeve.
"Are you taking Truman's case, Mr. Hazeltine?" he eagerly asked.
"No," Gillian said.
The county prosecutor did not hear this question and answer.  He made his way to Gillian and said dramatically:
"So you've decided to stick your finger into this pie!"
Nellie Hearthstone was clinging to Gillian's arm and was staring at the ring of men as a mouse might stare at a pack of yapping fox terriers.
"I haven't," Gillian made himself heard, "the slightest interest in your pie, Elton.  Miss Hearthstone came to me for advice.  I advised her to surrender herself.  I promised her to have a talk with Truman.  Can it be arranged?"
Elton Dawbridge laughed.  It was a very irritating laugh.  It did something to the hair at the back of Gillian's neck.
The reporters were silent now.  Here was news.
"Hazeltine," the county prosecutor said loudly, "I've been wondering if you'd horn into this case.  It's just your type, isn't it?  Premeditated murder – beautiful orphan.  Let me tell you that the citizens of this county want none of your trickery.  Oh, we know how you've bought judges and bribed juries and employed perjured witnesses.  But we don't want anything of that kind in Clinton.  A decent, fine, kindly member of this community has been foully murdered by a jealous man, a dangerous, vicious man.  As the representative of the people, I am going to see that this murderer receives his just deserts."
Gillian remained calm.  His enemies had been throwing such insults his way for a good many years.  He looked at Elton Dawbridge gravely.  A motion picture man said:
"Will you give us your opinion of the case, Mr. Hazeltine?  The American public will be interested in knowing how you feel about it.
Lights glared into Gillian's eyes.  A microphone was held before him.  A camera began to grind.
Gillian had never overcome his original feeling of microphone fright.  He didn't like the idea of his words going bellowing out into fifty thousand theaters.  But he spoke now, as he always did, directly and crisply.
"I have no interest in this case except as a private citizen – as private citizens I always feel that it is unsafe to leap at conclusions or to permit mob madness to influence intelligent decisions.  My hope is that mob madness will not result in an innocent man being sent to the electric chair.  That is all I have to say."
A nervous-looking man inquired, "Do you say positively that you will not defend James Truman?"
Gillian glanced at the county prosecutor, and said: "My present intentions are not to touch this case.  If circumstances arise which cause me to change my mind, I will change my mind."
Elton Dawbridge now intruded himself into the picture.  He came forward with an upraised fist, but he did not strike.  It was only a dramatic gesture.,
"We don't want you to change your mind," he declared oratorically.  "This is a decent, clean community.  We can wash our dirty linen without help from legal tricksters.
He did not look at Gillian when he said this, but into the twinkling lens of the camera.
The cameraman said, apologetically: "I'm sorry, Mr. Dawbridge, but I ran out of film just before you started. Do you want to say it over again, after I reload?"
Gillian looked at the county prosecutor and grinned.  It looked very much like his fighting grin.
"It's too bad, Elton," he said wickedly, "that fifty million motion picture fans are going to be deprived of that gem."
Reporters again crowded about and shot questions.  They wanted to know how the Hearthstone girl had got in touch with him, what she had said to him, and what he had said to her.
"She came to my office for advice," he answered.  "After Mr. Grundle disappeared, she grew worried.  A man with a black beard had been hanging around–"
"That's bunk!" Mr. Dawbridge shouted.  "That's a fairy tale!"
"I have nothing more to say," Gillian smiled.
Over against the wall, he saw news photographers posing Nellie Hearthstone.  A battery of cameras, suggestive of a firing squad, was clicking away to the blaze of flash light powders.
The lovely orphan had been snatched up by the greedy machinery of publicity, and the equally greedy machinery of the law – as practiced in Clinton.
Gillian, as he fought his way to the door, wondered if they would grind and tear her to destruction.
There was no question in Gillian's mind as he left the jail and climbed into his roadster that a special grand jury would rush through an indictment and remand James Truman to the superior court for trial.  He would be tried, Gillian guessed, before Judge Lindley.
Shaking off the reporters who had followed him to his car, Gillian drove to a filling station, made inquiries pertaining to Judge Lindley's whereabouts, and was presently parking in the judge's driveway.
Ushered into the study, Gillian found his honor eagerly reading newspaper accounts of the Diamond Bullet murder case.
Judge Lindley was a man of about fifty with moody blue eyes, a thin, cruel mouth and a predatory nose.  He was, Gillian well knew, a power not alone in county, but in State politics.
The reception the judge gave Gillian was exceedingly cold.  He did not rise or offer his hand.  Behind his desk he sat and stared frostily at his visitor.
"I dropped in," Gillian cheerfully explained himself, "to see if you mightn't arrange to let me see Jim Truman."
The judge's eyes narrowed.  "Is Truman retaining you?" he snapped.
"No, judge.  I am interested in the case merely as a bystander.  It has stirred my curiosity.  A man who kills another by shooting him with a four and a half carat diamond is unique."
The cold eyes stared at him.  "Has that Hearthstone girl been in communication with you?"
"She has, judge."
"What did she say?"
"Supposing we make a deal," Gillian suggested.  "Supposing you promise to let me see Truman in exchange for the amazing inside facts she gave me."
"What did she say?"
"She said she ran away because a big, tall man with a black beard had been hanging around."
"That's poppycock!  You know what happened, Hazeltine.  Her lover, Truman, was jealous of Amos Grundle and shot him.  Those are the simple facts of the case, and I'm warning you if you come into my court with any tricks, you'll be disappointed."
"But if Truman is guilty, how could a trick save him?"
"It can't!" the judge snapped.  "I suppose," he said with heavy irony, "you can produce a man with a black beard."
"I leave him concealed in my sleeve," Gillian chuckled.
Judge Lindley turned red.  He stood up.
"Hazeltine, I don't want you in this town and I don't want you in this house.  You are my enemy politically – and you will be my enemy if you go into court.  Don't forget that.  Stay out of Clinton.  Keep your hands off this affair.  If you interfere, you'll be sorry."
Gillian looked at him gravely.  "That sounds like a threat."
"Construe it as you wish."
"It sounds," Gillian murmured, "like taking men for rides, guns in the dark, knives in the back.  Judge, you almost tempt me to stay.  It sounds like a poker game.  I am strongly inclined to stick around and call your bluff."
"You'll regret it," the judge snapped.
"My hole card," Gillian returned, "might prove, at that, to be a knave of diamonds."
Judge Lindley's eyes went narrower still.  He pressed a button.  The man who had admitted Gillian came in.
"Show this man the door," his honor snapped.
"I may see you in court, judge," Gillian said as he went out.
But Gillian had no real intention of taking the case.  He was merely following the dictates of his curiosity.  His curiosity led him now to the door of Seth Peters, attorney-at-law.

CHAPTER 6
IN THE STEAM-ROLLER'S PATH
SETH Peters, Truman's lawyer, had offices over a grocery store, the windows of which were now dark.  But there was a light burning in the offices above them.  Parking at the curb, Gillian climbed a flight of steps and knocked at a door with a frosted glass panel.
The door was swung open violently and Gillian found himself looking eye to eye into the pale, haggard face of a young man with curly yellow hair, broad shoulders, and a fighter's jaw.
Behind the young man, on a desk, an electric light burned and cast its rays upon a number of opened law books.
Seth Peters stared at Gillian and, slowly, a wave of red crept up from his neck to his hair.  He grinned with astonishment.
"Why!" he said.  "You're Gillian Hazeltine!"
"I came in behind a tall man with a black beard," Gillian said, smiling.
The young lawyer was trying to conceal his embarrassment and astonishment.  He looked about the shabbily furnished room.  He said:
"Gee whiz, this certainly is an honor, Mr. Hazeltine.  I've gone to court to listen to you a lot of times but I certainly never thought you'd walk into this room.  I was just reading up on some of your cases – wondering how I'd handle this one.  Did they tell you Jim Truman has retained me?"
Gillian nodded.  "While they weren't telling me that I'd get a knife in the back if I stayed in this spotless town they were saving that you were Truman s lawyer.  I dropped impurely out of curiosity."
"Please have a chair.  I've been reading up on your defense of Compton MacArthur and–"
"You won't find the solution to this riddle in any book," Gillian gently interrupted.  "MacArthur was not guilty, and my job was merely to find who was.  In this case, we know that Truman killed Grundle and your only hope is to prove that he had a sufficient motive.  My personal inclination," Gillian said with a chuckle, "is to pin the job on Elton Dawbridge or Judge Lindley."
Seth Peters grinned, then sobered.  "I guess you don't have to be told what's going on in this town, Mr. Hazeltine.  Clinton is rotting with political corruption.  Dawbridge is the big boss.  Even Lindley takes orders from him.  "
"How do you stand with them?"
The young man growled, "Hell's bells, I'm nothing but an insect in the triumphant course of the steam roller.  I'm slated to be squashed flat.  They've even made threats on my life.  You see, I've been delving into records.  They've covered themselves pretty thoroughly, but the smell of dead rats is strong in the wind.  I annoy them the way a horsefly annoys a horse.  But I don't worry them."
"Have they ever taken a shot at you?" Gillian asked.
"Not yet.  And I'm safe for the immediate present.  I'm elected to be the goat in this murder trial.  Dawbridge knows he'll mash me flat.  This is his golden chance.  He's using Jim Truman and the Hearthstone kid as a springboard for a leap into the big political puddle.  He has his eye on Washington.  Look at him grabbing publicity!  Doesn't it make you physically sick?  When he's sent Jim to the chair, he'll be famous.  And he'll send him there!"
"How well," Gillian inquired, "do you know Truman?"
"He's the only pal I have.  He's a great guy – hard working, a real scientific farmer, and as decent and square as they make 'em.  The only trouble with Jim is, he has too damned much pride.  Dawbridge hates him, like poison.  Jim got up on a soapbox at the last city election and told people what jellyfish they were if they elected Dawbridge's gang.  He has told Dawbridge to his face that he's a crook a sneak-thief and a liar.  Now Dawbridge has him where he wants him.  Have you seen the Hearthstone girl?"
Gillian told him of meeting the lovely orphan, of her story of the murder, and of delivering her to the DA.
"She might lie Truman out of this," Gillian said, "except that she can't lie.  What do you know about her?"
"Finest kid that ever breathed," said the young lawyer.  "She's as game as she's good-looking, and clever to boot.  Jim and I used to play games with her, trying to make her tell lies.  It's a funny kink.  She literally can't tell a lie.  She gets all red and chokes up if she tries.  She would have made a fine wife for Jim.  She has the finest principles of any girl I ever knew.  I wish she'd fallen for me instead of Jim."
The voting man paused and looked anxiously at Gillian.
"Mr. Hazeltine, if it was anybody but Jim, I wouldn't touch this case.  I know he was a damned fool to kill that man, but he did it, and I'd give anything to help him out of the jam he's in. He and Nellie are simply crazy about each other.  I feel he had just as much moral right to kill Grundle as one would to kill a rattlesnake that was getting ready to strike in a minute or two.  I certainly do wish you'd take this case."
"I'm no miracle worker," Gillian said.  "I have no more idea how that boy could be saved than you have."
Seth Peters grinned.  "Yeah?  Well, I'd lay a bet that you'd have some sweet ideas before many hours had passed.  I'd match you against a dozen Elton Dawbridges.  This is my first murder case and I don't know what to do.  I'm not very clever.  All I know how to do is put my head down and my fists up, and slam into 'em."
"Tell me about Grundle," Gillian, said.
"I never knew the truth about that skunk," the young man replied, "until they arrested Jim.  Then Jim spilled the works – told me what he'd learned from Nellie the night before he shot Grundle.  Grundle was a regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – a model citizen in the city, a wife beater in the home.  He was on the board of education and the board of charities, taking orders from Dawbridge.  They were a pair of fine thieves.  Only one man knows the truth about Grundle's home life – the truth about the real man."
"Jeff Pavlitch?" Gillian said.
"Yes, sir.  Pavlitch knows."
"If you could put the farm hand on the stand and draw a story out of him of Grundle's brutality, it might make a jury disagree," Gillian offered.
"But what would my case be?  Proving that Grundle was a Jekyll and Hide – prove that Grundle was infatuated with Nellie and intended to kill his wife and marry her.  The will is proof enough of that.  Dawbridge will try to convince the jury that the girl is little better than a woman of the streets – that she somehow cajoled Grundle into making her his heiress.  He will have to ruin her reputation to put his case over – unless he relies on her true story."
"Would you like to drive out and see Pavlitch?" the young lawyer asked.
"Yes.  We might see how reliable he is.  There's one more question.  This morning's papers carried the story that Dawbridge had accused the Clinton orphanage superintendent of gross misuse of office – it amounted to an indictment for white slavery.  Is that story true?"
"No, sir!" Seth Peters indignantly exclaimed.  "It is another of Dawbridge's filthy lies.  Old Pete Wardell has been the orphanage superintendent for twenty-seven years, and a finer, more decent old man doesn't live.  Dawbridge had his ax out for Pete because the old man once told several people that Dawbridge was a crook.  Dawbridge has a worthless, drunken brother he wants to put in Pete's job.
"Old Mr. Wardell was up to see me this afternoon.  He'd had a heart attack.  The scandal has just about killed him.  He's been proud of his record at the orphanage and proud of the decent boys and girls to whom he was practically a father.  Dawbridge's rotten lies cast a cloud of suspicion on every girl who ever lived in the orphanage.  That was what hurt Mr. Wardell.  I certainly do wish, Mr. Hazeltine, that you'd jump into this situation and roll up your sleeves and–" 
He stopped as a sharp knock occurred at the door.
"Come in!" he shouted.
The door opened.  A tall, thin woman with sharp, black eyes came in and closed the door firmly behind her.  Her hair, which was black, was obviously dyed, for her face had the sharpness and the lines which hair dyeing somehow brings out.
She glared at Gillian.
"Are you Gillian Hazeltine?" 
He nodded.  "Yes, madam." 
"My name is Nettie Jarvis.  You're just the man I want to see."

CHAPTER 7
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

A MUFFLED exclamation of impatience escaped the younger lawyer.  Miss Jarvis," he said, "I told you this afternoon that I simply cannot make use of your testimony.  Mr. Hazeltine and I are very busy and–"
"Not too busy to talk to me," Miss Jarvis said grimly.  She looked searchingly at Gillian.  "So you're Gillian Hazeltine, the great criminal lawyer.  My, but this is certainly a pleasure, Mr. Hazeltine!  I've read about all your trials.  When I heard the rumor that you were in Clinton, I wore myself out trying to find you."
Gillian's eyes were sparkling with secret amusement.
"I understand, Miss Jarvis," he said, "that on the morning of Amos Grundle's murder, you saw a tall black bearded man follow him from his house and into the woods."
The seamstress's black eyes glittered.
"That's true, Mr. Hazeltine.  I was riding along the road on my bicycle.  What's funny about that?" she demanded, glaring at Gillian.  "I'm a poor woman.  I can't afford a car.  I've ridden a bicycle since I was a girl years before you were born.  It's much pleasanter than walking."
"And very good exercise," Gillian said in a subdued voice.
"Elegant exercise!" Miss Jarvis cried.  "Look how slim I am!  I don't have to take Hollywood diets and drink prune juice by the gallon to reduce.  It's bicycling that does it.  If these modern girls would only–"
"You were saying," Gillian gently broke in,  "that you were riding past Grundle's house on your bicycle the morning he was shot."
The black eyes glowed.  "Yes, sir.  It was a little before ten in the morning.  I should say it was approximately nine forty-three.  I was on my way to Mrs. Brubaker's, five miles farther along the road, to help make the clothes for her new baby.  Mrs. Brubaker will testify to this.
"As I was passing the Grundles' front yard – their house is close to the road, you know – I saw Mr. Grundle walk out of the back door with a rifle under his arm.  Then I saw a face peering out at him from the bushes."
"Was this the man with the black beard?" Gillian asked.  Seth Peters softly groaned, as one might who has heard a story for the fifth time, and an absurdly false story at that.
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine.  He was a great tall man.  He wore a black slouch hat and had a long tangled black beard.  And as Mr. Grundle started off in the direction of the quarry, this tall, mysterious man stepped out from the bushes and stealthily followed him.  He crept from tree to tree like an Indian."
"Did you ever," Seth Peters growled, "see an Indian creep from tree to tree?"
"I go to the movies!" Miss Jarvis snapped.  "I guess I know how Indians creep!"
"Go on with your story, Miss Jarvis," Gillian encouraged her.
"Mr. Grundle vanished into the woods," she obliged, "with this tall, sinister-looking man dodging around behind.  That is all I saw except that there was a mysterious bulge in the man's hip pocket."
"Such as a revolver might make?"
"Exactly!"
"Then how do you account for the fact that Grundle was shot with a diamond?"
"The stranger stole the diamond the night before from Mr. Truman's house."
"But why did he waste a perfectly good diamond on killing a man when an ordinary bullet would have sufficed?"
"He wanted to cast suspicion on Mr. Truman."
"Why?"
"How do I know who Mr. Truman's enemies are?" the old lady testily answered.  "It was probably some enemy out of his Past."
"Mr. Truman is rather a young man to have much of a past.  From what I've gathered, his 'past' was devoted mostly to getting an agricultural school education – and working his farm."
"I don't say," Miss Jarvis answered, "that I know who the man was.  If I did, I'd shout it from the housetops.  What I say is that it is a wicked shame for Mr. Truman, who is a fine young man, to be locked up for a murder he did not commit."
"How was this black-bearded stranger dressed, Miss Jarvis?"
That was an easy one for the seamstress.  She took it in her stride:
"He wore a black slouch hat, a black sateen shirt, a vivid red bandanna handkerchief, blue serge pants – like an old time gold miner – and he had on a pair of scuffed brown oxfords.  As I told you, that is what I saw–"
"While you were bicycling past the Grundle farm?"
"Yes, sir.  I wanted you to know this."  She started for the door.  "If you want to use my testimony I'll gladly take the witness stand and tell in detail what I saw.  I have withheld a certain amount of detail to use in the courtroom scene."
"Scene?" Gillian said, as if baffled.
"I mean, in the courtroom.  I will bide my time.  And I must say it's an honor to meet you. I knew you would be courtly and gallant and considerate."  She shot a sour glance at Seth Peters.  "Which is more," she added acidly, "than I can say for some of the younger members of your glorious profession."
Gillian gave her his courtliest, his most gallant bow.  And when the door was closed and she was safely out of earshot, he sat down and covered his face with his hands.
But Seth Peters did not see the humor of it.
"She's nothing but a damned old pest," the young man said.
Gillian feebly waved his hand.  "I know, I know," he said weakly.  "The poor old girl is in an awful predicament.  Her pride is involved.  She has told this lie and she has to stick to it."
"She's the worst old liar in town.  She's notorious."
"Yes.  She's a congenital liar – just as Nellie Hearthstone is a congenital, truth-teller.  Miss Jarvis has doubtless led a dry, dull, uneventful life.  Who knows what glorious adventures she lives through as she bicycles about the county?  This lie – this romance she told us about a man got up like something out of an old-fashioned stage melodrama – is like the bear that had a man holding its tail.  The man didn't dare let go.  Miss Jarvis must stand by her lie.  She must nourish it along.  It is already so real to her that she believes it herself.  Do you know who that black-bearded man really is?"
Seth Peters looked perplexed, "What do you mean, Mr. Hazeltine, who is he?"
"I'll tell you," Gillian laughed.
"That man is our old friend – the bogey man.  He is the mysterious, invisible bad man we think about as kids.  We think we forget about him when we grow up, but we never do.  He always bobs up at murder trials.  There was a black-bearded, mysterious stranger mentioned in the Hall-Mills case.  When Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray killed Albert Snyder, she told the police that a black-bearded giant of a man had come to the bedside, bent over her husband and bashed in his skull with sash weight – or was it a hammer?  We hate to admit it, but most of us still believe in the bogeyman.  Who else is it that makes us scared to walk into a black room?"
"I suppose you're right," Seth Peters politely agreed, "but it's pretty obvious that we can't save Jim Truman with a bogey man alibi."
Gillian shrugged.  "You never know who or what you may use in a case as tough as this one," he said.  "Shall we drive out and see how Jeff Pavlitch stacks up as the one and only witness for the defense?  How old is he?"
"About forty-seven."
"Married?"
"Yes, sir; to an American woman.  I talked to them yesterday.  As a matter of fact, Pavlitch has been talking pretty freely.  He hated Grundle."
"If I were you, Peters, I'd send him away until the: very day you want his testimony.  Don't let Dawbridge know about him.  Don't even let him appear at the grand jury inquiry.  He is your table card."

CHAPTER 8
SECOND MURDER

TWO reporters were lounging in Gillian's coupe, and three more were making themselves at home on the running board when the two lawyers crossed the sidewalk.
One of the five was Josh Hammersley of the Times – an old and trusted friend of Gillian's.  Josh threw away a cigarette and said:
Yeah, I expected to run into you out here, Gill.  A good wholesome murder can't take place anywhere these days without your being in it up to your ears."
"I'm not in this one, Josh."
"You will be, sooner or later.  If I were a lawyer, I would climb aboard if only to annoy Dawbridge.  We ornaments of the press have developed acute cases of tin-ear – it is from listening to the roar of bouquets hurled by Mr. Elton Dawbridge at Mr. Elton Dawbridge."
A reporter seized Gillian roughly by the arm.  "Say," he barked, "who killed Amos Grundle?"
"Cock Robin," Gillian answered.
"The bogey man," Seth Peters sourly added.  "He has long black whiskers, he creeps from tree to tree like an Indian, he shoots his victims with diamonds, and he can be seen only from a bicycle."
"There's your story," Gillian said.  "Go and interview Nettie Jarvis, the seamstress."
The reporters collectively groaned.  Josh Hammersley said, plaintively: "Interview her!  We can't get away from her.  She asked me an hour ago if I would like to run the story of her life in serial form.  Gill, be a good egg and let us have the exclusive story that you are taking this case."
Gillian shook his head.  "When I go back to town tonight, I'm washed up."
"You mean," Josh guessed, "Truman hasn't a chance.  He is sewed up in a bag and the bag is dangling from Dawbridge's scalp belt.  Well – give us some dope on the Hearthstone girl.  What is she – the sweetheart of Clinton County?"
"Nope.  I talked to her for four hours.  She's decent, cultured, refined.  A wonderful girl."
"Can Dawbridge make her testify against Truman?"
"Yes."
One of the reporters grinned.
"You're saying, Mr. Hazeltine, that the Hearthstone girl saw Truman murder Amos Grundle.  That's great!  Now, tell us how he happened to use that damned diamond."
Gillian looked at him coldly, then at Josh Hammersley.
"Josh," he said, "this young man is evidently new and overambitious.  You might take him aside and tell him how it distresses me when I am misquoted.  I'll give you boys an interesting sidelight on the Hearthstone girl.  She is a psychological rarity.  She literally cannot tell a lie.  Because of her obscure origin, she has a tremendous amount of pride.  This excessive pride has made her so honest, so truthful that the normal man or woman could not grasp it."
"Is this straight?" Josh demanded.  Gillian nodded.
"Wait a minute!" Seth Peters interrupted.  "Aren't you apt to hurt the case, Mr. Hazeltine, by letting that out?"
"Not a bit of it.  What the case most needs is public sympathy.  When the public learns that Nellie Hearthstone is a decent, high-principled girl, sentiment will swing to her.  Public sentiment is the most powerful weapon a lawyer can use."
"How about that will?" a reporter asked.
"Miss Hearthstone told me flatly that she will not touch a cent of Grundle's, money."
"What's the defense going to be?"
"Ask Mr. Peters.  He is Truman's lawyer."
Several of the reporters grinned.  One of them told Peters, "You'd better kidnap Mr. Hazeltine, buddy.  If you don't, when Elton Dawbridge gets through with you, you'll ride out of this town with a lily in your hand."
Gillian said quickly, "Let's go, Peters."  He climbed behind the wheel.  Peters got in beside him.
It was beginning to sprinkle.  Lightning flickered in the west, and the faraway rumbling of thunder rolled through the streets like the sound of distant drums.
Following Seth Peters' directions, Gillian drove rapidly out of town along a badly rutted dirt road.  At the Grundle farmhouse, which was in total darkness, Gillian slowed but did not stop.  Several cars were parked in the ditches.  Flashlights gleamed, like fireflies.  Curiosity-seekers were evidently swarming over the premises.  Gillian drove on.
"There's a car following us," Peters said presently.  "I think those reporters are after us."
"We'll have to duck them.  Where is Pavlitch's house?"
"Up a side road a half mile on.  Step on it!"
Gillian stepped on it.  As they neared the side road, he switched off his lights and drove slowly around the corner.  After an interval, two cars went flying past on the main road.  Gillian waited until they were well past, then switched on the dimmers and drove on.
Rain was now failing heavily.  It made of the small structure, which Seth Peters designated as the Pavlitch farmhouse, a somewhat ghostly residence.  It was unpainted, and the weather had blackened it.  Oil lamps at curtainless windows added to its air of desolation.
Even before Gillian had turned off the ignition, he heard the muffled wailing of a woman.  It was a shivery sound.  He ran across the yard and into the house.  The room he entered showed various evidences of poverty.  There were no rugs or carpets on the scrubbed floor.  The furniture was poor and shabby.
A man was lying on a couch against one wall.  Beside the couch a woman was huddled in a chair, wailing.
She was unaware of Gillian's presence until he spoke; then she sprang up with a scream.
Gillian felt more than a little faint.  Accustomed as he was to murders, the sight of a dead man always affected him.  And one glance at the figure on the couch was sufficient to tell him that Jeff Pavlitch was dead.
The woman was too hysterical to do more than babble, and wail.  But Gillian, gently questioning her, gathered that it had all happened within the last two hours.  A man had come to the door and asked Jeff to step outside.  He had been gone about an hour.  Mrs. Pavlitch, worried over the sinister developments of the past week, had gone out to look for him.
She had found him, lying in the ditch at the fork, with his skull crushed in, as if he had been struck with terrific force by some heavy object – a club, perhaps.  She had run back for a wheelbarrow and brought him home in that.
Seth Peters, almost as white as the man on the couch, was staring past Gillian.
"The coroner," he said shakily, "will find that he was struck by a passing car-driver unknown.  Page Elton Dawbridge!"
Gillian led him outside.  As they returned to the coupe through the rain, the young lawyer said savagely: "It gives me a choked, strangled feeling, as if everything was closing in.  Vollmer, the coroner, is Dawbridge's brother-in-law.  You know as well as I do that Dawbridge put Pavlitch on the spot.  He isn't going to leave the smallest stone unturned.  He has killed the only witness I could possibly count on for help.  What can I do now?"
Peters cursed in his half-hysterical horror.

CHAPTER 9
THE $150,000 BET

BACK in Seth Peters's office, Gillian took a cigar from his pocket, lighted it and began pacing slowly up and down the small room, with a vertical groove between his eyes, a pale banner of smoke trailing after him.
Seth Peters sat hunched on the edge of his desk, his smoldering blue eyes following Gillian's strides, his face haggard, his air one of hopeless defeat.  He had seen, in the past few days, the crumbling of his hopes to get a foothold in Clinton and to deal summarily with the rascals who ran Clinton.
He was whipped by ruthless might before he had a chance to fight.  If the truth were known, he was more than a little disappointed in Gillian Hazeltine.  He had heard so much about this slender, keen-eyed man.  His enemies called him the Silver Fox – and not because Hazeltine's black hair was prematurely sprinkled with silver.  He was supposed to be so brilliant, so resourceful.  Well, if he was so damned clever, why didn't he do something?  Why did he talk so childishly about bogeymen?
Gillian now and then halted his stroll, removed the cigar from his mouth, and gazed thoughtfully, almost hopefully, at the ash.  Then, with an imperceptible headshake, he strolled on.
Ideas were coming to Gillian from the thin air or, perhaps, the cigar ash, but he discarded them as rapidly as they presented themselves.
On one of his turns, feet were heard on the stairs.  The flimsy building vibrated with the heavy footfalls.
Gillian stopped in his tracks and owlishly gazed at the door.  Seth Peters swung about and glared at the frosted glass panel.
"More reporters," Gillian guessed.
"Nettie Jarvis," Seth Peters said cynically, "about to divulge further details on the bogey man."
The door opened.  It was Elton Dawbridge.  His theatrical black eyes seemed to snap.  His wavy black hair was disordered.  He stepped over the threshold and firmly closed the door behind him.  His eyes danced from Seth Peters to Gillian.
The county prosecutor placed his back against the door.  He looked dangerous.  There was somehow in his appearance and air a suggestion of a panther crouched to spring.
"I want to know," he said coldly, "what you are doing in this town, Hazeltine."
Gillian leisurely replaced the cigar in his mouth and puffed at it.  The question seemed to puzzle him.  It was as if he were asking himself just what he was doing in this town.
"I'll tell you," Gillian drawled.  "I'm curious to find out how you're going to launder Clinton's dirty linen.  There's so much of it to wash that I'm anxious to know where you're going to begin."
"Now it's my turn to ask one," Seth Peters whipped out as he rose from the desk.  "You dirty rat, who invited you to come into my office?"
The county prosecutor glanced at him and smiled.  It was a thin, contemptuous smile.  He wasn't afraid of this cocky youngster.  His eyes, when he swung them back to Gillian, were, however, hard and measuring.
"Are you coming into this, Hazeltine, as his associate counsel?"
"No!" Seth Peters snapped.  "And I'd give my right arm if he were!  We'd give you a run for your money – you rat!"
Elton Dawbridge ignored him.  Gillian blew three perfect smoke rings at the ceiling.  The county prosecutor smiled.
"You've made a very wise decision, Hazeltine.  I don't have to tell you what this case represents to me.  I'll come clean, because I want you to realize that this case is dynamite.  This case is an opportunity for which I've been waiting for years.  It means I'm through being a hick town lawyer.  I'm going to be the next attorney general of this State."
Seth Peters was breathing hard through dilating nostrils.
"That isn't news," he said hotly.  "This isn't a question of whether Jim Truman goes to the chair rightly or wrongly, to you.  His electrocution is nothing to you but a peg to hang publicity on."
The county prosecutor continued to ignore him.  "You see what I mean, don't you, Hazeltine?"
"Yes," Gillian said, "I see what you mean."
"And you see that there's no room here, don't you, for your clever tricks, courtroom surprises, lying witnesses, bought judges."
"It's funny," Gillian remarked, "the way you harp on my tricks.  How could any trick – any kind of trick possibly save that Truman boy from the chair, with you prosecuting, Lindley presiding, and a handpicked jury with a verdict decided before the show starts?"
Elton Dawbridge grinned. 
"You have the situation nicely sized up, haven't you?  I'd be willing to bet you that all the tricks in your bag wouldn't upset that scheme."
Gillian lifted his heavy black eyebrows.  "Really, Elton?  I didn't know you were a gambler.  I thought you never laid money on anything but fixed fights."
"This fight is fixed."
"But just how much of a bet did you have in mind?"
"I'd bet everything I own!"
"Let's get this straight.  You would bet everything you own that I could not spring any surprise, or trick, to knock this beautiful scheme of yours into a cocked hat?"
The county prosecutor was looking at him with narrowed eyes.
"That's what I said!" he snapped.  I'd bet everything, I own including the shirt on my back that my scheme is going through as I've stated."
"How much," Gillian inquired, "is everything you own, converted into cold cash?"
Elton Dawbridge laughed harshly.  It sounded like a bark.
"A hundred and fifty thousand dollars!"
Gillian looked astonished.  "You really mean, Elton, that you'd bet that sum that I could not spring a surprise that would ruin your little scheme?"
"Every dollar of it!  That's how sure I am.  That puts a cash value on the risk you'd run in touching this case.  You can consider it, if you wish, a warning."
Gillian was studying his cigar ash.  He looked at Dawbridge gravely.
"Elton," he said, "you aren't being fair.  You know you're taking advantage of my worst weakness.  You know how I love to gamble.  You know I can't resist a sporting proposition."
The county prosecutor reached for the doorknob.  "This joke's gone far enough.  Get out of this town, Hazeltine, and stay out."
"But I'm taking your bet!" Gillian answered.  "I'm betting you a hundred and fifty thousand that I can upset your little scheme.  Supposing we each deposit one hundred and fifty thousand cash in any bank you name in escrow.  Winner takes all.  If you land Jim Truman in the hot seat – you get it all.  If I get him an unconditional verdict – the pot's mine."
The county prosecutor was glaring at him.
"You can't do it honestly!" he barked.
"My dear man," Gillian smiled coldly, "when was I ever accused of being honest?"
"All right!" Dawbridge shouted.  "I say you can't do it honestly or dishonestly–"
"Does that mean – the bet stands?"
"You're damned right it does!  Bring out your tricks!  Trot out your surprises!  I've got this case right here!"  He extended a clenched fist.  "Right in here!  This is my town.  The case will be tried by my judge.  You're getting weak-minded, Hazeltine.  You're a fool!"
"I've been called worse names than that by rank amateurs," Gillian cheerfully returned.  "It's too bad about poor old Jeff Pavlitch, isn't it?"
The county prosecutor's eyes narrowed and hardened.
"What do you mean?"
"Haven't you heard?  He was run down and killed by an automobile just a couple of hours ago."
"By an automobile?"
Gillian smiled.  "You didn't think, did you, Elton, that some one called him out of the house and led him down to the fork where a gang was waiting to bash his skull in?"
Elton Dawbridge licked his lips.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm talking," Gillian said calmly, "about the only witness who could take the stand and tell the real truth about your sidekick Amos Grundle.  Pavlitch is dead."
Dawbridge shook his head with a thin smile.
"Isn't that too bad?  It's really a pity.  Poor Pavlitch!  You know, Hazeltine, it's a queer thing, but I've noticed around here, in Clinton, that people who talk too much often do get hit by passing automobiles.  They suddenly seem to grow careless with their lives, as it were.  You might bear that in mind."
" Thank you," Gillian said, "I will.  And I want to tell you a queer thing, too.  There is a gang of young fellers back home who seem to have the strangest respect for my life – and a positive dislike for any one who takes liberties with it.  A man who didn't seem to like me tried to kill me one time by putting dynamite under the hood of my car.  When I turned on the ignition, an electrical connection was to be made that would set the dynamite off.  But one of this gang of young fellers caught him as he was attaching this to my car.  I know it sounds incredible, but when that man's body was found in the river a week later, there were two hundred and seven bullet holes in him by actual count."
The county prosecutor was grinning.  "I understand.  You think you can bluff me, don't you, Hazeltine?  You think you're going to lick me with one hand tied behind you."
"Not at all," Gillian protested.  "I am a very modest man.  I expect to use both hands and both feet."
"And strike below the belt plenty!"
"When in Rome," Gillian answered.
"I always conduct myself in accordance with the standards set by the Romans.  In Clinton, I will naturally stoop to anything.  One of the reasons for my success is my adaptability.  I never hesitate a moment in adopting the methods of my opponents regardless of their questionability."
Dawbridge nodded, still smiling.  "I think we understand each other perfectly.  Are there any details we haven't discussed?"
Gillian was suddenly hard of lip and eye.
"We will have to have one ironclad agreement before you leave this office.  There is to be absolutely no third-degree stuff pulled on the Hearthstone girl."
"I wouldn't dream of such a thing!" Dawbridge exclaimed.
"No clever little tortures," Gillian said.  "No dope in her food.  No keeping her awake hour after hour.  If you or any of your pups lay a hand on that girl – fireworks!  With machine guns and anything else available.  The same goes for Truman, Question them within legal limits – no more.  I'm going to keep in touch with those two babes in the wood.  If they say you're getting rough – I'm just as apt as not to bring that gang here.  And if any attempts are made to prevent me from having access at any hour to them, I'll blast.  Got that?"
The county prosecutor opened the door.
"My!" he breathed.  "But aren't you hard!  You send cold chills all over me, Mr. Hazeltine.  I'm almost afraid of my own shadow.  I've got it.  And what I said before still goes, you're weak-minded."

CHAPTER 10
OPENING SHOT

WHEN Dawbridge was gone, Gillian resumed his pacing.  He walked up and down the little office, puffing at his cigar.  Seth Peters followed his movements now with wide-eyed amazement verging on bewilderment.
"Gee whiz, Mr. Hazeltine," he said in an awed voice, "you must have had a swell idea all of a sudden."
The Silver Fox stopped and looked at him.  "What do, you mean?"
"Well, a minute ago, you didn't have the slightest idea what Jim's defense would be.  You must have struck a dandy!"
Gillian folded his arms and looked at the pale young lawyer as if he were puzzled.
"I struck a dandy idea hours ago.  It's just beginning to grow up.  In a little more time, it's going to be ripe and husky – with whiskers."
"Whiskers?"
"Black ones."
"You're back to the bogeyman," Peters groaned.
"My dear boy, I've never let the bogey man out of my sight."
"You don't mean to tell me you are going to put Nettie Jarvis on the stand and try to make a jury believe in the black-bearded stranger?  Gee, Mr. Hazeltine, everybody in town knows she's a terrible old liar.  You'll be laughed out of court."
Gillian's eyes were twinkling.  "Think so, kid?"
"There isn't any question about it.  How can that old liar have any weight against Dawbridge's case?  There's the jeweler who knows the diamond was Jim's.  And there's the coroner who found the diamond in Grundle's heart.  Even if Nellie doesn't take the stand and spill everything with her story, Dawbridge has an airtight circumstantial case, hasn't he?"
No case is airtight until the last rivet is in."
"You're going to lose that, bet, Mr. Hazeltine."
"How," Gillian asked, "would you like to lay a little side bet?"
The young man laughed.  "I haven't even paid my last week's board bill.  Besides, I-I know you're going to win." He didn't say this very decisively.  Seth Peters was, in fact, more than doubtful that Gillian had a chance to win that bet.  But he realized that, if Gillian won the case, his own future was assured.
These reflections were interrupted by a gentle knock at the door.  The youngster called out: "Come in!"
The door opened to admit a white-haired old man.  Through thick, gold rimmed glasses he peered at Seth Peters, then at Gillian.
"Excuse me, Seth," he said.  "I thought you were alone."
"It's all right.  Come in, Pete.  This is Gillian Hazeltine.  Mr. Hazeltine, this is Pete Wardell, the orphanage superintendent.  Pete, Mr. Hazeltine is taking the case.  How's that for good news?"
The old man peered at Gillian.
"That is, indeed, good news.  I am delighted to know you, Mr. Hazeltine; and I do hope you can do something for that poor boy and Nellie.  She is a splendid girl.  She was like my own daughter."
"I take it," Gillian said, "that you did not know the kind of man Grundle was when she went to work in his house."
"I certainly did not, sir.  It came as a shocking surprise.  And the accusations made by Dawbridge, that filthy-minded, despicable–"  The old man's voice was shaking so with emotion he could not go on.  He cleared his throat and said: "I am sure that you will put that rascal where he belongs, Mr. Hazeltine."
"I'm going to do my best."
The orphanage superintendent turned to Seth.  "You are still on the case?"
"Yes.  Mr. Hazeltine is, nominally, my associate counsel, but actually I am his office boy.  I'm going to learn something about criminal law.  It will be a wonderful chance for me."
"I came up here," Pete Wardell said, "to tell you a rather curious thing I just learned, Seth.  It may be of no value – it may be useful.  I just found Jumbo Waller, lying drunk in a doorway, and I took him home. Jumbo," the old man explained to Gillian, "is a sort of assistant to Dr. Vollmer, the coroner.  The coroner has an undertaking establishment which serves, in times like this, as the city morgue.  The body of Amos Grundle is there now.  It is to be taken to the crematory tomorrow morning."
"I read about that in the papers," Gillian said.  "Grundle once stated that he wished to be cremated.  He had some curious superstition about being buried."
"Yes, sir.  And this Jumbo Waller told me a mighty curious thing.  He said that Dr. Vollmer did not find that diamond in Grundle's heart at all."
"Really?"
"Yes, sir.  It was embedded in a rib above the heart – the third rib down."
Seth Peters grunted.  "Well, it served its purpose just the same.  The shock of the impact killed him."
"I suppose so.  But I thought you might like to know about it."
"Thanks, Pete," the young lawyer said, "but the status of the case remains the same as it was.  Truman killed him somehow by firing the diamond into him.  That's all the law cares about.  Isn't that so, Mr. Hazeltine?"
Gillian was looking at the orphanage superintendent.
"Do you know, Mr. Wardell, how much of an autopsy Vollmer performed?"
"According to jumbo, he only probed for the bullet – and found the diamond stuck in that third rib."
"Didn't he cut into his heart?"
"No, sir.  He found the diamond and quit with that."
"That's curious."
"Of course, Mr. Hazeltine, the body had been in the water several days.  It must be a sickening job to work on a body that's as far gone as that."
"True."
"Why bother with going further with an autopsy?"  Seth Peters impatiently asked.  "The diamond killed him – and they found that."
Gillian was pale.  "I want to take a look at that body," he said.  His aversion to dead bodies made him feel ill already.
"I don't see what's to be gained," Seth Peters protested.
"You don't have to go."
"Oh, I'll go.  But it strikes me as being a waste of time and emotion.  I hate dead men."
But he accompanied Gillian to Vollmer's Undertaking Parlors.
Two men were lounging in the entrance – two large, tough, grim looking men with police clubs.  One of them said, gruffly, "No one's allowed in here."
"But," Seth Peters protested, "we are Jim Truman's lawyers.  We want to inspect Amos Grundle's body."
"Nothing doing.  The coroner's inquest was held this mornin'.  No one's allowed in here."
"Whose orders?" Gillian asked.
"The county prosecutor's."
Gillian looked past him into the dimly lighted interior of the undertaking establishment.  He saw four men lounging in there, armed as were these two, with clubs.
The watchdog growled: "Yeah and there's four more lookin' after the back door."
"Amos Grundle, up there in heaven," Gillian said dryly, "strumming away on his golden harp, must feel very much flattered at such protection."
"Yeah – and maybe you two guys can mooch."
Out of the guards' earshot, Gillian said, in perplexed tones, "Now, just what is there so precious about the mortal remains of Amos Grundle?"
"I think the diamond is locked up in the coroner's safe," the young lawyer answered.  "It's had a lot of publicity.  Dawbridge is probably afraid some yegg will take it."
"A four and a half carat diamond would interest no yegg," Gillian pointed out.
"Then he may be afraid we'll steal it, to rob him of evidence."
"I'd question that," Gillian said.  "If the diamond is so precious, why hasn't he stored it in a bank vault?  Peters," he went on briskly, "I'm going back to Greenfield to look up a couple of my friends.  While I'm gone, drop in at the jail and tell Nellie and Jim that I am going to do all I can for them, and that they are under no conditions to say a word about the murder to any one – not even to you.  Dawbridge will move heaven and earth to get a confession out of them.  So far, neither of them has admitted the slightest knowledge of the murder.  Tell them I said to keep mum."
"Yes, sir.  Will you be back tonight?"
"As fast as I can burn up the roads.  When you have delivered my message to Nellie and Jim, go to your office and stay there.  Don't let any excitement which may occur on the street attract you out.  Understand?"
"No, sir; but I'll do what you say."
They parted at Gillian's car.  The rain had stopped.  Gillian climbed in and raised the side windows of his coupe, although the night was not cold.
He drove under the covered bridge.  A black Packard roadster followed him.  It was without lights.  It tailed him for five miles, along winding roads up through the hills.  When Gillian reached the wider, straight concrete stretch which went through bogs and thickets to the village of Chester, he opened the throttle.
So did the driver of the black roadster.  At a four corners, the roadster swept up beside him.  He had no warning of its presence until headlights flashed along the road beside him.  Then it was abreast.
He saw dimly a man bending over the wheel; another man crouching down in the rumble seat.
There was a spurting of blue-red flame.  A savage shattering sound occurred at the window beside which Gillian sat.  The coupe slewed away, and the roadster swerved off into the left branch of the intersecting road.  Its ruby taillight dwindled, vanished completely.
Gillian drove on.  A glance had told him that the bulletproof window was ruined.  He was angry.  Bulletproof windows were expensive.  But he was relieved, too.   Elton Dawbridge had fired the opening shot in the war, and missed.  Gillian only hoped that the following ones would leave him unscathed.  At all events, the fight was on – and it was Gillian's next move.

CHAPTER 11
OUTSIDE THE LAW

WITH his accelerator flat on the floor, except for curves, crossings and villages, Gillian drove the forty miles in less than fifty minutes.  It was midnight when he reached Greenfield.
He drove past his own house and along the exclusive residential parkway above the Sangamo, to turn with shrieking tires into a crushed-stone driveway.  He stopped under the Porte-cochere of a spacious colonial house in which one window alone was alight.  He ran up the steps and pressed the bell.
His summons was answered presently by a tall, middle-aged man with iron-gray hair, a pair of cool, steady blue eyes, who wore a black dressing gown over pajamas.  There was a book under his arm and a pipe in his mouth.
"Good evening, Hank," Gillian said.  "It's a shame to disturb you, but how would you like to do me a great favor?"
Dr. Henry Hoffman's cool, steady blue eyes narrowed.  Then he smiled whimsically.
"It's nice of you to put it that way," he said.  "When you snap your fingers, I jump – as who doesn't?"
Gillian looked displeased.  "Let's not put things on that basis," he said.  "You make it sound like blackmail – a word I particularly detest."
"Very well, Gillian.  What can I do?"
"Take some X-ray photographs of a corpse.  Have you a portable X-ray outfit here or will we have to go to your laboratory?"
"I have one here.  Tell me, how long has this corpse been a corpse?"
"About a week."
"Hm.  What are the circumstances?"
"I'll tell you as we drive along.  Don't bother changing your clothes.  There will be no ladies."
The Roentgenologist, despite his eyes, made no objections to this informal suggestion.  But his mouth tightened peculiarly.  The X-ray expert did not know whether Gillian had made that reference to ladies pointedly or not.  Ladies had been responsible for a certain painful predicament from which Gillian had extricated Dr. Hoffman and earned his lifelong gratitude – and obedience.
The two men loaded several heavy black boxes into the rear deck of Gillian's coupes and started off.
"This corpse," Gillian explained, as, he headed the car toward the business section, "reached its present distressing condition because of a murderous attack by an assailant or assailants unknown."
"Where is it, Gillian?"
"Clinton."
"Ah!  Not the farmer the papers have been so full about!"
"Yep.  Amos Grundle."
"He was killed in an amazing way, wasn't he?  A diamond in the heart.  It stirs the imagination."
"An odor of rats has been detected," Gillian informed him.  "The diamond did not reach his heart.  It was found embedded in the third rib from the top – above the heart."
"The shock might have caused death."
"How do I know," Gillian inquired, "that a ruby, sapphire, emerald or even a pearl does not exist in some other part of the anatomy?"
"Each of those stones shows up nicely on a fluoroscopic screen," the doctor said.
"My dear Hank," Gillian laughed, "one of the delightful things about you is your ability to grasp any idea with a minimum of explanation. You have that rare quality, intuition.  No wonder women are mad about you."
"I have taken some remarkably sharp photographs of bullets lodged in backbones," the doctor grimly retorted.  "A farmer named Truman, I understand, is charged with sowing diamonds not wisely but too well.  Is there another suspect?"
"A black-bearded stranger."
"John Doe?"
"In my simple lexicon, he is the bogey man."
"The bogey man exists," Dr. Hoffman said gravely.  "I have encountered him under beds."
Gillian laughed.  "Do all husbands wear black beards?"  He quickly added: "Our corpse is to be cremated to-morrow morning." 
"That explains the urgency.  Am I to take the stand for the defense?"
Gillian sighed.  "If I only knew who would take the witness stand for the defense!  A case like this is similar to opening a safe.  You can try hundreds of combinations, but only one will work.  I am still looking for the right combination."
They had drawn up before a poolroom which masked one of Greenfield's most notorious speakeasies.
"I'll be back in minutes," Gillian said, and went in.
He walked to the rear end of the poolroom, which was full of men and thick with smoke, opened a door and walked down a hall to another door.  On this he rapped three times, then twice.
He waited, knowing that he was being inspected by an ingenious system of mirrors.
The door opened.  A sallow-faced man of forty grinned nervously.
"Good evening, Mr. Hazeltine.  Something up?"
"Where's Silky?"
"He's right here, Mr. Hazeltine."
Gillian found Silky Davis at the bar, nursing a highball: a slim, elegant, white-faced young man with black marbles for eyes.
"Busy?" Gillian asked him.
"Not too busy to do anything I can for you, Mr. Hazeltine.  What's up?"
"Come outside."
The elegant young man followed Gillian out to the street.  With his thumb, Gillian indicated the splintered bulletproof window.
Silky Davis whistled softly.  "Browning," he said.  "Where'd that happen?"
"This side of Clinton."
"Oh, yeah?  You mixin' into that mess, Mr. Hazeltine?"
Gillian nodded.  The elegant young man shook his head.
"They've got a hard mob up there, Mr. Hazeltine.  It's a small town, but it's a halfway point, as you know, for a lot of Canadian booze – a kind of a bottleneck, you might say.  They don't care who they shoot."
"Afraid of 'em?" Gillian quietly asked.
"Who?  Me?  Say, listen, Mr. Hazeltine, if you have a little job you want my boys to do for you up in Clinton, say it, Mr. Hazeltine, and the job is done."
"This has to be done immediately."
"Sure thing!  We do everything immediately, and sometimes even sooner.  Now, just what is this job?"
Gillian told him briefly.  Silky made no comments.  All he said was, "K. O., Mr. Hazeltine, K. O.  You know where the bridge is by that green roadhouse five miles outside of town?"
"Yes."
"We'll be there three minutes after you are.  Just leave it to me.  Leave all the details to me.  See you in church, Mr. Hazeltine."
That was the way Silky Davis did business.  Gillian drove out of town on the road toward Clinton and waited at the bridge by the green roadhouse.  He had not waited five minutes when three expensive sedans rolled up.  Silky, behind the wheel of the foremost, was smoking an opulent cigar.  He leaned out and called:
"Trail us, Mr. Hazeltine.  When you get to Clinton, the job will be done and everything will be ready for you."
A sputtering on the right became louder, and a motorcycle policeman came up and stopped between Gillian's coupe and Silky's sedan.  He looked from, one to the other; touched his cap to Gillian and said:
"What's goin' on here, Silky?"
"Why, We're going out and kill a lot o' guys, Mike.  Want to come long?"
Mike glanced, puzzled, at Gillian.  "What is going on here, Mr. Hazleton?"
"Just what Silky says, Mike.  We may kill a lot of guys.  Want to come along?"
"Where?"
"Clinton."
"No, thanks," Mike said fervently.
He wheeled about and sputtered off.  Silky started down the road for Clinton.  The other two sedans fell into line at approximately seventy miles an hour.  Gillian tried to keep up.
Mr. Hoffman said nervously: "Gillian, this is dangerous business, isn't it?"
And Gillian, laughing, answered: "Not if we slow down for intersections."
They shot across the covered bridge into Clinton five minutes after the arrival of Silky Davis's expedition.
That elegant young man had the situation well in hand.  When Gillian, stopped his car before Vollmer's Undertaking Parlors, Prosecutor Elton Dawbridge's sentinels were nowhere to be seen.  Well-dressed young men lounged in the entrance.
Silky Davis was standing in the doorway, smoking a fresh cigar and softly brushing his hands one against the other.
"It's all set, Mr. Hazeltine."
"What happened?"
"Nothing, Mr. Hazeltine.  Nothing at all.  We just drove up, unloaded, and showed 'em a little hardware.  We corralled 'em in the back yard, and they're there now – just like lambs."
"Anybody hurt?"
"Only one of them, who has a little sick headache, because his chin fell against something made of brass."
Gillian helped the doctor unload the black boxes.  But he did not accompany him into the back room.  The very thought of that back room made him feel ill.
He paced up and down until Dr. Hoffman came out, carrying the black boxes.  The doctor's face was slightly green.  He looked at Gillian, narrowed his eyes and nodded.
"How about the diamond?" Gillian asked.
"It was stopped by that third rib."
"How about the heart?"
"It was untouched."
"I'll see you to-morrow," Gillian said.  "Silky will take you home."
"Are you staying here?"
Gillian nodded.
"Will I have to go into court?"
"Certainly."  Gillian turned to Silky.  "A thousand thanks, Silky."
The gunman made a nonchalant gesture with his cigar.
"It was a pleasure, Mr. Hazeltine.  I tossed it off with my left hand.  Ask me to do something hard, some time!"
Gillian entered his car and drove to the jail.  Five reporters were dozing in chairs.  A photographer was holding his camera lovingly in his arms.
Tiptoeing through a hall and into the jail, Gillian found a turnkey.  The turnkey said that Mr. Dawbridge had given him orders to admit Mr. Hazeltine at any hour.
"Do you want to see them both?"  Gillian said that he did.  The turnkey led him down a corridor to a cell where a young man sat on the edge of cot with his face in his hands.  His sandy hair was rumpled.  He looked up.  His features were clean-cut.  He had a good chin, firm lips and direct eyes.
He sprang up.  "Are you Mr. Hazeltine?"
"Yes."
"This is Jim Truman," the turnkey said.  "The girl has got the next cell.  They're the only guests we've got right now.  We thought the poor young things might be lonesome, so we put them as close together as the law allows."
The turnkey walked away.  Gillian looked into the adjoining cell.
Nellie Hearthstone, standing at the door, resembled a ghost.  Her large dark eyes stared at him without expression.  He turned and read tragedy in the eyes of James Truman.
"You two kids," he said, "are going to have to snap out of this.  Things are never as black as they are painted.  Truman, did Seth Peters, deliver my message?"
"Yes, sir.  Before they moved us."
"They gave you new cells, eh?"
"Yes, sir; about an hour ago."
"Nice clean, new cells," Gillian said dryly.  "You can thank Mr. Dawbridge for that.  He knew you would like being close together.  Have you engaged in any conversation since this happened?"
"No, sir; we haven't said a word."
"You realize, of course," Gillian said pleasantly," that the able and distinguished county prosecutor has a Dictaphone hooked up so that he can hear every word you say, or so a stenographer can make a. record for him.  You see, Mr. Dawbridge has had very little love in his life, and is very curious to know what a pair of devoted lovers might say to each other."
Jim Truman was smiling grimly, and Gillian realized that here was a young man with courage.  And the thought of permitting Elton Dawbridge to send him to the electric chair became even more distasteful to Gillian.
He asked Jim Truman if the county prosecutor had questioned him.
"Yes, sir; he's been questioning me all day."
"How about you, Nellie?"
"They asked me questions when they arrested me.  But they haven't bothered me since."
"You have just one answer to all their future questions: 'My lawyers will answer that.'  When the grand jury meets, you will answer no questions.  You will be indicted, anyway. Try not to worry.  Things may not look so black in a few days."
Gillian said good night and left them.  On the sidewalk outside the jail he encountered the county prosecutor, an ugly light in his eyes.
"What," he clipped out, "was the big idea of that?"
"Of what?" Gillian gently asked.
"Bringing in Silky Davis's mob to stick up Vollmer's."
"The answer to that," Gillian replied, "is, what was the big idea of stationing your gang there to prevent my seeing that corpse?"
Dawbridge ignored the question and said, "I could have you arrested for that."
"Well, why don't you?"
The county prosecutor was pale and nervous.  "It may interest you to know that the coroner gave out a statement an hour ago to the press, that the earlier report of the diamond being found in Grundle's heart was erroneous."
"Why didn't he say that in the first place?"
"The sooner you learn," Dawbridge answered, "that I am running this show, and that I am going to keep on running this show, the better.  Why did you want to see that corpse?"
"Because corpses never lie."
The county prosecutor glared at him.  Gillian said: "Not upset, are you, Elton?  Not worried about anything, are you?"
Dawbridge, with an effort, grinned.
"Hazeltine," he exclaimed, "the keys of the city are yours.  Welcome to Clinton!  Pardon me if there aren't fireworks and a brass band.  You'll just have to excuse our informality.  I want to retract all my harsh words.  I want you to know that nothing could suit me better than having you here!"
"I feel flattered," Gillian said dryly.
"Am I supposed to ask why you are so delighted?"
"That's right!  Why am I so delighted?  Because you are going to keep this case on the front page.  Hazeltine, the courtroom wizard, is handling the defense.  Hooray!  Pardon my enthusiasm, but I need publicity.  The more I get, the farther I go."
"I know what you mean," Gillian said.  "The more dynamite you put under a rotten old stump, the higher it blows."
Dawbridge chuckled.  "With you in the case, I realize I was a piker to want the State attorney generalship.  I'm going to play leapfrog right over that job."
"I'm glad we're so harmonious," Gillian answered.  "But don't forget our little bet."
"Forget it!" the other cried.  "I've already spent it!"
"I hope," Gillian said, "on something worthy."
"A trip to Washington!"
"The White House?" Gillian asked in an awed voice.
"Not yet.  Only the Senate this time.  But wait!"
Gillian made a mocking bow.
"Good night, Senator!"

CHAPTER 12
POLITICAL WARFARE

TWO of the Greenfield newspapers made some reference next morning to what they humorously hailed as "Hazeltine's Bogey Man." One tabloid printed a "synthetic photograph" on the front page, showing Gillian Hazeltine chasing a black bearded dwarf with a butterfly net.  In the synthetic photograph, the dwarf had the wings of a wasp.
Editorial comment was inclined generally to the opinion that Mr. Hazeltine was turning the Grundle murder case into a three-ring circus.
Gillian remained in his office all day long.  He refused to see reporters.  His switchboard operator refused to connect any calls to him except a long distance one from his wife in Chicago.
Vee had read, in the Chicago Tribune, that Gillian was defending James Truman, and she wanted to know what it was all about.
"A couple of nice kids in hot water," he told her, "and I have a hundred and fifty-thousand-dollar bet on with the black-hearted crook who will prosecute Truman that I can get him out of it."
"I'll charter a plane and be home in two hours," Vee said.  "Love and kisses, darling."
"I need plenty," Gillian said.  It was like Vee to come when needed.
He didn't like the way the newspapers were acting.  They weren't giving Nellie Hearthstone the sympathy he had hoped for.  The afternoon Bulletin carried a half page photograph of her, with great black type above it inquiring:

GOOD OR CLEVER?

And Elton Dawbridge was quoted in a lengthy interview as saying:
"We do not want men of Gillian Hazeltine's caliber interfering in this tragedy which has plunged our county into sorrow and thrust it on the front pages of the press of the nation as the scene of a sensational and deplorable crime.  We want to get at the bottom of this case by honest, honorable methods.  We don't want golden-mouthed law-twisters clogging up the machinery of our courts.  We don't want smart Alec city lawyers whose sole ability is to obscure the issue with vaudeville tricks.  We don't want a courtroom Barnum, a legal clown, to mock at our grief.  We don't want trickery in our courts.  We want justice!"
Gillian softly announced to himself that Elton Dawbridge was the world's most mealy-mouthed hypocrite; and read on:
"A pillar of our community, a decent, upright citizen has been murdered-foully murdered.  I intend to send the blackguard who murdered him to the electric chair.  I have no hope of rewards.  In my humble way, I wish but to do my duty and to keep faith with my people, my State, and my God."
Gillian could read no more of that.  His stomach was rebelling.  He smoked twenty-two cigars that day, and devoted most of his time to gazing dreamily down the river.
Once, when Miss Walsh came in and looked at him anxiously, he said: "Tell me how you like working for a smart-Alec city lawyer, a courtroom clown?"
The girl went white.  She banged on his desk with a small clenched fist.
"Mr. Hazeltine," she said venomously, "if you don't put that crook where he belongs, I'm going to quit!  I'm going to start a farm and grow sour crabapples!  I've been with you a good many years, but I've never known you to take a case which smelled so to high heaven.  Those hypocrites!  I've never met Jim Truman and I've only had a glimpse of the Hearthstone girl, but I'd bet a month's salary they're both fine young people.  And I'd bet a year's salary that Amos Grundle was a brute and a beast."
"Did I say so?" Gillian murmured.
"Everybody knows it.  They say he was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – a model citizen in public and a wife beater at home.  Isn't it true?"
"Yes, it's true."
"I knew it!" Miss Walsh cried.  "I'd kill a man like that myself!"
Gillian smiled.  "A nice girl like you?"
"A nice girl like me!"
Miss Walsh was glaring at him.  Gillian laughed.
"What's going to happen to those two kids?" she demanded.  "As things stand, won't she have to testify against Truman?"
"Yes."
"If she doesn't talk, won't she be sent to prison for contempt of court?"
"Or worse," Gillian affirmed.
"Is it true that she's a psychological freak – can't tell a lie?"
The lawyer nodded.  His efficient secretary spread out her fingers in an imploring gesture.
"Well, what are you going to do?  You don't dare let her take the stand.  The minute she goes on the stand.  Your case is lost.  Isn't it?"
"Yes," Gillian answered.
"What are you going to do?"
"That's what I'm working on now," he said.  "You're right.  She must not take the stand.  She must not even testify at the grand jury inquiry.  Truman must lie.  He must say he did not leave his farm the night or morning of Grundle's murder.  At his trial, I will not let him take the stand."
"But how about the girl?  If you don't let her testify, and if you plant the idea that Truman was on his farm – isn't the conclusion obvious that the girl is guilty?"
Gillian nodded.  "You have summed up the problem perfectly," he said.
"Is there a solution?" Miss Walsh asked.
He turned from her and looked down the river.  He took several puffs at his cigar.  He blew several smoke rings at the ceiling.
"You've heard a great deal lately, haven't you," he asked, "about my trickery?"
"Yes, Mr. Hazeltine."
"It comes down to this," he said.  "Give a dog a bad name often enough and long enough and, pretty soon, the dog gets it into his head that he's a pretty wicked pup – I'm that dog."
Miss Walsh gave him a radiant smile.
"That's a relief," she said.  "You can't be tricky enough to please me.  I want you to make them change it from courtroom 'Barnum' to courtroom 'Houdini.'  Smash 'em!"  Her eyes sparkled.  "I meant what I said about quitting.  You know very well that, if it weren't for me snapping the whip over you, you'd never get a stroke of work done.  You lose this case and I start that sour crabapple farm!"
"I'll do my best," Gillian promised.
Governor Judson Withrow, calling from the State capitol, telephoned Gillian at his house that night.  He wanted to know what was going on in Clinton.
"What's behind the curtain, Gill?"
Gillian told him bluntly.  "It's a rats' nest.  All I'm trying to do is put a bell on the leading rat."
"If you can bell that rat," the Governor said, "you'll earn my everlasting gratitude.  If you need help – holler."
"Thanks, Judson."
In the following days, Elton Dawbridge did his best, his worst, and his utmost to plug whatever guns Gillian might be preparing to wheel into the fray.  A clever man, this Dawbridge.  He worked on public sympathy until public sympathy wavered and fell his way.  Gillian felt his steel more than once in those exciting weeks.
The mystery, meanwhile, remained a mystery.  The picturesqueness of the missile used to kill Amos Grundle tantalized the public.  There were newspaper rumors that the diamond was losing its popularity as an engagement stone.
The newspapers were very much interested in knowing why Jim Truman maintained such a grim silence.  And why did the Hearthstone girl stubbornly refuse to answer all questions?
The logical answer was summed up succinctly in the single word: Guilty.
A quickly summoned grand jury tried to question them.  Jim Truman was indicted after a hearing lasting no more than an hour.  The testimony of the coroner and John Beckwith, Clinton's leading jeweler, established a circumstantial chain which was damning.
Jim Truman was remanded to the superior court, Clinton County, Judge Lindley presiding, for trial.

CHAPTER 13
LIFE ON TRIAL

THE jury box was slow to fill.  Gillian Hazeltine suspected that the panels were handpicked.  His only effort was to fill the box with men who resided in remote parts of the county – men who might not be directly under Dawbridge's dominance.  Gillian used up his last peremptory challenge on juror Number 10.  Twenty minutes later, the trial was under way.
Gillian looked pale and haggard, as he always did at the outset of a trial.  But Elton Dawbridge looked triumphant.  His face was flushed.  His eyes glowed and sparkled.  He had the air of a man fighting his way to a triumphant victory.
At Gillian's table sat Seth Peters, Nellie Hearthstone and Jim Truman.  Nellie was all in black, which contrasted sharply with her pallor, and gave her spiritual beauty.
The State's first witness was Dr. Adam Vollmer, the coroner.  He was a horse-faced man of forty-five, with ink-black hair and very blue eyes under thick black brows.
He testified that he had been called to the flooded quarry on the afternoon of September fourth to examine a body which had come to the surface.
"Did you identify the body as the remains of Amos Grundle, of Blue Hill Road?" Dawbridge asked.
"I did," the coroner answered.
"How long would you say, in your expert opinion, the body had been in the water?"
"About a week."
"What did you do with the body?"
"I had it removed to my establishment on Main Street for a thorough examination."
"Did you perform an autopsy?"
"I examined the body superficially.  Later, I performed an autopsy."
"What did you find, doctor"
"I found that Amos Grundle had met his death as the result of a diamond that had been fired into his body, presumably from the rifle found lying under a bush near the quarry."
"Do you identify this as the rifle?"  The county prosecutor picked up a rusty Army rifle from his table.  It was a late model Springfield, with bolt action and telescopic sights – a sniper's arm.  The coroner examined the rifle and stated that it was the one found under the bush.  It was admitted as material evidence, Exhibit A, for the State.
"Now, doctor, will you kindly tell the jury in what part of Amos Grundle's body you found the diamond?"
"It was lodged in the third rib down on the left side, just above the heart."
"Not in the heart?"
"No, sir."
"Didn't you make the statement that you had found the diamond lodged in the heart?"
"I did.  That was before I made a thorough examination."
Dawbridge flashed a gleam at Gillian.  He was making sure that Gillian could not make a point of this in his cross-examination.
"Will you tell the jury, doctor, just why you made that statement?  To be explicit, why did you first say that the diamond was in the heart, and later change your statement?"
"I hardly need to say that it is extremely unpleasant to handle bodies which are in the advanced state of decomposition in which Amos Grundle's body was when I took charge of it.  My superficial impression was that the diamond had gone into Grundle's heart, causing instantaneous death.  I packed the body in ice for several days, to arrest further decomposition processes.  When it was possible – a couple of days later – I made the thorough autopsy."
"Would you recognize the diamond if you saw it?"
"I believe so."
Elton Dawbridge opened a small black box and removed from it a white pebble that glittered and sparkled.  "Is this the diamond?"
The coroner examined it.  "Yes, sir."
"How do you identify it?"
"By its old-fashioned cut and the scorched appearance at the edges."
The county prosecutor introduced the diamond as Exhibit B for the State.  It was admitted as such, and the diamond was handed to the jury.
Dawbridge walked slowly toward the witness stand with his hands in his pockets.
"Dr. Vollmer," he asked in a clear, strong voice, "would you say that the shock of that diamond striking Amos Grundle in the rib was responsible for Amos Grundle's death?"
"I would indeed."
"Kindly elaborate on this point to the jury."
The coroner complied: "The shock of the diamond striking a man so close to the heart might readily result in such a shock to the vasomotor system that death would almost instantly follow."
Gillian objected.  "Your honor," he said, "it has not been established that that diamond was fired at Amos Grundle at close range."
Dawbridge said: "Your honor, let me put a question to the witness which will, I believe, clear up this point.  Why, Dr. Vollmer, do you state that the rifle from which the diamond was discharged was fired at close range?"
"Because the dead man's shirt was considerably scorched about the hole where the diamond entered."
"In that case," Gillian said, "the shirt in question should be submitted to this court as material evidence.  I want to see that shirt."
The coroner was looking at him with hard, narrowed eyes.
"The shirt was lying on a chair with the dead man's outer clothing the evening of the inquest.  That night, a grind of men forcibly entered my establishment and made off with that clothing.  They were identified as Silky Davis's gang.  Perhaps you know something about it."
"Your honor," Gillian said indignantly, "I humbly request that the witness's last sentence be stricken from the record.  It is self-evidently an assumption, impossible to prove."
Judge Lindley looked at him coldly.  "I will reserve decision until this discussion is settled," he ruled.
"I want to see that shirt," Gillian insisted.  "It either proves or disproves a vital point.  Was that hole scorched or wasn't it?"
"I submit, your honor," said Dawbridge dramatically, "that the witness is credible, a man of established reputation, and under oath.  He says he saw the scorched hole.  Will you give us a ruling?"
"Objection is overruled," said his honor.
"But where's the shirt?" Gillian asked plaintively.  Several people laughed.
The judge glared.  "There will be no horseplay in this court," he snapped.
"The State will continue."
"I will repeat a previous question," the prosecutor obliged.  "You say, do you, doctor, that the diamond struck Amos Grundle in the rib with sufficient force to result in instant death?"
"I do."
"That will be all," Dawbridge said.
Gillian began his cross-examination.  He walked toward the witness and did not stop until he was six feet away. His eyes went to grips with the coroner's.
"You said a moment ago, doctor, that your official duty in examining the corpse was extremely distasteful?"
"I did!" the doctor snapped.
"It was so distasteful, in fact, that you postponed a thorough autopsy for several days."
"It was very distasteful."
"How did you find that diamond in the first place
"By probing!"
"Was the diamond embedded in the rib?"
"It may have been when it killed Mr. Grundle.  It came out easily enough."
"Kindly explain yourself."
"I mean that, after death, decomposition set in.  The shattered section of the bone became practically jellylike."
Gillian frowned.  "I can't understand, if the diamond was in a rib, why you stated it was in the heart."
"My first assumption happened to be incorrect.  It took considerable probing to bring out the diamond.  I merely assumed that it had got into the heart.  I later ascertained it had not entered the heart."
"Did you examine the heart?"
"Yes."
"Did you examine the lungs?"
"I did not consider it necessary."
"You did not consider it necessary," Gillian said, with angry surprise, "to ascertain whether Amos Grundle had perhaps not met his death by drowning?"
"No," the coroner answered.  "If Mr. Grundle had died by drowning the legal status of the case would have been the same as if he had died instantly when the diamond struck him.  He would have drowned as a direct result of a murderous assault.  Am I right?"
"You are quite right, doctor.  Let us sum this thing up, then.  When you finished your very distasteful task of probing for the diamond and, later, of examining the heart, you considered you had performed your duty sufficiently?  I mean, you had discovered what was, in your expert opinion, ample cause of death "
Elton Dawbridge was looking at Hazeltine suspiciously, but he did not suspect how cunningly Gillian was laying the plans for a trap to be sprung later.
"That's right," the coroner answered.
"In other words, your autopsy was complete when you had removed the diamond, and, later, examined the heart.  As an expert, you saw no need of examining lungs or other vital organs or other parts of the body, naturally.  In your opinion, the diamond did it.  You had the burned hole in the shirt to prove it.  Am I right on these various points?"
The coroner was now suspicious, but he nodded and said, "Yes, that's right."
"You're excused," Gillian said, and sat down, mopping his face.  No one in that courtroom would know how relieved he was.  He saw, at last, the faint glimmering of possible success in the far distance.  He had, at least, a fighting chance.
Next witness for the State: John Beckwith, jeweler – a pale, obviously frightened man of sixty, who peered about the crowded courtroom as if his eyesight were bad.
"How long have you been a jeweler in this city, Mr. Beckwith?" asked Dawbridge suavely.
"Forty one years and three months," was the faltering answer.
"In that time, you have handled countless precious stones, have you not?"
"Yes, sir – countless."
"Isn't it a fact, Mr. Beckwith, that you are so familiar with precious stones that when you have seen one you can never forget it?  Let me elaborate.  Isn't it a fact that every precious stone of any size has, to you, a definite personality – as much of a personality as any human being has?"
"That is so – yes."
"Will you tell the jury something about this?"
The uneasy witness faced the jury.  "A precious stone," he explained, "has a certain color, certain defects or flaws.  An expert who has seen a stone once will recognize it again."
"Isn't it true, Mr. Beckwith, that, about a week before the murder of Amos Grundle, a stone weighing about four and one half carats was brought to you; that it was set in an old-fashioned gold brooch, and that its owner wanted you to remove it from its mount for him?"
"Yes, sir," the old man faltered.
"Who was this man?"
"James Truman."
"Do you see him in this courtroom?"
"Yes, sir.  He is sitting at that table, there."
"You say that this man, this James Truman, came to you about a week previous to the murder of Amos Grundle and asked you to remove for him a diamond weighing about four and one half carats from a brooch?"
"Yes, sir.  That's right."  The witness was now staring unhappily at the floor.  This was, obviously, no pleasure to him.
"Did James Truman take that unset diamond away?"
"Yes, sir.  He called for it about six days later and, took it and the brooch."
"Was that the day before Amos Grundle's murder?"
"I-I think it was."
"Mr. Beckwith, did you ever see that diamond afterward?"
The witness nodded.  "Yes, sir," he muttered.
"Kindly describe to the jury the circumstances."
"The day after Mr. Grundle's body had been found in the quarry, I was called to Dr. Vollmer's place and asked to examine a diamond that had been found in Mr. Grundle's body.  To my amazement, it was the diamond that I had removed from the brooch for Mr. Truman."
"Was there any question about this in your mind?"
"No, sir; absolutely none.  The diamond was an old-fashioned cut – what we call a rose cut, as compared to the modern brilliant or emerald cut, which is sometimes called a baguette.  It had two carbon spots and a very small grain flaw.  But it was of a very clear blue-white color – a beautiful stone indeed."
"Would you recognize that diamond now?"
"Of course!"
"Is this the diamond?"
The jeweler removed from his vest pocket an optician's loupe and, screwing it into his eye, examined the stone.  He looked up, removed the magnifying glass and nodded.
"Yes, sir; this is the diamond."
"That will be all."
Dawbridge glanced at Gillian.  It was a scornful glance.  With that tiny flashing blue-white pebble, a chain of circumstantial evidence had been forged which was sufficient in itself to drag James Truman to the electric chair.  Of this there was no doubt.  What trick of Gillian's could possibly crack that mighty chain?  What could Gillian possibly say to the jeweler that would upset his testimony?
The courtroom buzzed when Gillian waved his hand in dismissal.  He didn't wish to cross-examine!
Even Dawbridge looked at him with astonishment.  It remained now for the county prosecutor to drive in his final rivets.  He placed lying witnesses on the stand who declared that they had heard the defendant making threats against Amos Grundle.  They had been carefully selected and carefully rehearsed-henchmen of Dawbridge's.  In his cross-examination, Gillian confused them and ridiculed them.  Any lying witness would regret the hour Gillian cast eyes on him.
Dawbridge roared objections.  Judge Lindley stretched the law to the cracking point in sustaining them all.  But Gillian proved they were liars.
When this was over, Elton Dawbridge played his trump card.
In his dramatic voice, he cried: "Miss Nellie Hearthstone will take the stand!"

CHAPTER 14
TRICKERY!

THE courtroom hummed.  A bailiff banged with his gavel.  All eyes were fixed on Nellie.  This was the moment for which every one of those morbidly curious men and women in that court had been thirsting.  It was the great moment for which the press of the nation had been waiting.  In every city of importance in the country, an extra would soon be on the streets:

NELLIE HEARTHSTONE TAKES STAND!

There is no question about it: the great mass of people enjoy scenes of torture.  The public knew that the Hearthstone girl would undergo the most exquisite torture when she took the stand.
The savage political machine of the Dawbridge gang would strip the clothes from her, so to speak.  Dawbridge would take pains to reveal her ancestry – or legal lack of ancestry.  And would force from her lips the story that would send to his death the man she loved.
There appeared to be no way to save her from this ordeal.  Dawbridge was staring at her greedily, as a wolf might stare at a lamb. Judge Lindley, staring at her, was all but licking his chops.
She sat at the counsel table, with her lovely head up, her eyes serene.  She was so pale that reporters commented on it in their dispatches.  And they commented on the fact that she looked a thoroughbred.  She had that indefinable something which is described, in modern slang, as "class."
At a word from Gillian, she arose and walked to the witness chair.  Elton Dawbridge was rubbing his hands, in anticipation, as he strode toward her.
To the surprise of every one, the county prosecutor, after she had been sworn, made no reference to her early life – her legal lack of parents.  He would, presumably, come back to that later.
Dawbridge licked his lips and said:
"Miss Hearthstone, at the time of Amos Grundle's death, is it not true that you were employed in his household as a servant?
"It is true," she answered.
"Is it true that on the morning of Amos Grundle's death, you left the house shortly before ten o'clock to meet James Truman on the edge of the old quarry which lies between the Grundle and Truman farms?"
"Objection!" Gillian barked.
Dawbridge and the judge looked at him with hard inquiry.
The judge snapped: "On what grounds?"
"According to the laws of this State," Gillian quickly answered, "a married woman cannot be called upon in any court to give testimony which might be in any way prejudicial to the interests of her husband!"
Judge Lindley's jaw dropped.  Elton Dawbridge only glared at him.
"This girl is not married to the defendant!" he shouted.
"I beg to differ with my esteemed colleague," Gillian said gently.  "Intentions of marriage were filed by the defendant and the witness on the afternoon of Mr. Grundle's regrettable death.  The marriage ceremony was performed yesterday by the Rev. Josiah Minkin, of Greenfield.  Dr. Minkin is not present, but he will testify if it is necessary."
Elton Dawbridge looked dazedly at the judge, and the judge continued to glare at Gillian.
"Trickery!" he muttered.
"I beg your pardon, your honor?" Gillian said clearly.
"I-er-said nothing.  The objection is sustained."
The courtroom buzzed again.  The judge threatened to have it cleared if quiet could not be maintained.
Nellie looked serenely at Gillian.  Thus had Gillian thrown an armor about Truth.
But Elton Dawbridge was not to be thrust aside so easily.  He could mention incidents which had nothing to do with the defendant.  And he did. Although the newspapers had already done so, he savagely laid bare the unfortunate facts of Nellie's origin.
Serenely, truthfully, Nellie answered him.  She had nothing to withhold.  Her attitude was that she was far from being ashamed of her cloudy origin, and far from being ashamed of having grown up in an orphanage.
His wrath got Mr. Dawbridge nowhere.  Thwarted, he turned his witness over to the defense.
Gillian said simply: "Miss Hearthstone, I want you to tell the jury something about your life with the Grundles."
She did so.  She told the jury of the persecution of Amos Grundle; of his cruelty to his wife, of his brutality to her, of his meanness to animals.
Dawbridge objected; was sustained.  But the facts came out, none the less.  The courtroom listened and was appalled.  There had been rumors of Amos Grundle's dual nature.  And there could be no question that Nellie was telling the truth.
Yet, when Gillian dismissed her from the stand, the ugly fact still remained: A chain of circumstantial evidence which could not be broken bound James Truman to the electric chair.
The State rested. Judge Lindley said, almost in a snarl:
"Gentlemen of the jury, we are about to take a recess for lunch.  Court will reconvene at two.  The Court admonishes you not to speak about this case among yourselves or permit any one to speak to you about it.  You will keep your minds open until the case is finally submitted to you.  The defendant will retire."
Gillian said: "If your honor please, is it necessary to hold Mrs. Truman any longer?"
Judge Lindley: "Mrs. Truman will be returned to her cell."  He beckoned Gillian to the stand and said: "Hazeltine, if this marriage is only a bluff, I will put you away for ten years for contempt."
Gillian smiled.  "It is not a bluff, your honor.  As you know, perhaps, Mr. Dawbridge has kept the defendant and Miss Hearthstone in adjoining cells, with a Dictaphone concealed somewhere.  Yesterday, I brought Dr. Minkin in to perform the ceremony, and he did so – standing in the corridor so that he could look into both cells.
"The Dictaphone, I believe, was out of order for about an hour!  Shall we say that this marriage was made in heaven and in jail at the same time, your honor?"

CHAPTER 15
THE X-RAY

GILLIAN was now surrounded by reporters, but he would answer no questions.  But he invited his old friend Josh Hammersley, of the Greenfield Times, to have lunch with him and Seth Peters in the latter's office.  Seth had brought down sandwiches, pie and coffee.
Behind the locked door of the office, Josh said: "Gill, you give me a pain in the neck.  I could beat the country on this if you'd only give me a hint."
"You can keep on having the neck pain," Gillian laughed.
"But you have a defense?"
"Certainly I have a defense.  But I won't talk about it.  I'm superstitious.  It isn't that I don't trust you, Josh, but I have the foolish belief that spilling a plan before you execute it spoils it." 
"You might let me have something exclusive to send out."
"Wait till after the trial.  We ought to wash things up this afternoon.  See me after the trial, and I'll give you a nice little exclusive story."
"Who's your first witness?" 
Gillian hesitated to answer, then said, reluctantly: "Dr. Hoffman."
"The X-ray specialist?"
"Yes."
"What's the big idea?"
"Keep right on guessing."
Josh threw down his half-consumed sandwich, took a final gulp of coffee and ran to the door.
"What's your hurry, Josh?"
"I'm going to file that.  You don't mind?"
"Hop to it."
"And you'll, have something exclusive for me after the trial?"
"If I win the case – yes."
Elton Dawbridge was sitting on the edge of his table when Gillian walked in.  The county prosecutor said: "Hazeltine, I'm warning you, if you pull any trickery this afternoon, I'll have you disbarred."
"Those are harsh words," Gillian laughed.  "And it seems to me I've heard them before."
"I'll smash you flat – I'm warning you!"
"I tremble all over," Gillian answered, "You terrify me, Elton.  Really, you do.  You know, you're a terrifying man.  Something ought to be done about you.  If I had any voice in the matter, I'd have you burned at the stake.  By the way, you haven't forgotten our little bet?"
"My hundred and fifty thousand is in escrow in the Greenfield First National, isn't it?"
"And you're still going to Washington – Senator?" Gillian gravely asked.
"You know I'm going to win this case.  I'm saying again: any of your vaudeville tricks, and I'll mash you flat!"
The, judge had come in.
"My first witness," Gillian said presently, "is Dr. Henry Hoffman.  Will Dr. Hoffman take the stand?"
This was greeted by a stir of interest which drew glares from several bailiffs.  And there was noticeable excitement about the press table.  Dr. Henry Hoffman of Greenfield was the foremost X-ray specialist in the state; a man, indeed, of such prominence in his profession that he was frequently called into consultation in all parts of the country.  A dangerous man for the defense.
Elton Dawbridge stared at him with fascination.  So did Judge Lindley.  What did Gillian have up his sleeve?  If they had asked him Gillian would promptly and gravely have answered, "The bogey man" – and meant it.
"Dr. Hoffman," Gillian briskly began, "will you kindly tell the jury what you were doing about midnight on September the fourth?"
"I was reading a book in bed," the doctor answered.  "At a little after midnight, there was a ring at my front doorbell.  I answered and found you standing there."
"What did I want?"
"You wanted me to accompany you here, to check with my instruments an autopsy which had been performed by Dr. Vollmer, the coroner here."
"And did you come here?"
"I did."
"Kindly describe your procedure."
"You took me to Dr. Vollmer's undertaking establishment.  I went into the back room, where the corpse of Amos Grundle was packed in ice.  I unpacked the ice and made a searching investigation."
"Did you take X-ray photographs?"
"I did.  I took ten of them."
"I have the photographic films here," Gillian said, holding up a sheaf of thick, black celluloid sheets.  "Will you kindly identify these as the photographs you took that night?"
"Gladly."
Gillian handed the photographs to him.  Dawbridge started forward, but changed his mind and glanced at the judge.  Judge Lindley was frowning and his eyes were glittering.
"Will you explain these films and pass them along, first to the judge, then to the jury?"
"I will.  The first of them, which has a label on the back of it, numbered one, shows a diagonal view through the chest of the dead man.  It shows two interesting things.  It shows that the heart of the dead man was not removed, as Dr. Vollmer stated this morning.  And it shows that the diamond bullet – or a missile of some kind – lodged, as has been claimed, in the third rib down on the left side, above the heart."
"Would you say, doctor, from your study of that X-ray film, that the impact of the diamond on that rib would have caused instant death to a strong, healthy man?"
"I would not say so," Dr. Hoffman answered.  "In fact, I would be strongly inclined to doubt that the impact of the diamond at that point would cause death in a robust man.  The rib was fractured at that point.  The blow might have driven the breath from the victim's lungs, but I certainly would not agree with any one who stated that such a blow would result in death."
"Might it have resulted in unconsciousness?" Gillian inquired.
"I doubt it very much.  I should say emphatically no."
"What do the other photographs show?"
"There are three more, taken at various other angles through the chest, which support my contention.  The remaining six are of the bullet wound and the bullet in the back."
The statement came so casually that no one in the courtroom was prepared for it.  One reporter dashed out of the room.  People were babbling.  Judge Lindsey made no attempt to restore order.  He was staring at Gillian with indignant amazement.
The county prosecutor had seized Gillian's arm in a savage clutch.
"You damned trickster!" he cried.  "This is cooked up!"
Gillian shook him off.  When order was restored, Dr. Hoffman continued with his testimony.
"These six films show, from various angles, the course of the thirty-two caliber revolver bullet which entered the dead man's left side above the kidney and broke his backbone – shattered it, in fact – causing instantaneous death."
Judge Lindley was white.  His mouth was open, but he could say nothing.  Elton Dawbridge shouted:
"That's a lie!  Dr. Vollmer performed the autopsy.  He found no bullet lodged in Grundle's backbone!"
"Wait a minute," Gillian snapped.  "Let me refresh your memory.  This morning, under cross-examinations Dr. Vollmer said that he had not examined the lungs or any other part of the body.  He lied when he said he examined the heart.  His stomach was too tender for him to examine the heart or lungs.  He got that diamond out and called it a day!"
"He performed a thorough autopsy!" Dawbridge shouted.
Gillian said calmly: "Will the stenographer please read out of the record my question to the coroner which began: 'In other words, your autopsy was complete when you had removed the diamond,' et cetera?"
The stenographer thumbed back through the record and read:
"In other words, your autopsy was complete when you had removed the diamond and, later, examined the heart.  As an expert, you saw no need of examining lungs or other vital organs or other parts of the body, naturally.  In your opinion, the diamond did it.  You had the burned hole in the shirt to prove it.  Am I right on these various points?  Dr. Vollmer: 'Yes; that's right.'"
"That will do," Gillian said.  "It is clearly established, is it not, that Dr. Vollmer's delicacy prevented him from performing a thorough autopsy?"
"I deny it," Dawbridge snapped.  "Where is that shirt?"
"Ah, that shirt," Gillian sighed.  "Where, indeed, is the shirt?  Why didn't Dr. Vollmer examine the shirt, and he would have seen the bullet hole down on the left side, in back?"
"There was no other hole in the shirt!" Dawbridge roared.
"All you have to do," Gillian said quietly, "is to prove it by producing the shirt!"
"Your gang of gunmen stole the shirt!"
The courtroom roared with laughter.  When order was restored, Gillian said:
"If his honor please, may we have some ruling?  We are entirely out of order.  I beg the Court's indulgence for one moment.  Can your honor conceive of any man hiring a gang of gunmen, as my esteemed colleague puts it, to steal a shirt?" 
But Judge Lindley was speechless.
"Is it any fault of mine, your honor," Gillian went on, "that neither shirt nor corpse can be produced as 'material evidence.' Alas, the shirt is gone – and the corpse has long since been cremated."
The judge found his voice; barked: "Are you through with this witness?"
"If your honor please, I beg leave to introduce these films as Exhibits A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J for the defense."
His honor looked on the verge of apoplexy, but he was compelled to admit the exhibits as material evidence.  But his eyes sought out the white face of Coroner Vollmer across the room and crucified him.  That unfortunate man looked as if his stomach were troubling him still,
"Could this bullet have been fired from a silenced gun?" Gillian asked.
"There is no way of proving the contrary," stated Dr. Hoffman.
"I want your expert opinion on these two wounds, Dr. Hoffman," Gillian continued.  "The point I wish to establish is this: In your opinion, did the diamond in the rib or the bullet in the backbone cause the death of Amos Grundle?"
"Unquestionably, the bullet caused instant death," the doctor answered.  "The spinal cord was torn in twain."
"In your opinion, was Grundle dead when he fell into the water?"
"The X-rays prove he was dead," the witness answered.  "If you will examine those which show the lungs, you will see – at least I can see – that those lungs contain no water."
"And your expert opinion is that the diamond would not have caused the death?"
"That is my opinion."
"That will be all.  Does the State wish to cross-examine?"
Most decidedly the State did.  Elton Dawbridge shouted at Dr. Henry Hoffman until he was hoarse.  He took him up and down his direct testimony; tried to shoot holes in it, tried to trap the doctor into making contradictions.
The famous Roentgenologist remained unshaken.  Coolly, calmly, with icy politeness he turned the shafts aside.
Dawbridge all but collapsed into his chair.
Judge Lindley said harshly: "Has the defense other witnesses?"
Yes," Gillian said.  "Miss Nettie Jarvis."
Once again the courtroom burst into roars of laughter.  Some one in back shouted: "Oh, you bogey man!"
With glowing dark eyes and a complacent smile, the seamstress took the stand for her "courtroom scene."

CHAPTER 16
NETTIE JARVIS' BOGY MAN

THE "Bicycle Woman," as Miss Jarvis had been mirthfully referred to by certain of the peach colored newspapers, was fairly glowing with excitement.  One did not need be a clairvoyant to know that Nettle Jarvis was realizing her life's ambition.  Her words were to thunder across the nation.  She was, at last, in her own.
In a voice so thin and excited that it sent titters about the courtroom, Nettie answered Gillian's questions.
Yes, on the morning of Amos Grundle's murder, she had been riding past the Grundle farmhouse on her bicycle a few minutes before ten o'clock.
"Where were you going, Miss Jarvis?"
"I was going to Mrs. Brubaker's, five miles farther along the road, to help make the clothes for her darling new baby, 'Junior.'  Mrs. Brubaker will testify to this," the seamstress added with defiance.
"As you were passing the Grundle farmhouse, what did you see from your bicycle?"
"I saw Mr. Grundle walk out of the back door with a rifle under his arm."
"Anything else?"
"Yes!" Miss Jarvis hissed.  "I saw a face peering out at him from the bushes – the elderberry bushes.  He was a great tall man with a black beard – a thick black beard.  As Mr. Grundle started off in the direction of the quarry, this tall man stepped out from the bushes and stealthily followed him."
"Did he creep from tree to tree like an Indian?"
"Exactly!"
"Did you see a bulge in this black bearded man's hip pocket, as if he might be carrying a revolver?"
"I did!"
The face of every man and woman in the courtroom, with the exception of the judge and the county prosecutor, was smiling.  They looked grim and uneasy.
"How was this black-bearded man dressed, Miss Jarvis?  Like a tramp?"
"No, sir.  He was dressed queerly – like a miner – I mean, like the gold miners we see in the movies.  He wore a black slouch hat, a black sateen shirt, a vivid red bandanna handkerchief, blue serge pants and a pair of scuffed brown oxfords."
"What else did you see, Miss Jarvis?"
"That was all."
"Did you see this young lady here – Mrs. Truman, Nellie Hearthstone?"
"No, sir."
"That will be all.  Does the State wish to cross-examine this witness?"
"I want to ask the witness just one question," Dawbridge said sourly.  "Do you know, Miss Jarvis, that you have the reputation of being the greatest liar in Clinton County?"
Gillian snapped an objection – and was overruled.  Dawbridge and his judge were going to carry the fight to the last ditch.
Miss Nettie Jarvis left the stand to a fluttering and a tittering.  She looked very indignant.  With nose in air, she disappeared.  Her great moment had been crowned with an insult.
Dawbridge drifted over to Gillian.  His mouth was a snarl.
"You haven't heard the end of this," he growled.  "Those X-ray films were fakes – and you know it!  Was there a bullet hole in the back of that shirt?"
"Ask the shirt," Gillian answered.
"I'll cook you yet!"
"I'll make a tough dish – Senator!" 
"Next witness!" snapped the judge.  "Mary Nolan. "
Dawbridge turned in his tracks so sharply that he almost fell, His widening eyes looked at Gillian.  He strode back.
"Look here, Hazeltine.  What's the big idea?"
"Live and learn," Gillian answered.
"Why are you calling that girl to the stand?"
"You can cross-examine her to your heart's content," Gillian replied, "when I'm through with her.  Don't forget the bet!"
The county prosecutor licked his lips, watched the girl on the stand uneasily, and relapsed into silence.
She was a pretty, bright-eyed country girl.  She looked wholesome and fresh.
Gillian began firing questions at her:
"Miss Nolan, where did you grow up?"
"Clinton Orphanage," Miss Nolan said briskly.
"Was Mrs. Truman, formerly Nellie Hearthstone, there with you?"
"Yes, sir."
"What was and is your opinion of the orphanage superintendent, based on your personal experience and observation?"
"Mr. Wardell was the finest, kindest man I ever knew."
"Did you ever know him to auction off pretty orphans to the highest bidders?"
"No, sir.  That was a vile lie."
"What is your occupation?"
"I am a cook."
"Where are you employed?"
"At present, I am not employed."
"Where was your last position?"
"I worked for Mr. and Mrs. Elton Dawbridge."
A faint hum rose in the courtroom; but fell-off into eager silence again.
"Why did you leave his employment?"
"Because I knew too much."
Elton Dawbridge sprang up.  His mouth was working savagely.  His fists were clenched.  His eyes were ablaze.
He shouted: "That girl is lying!  She's lying!  This is a dirty, cold-blooded frame-up!"
Gillian said patiently: "Your honor, will you please request this gentleman to refrain from interrupting me?  He may take this witness for cross-examination in just a moment."
His honor did nothing but stare with hungry fascination at Gillian.
Gillian took advantage of the lull to say: "Miss Nolan, what do you mean – you knew too much?  Kindly tell the jury just what you meant."
"I meant simply that I knew how violently Mr. Dawbridge and Mr. Grundle quarreled and fought."
"Fought?" Gillian snapped.
"Yes, sir – fought.  They fought terribly.  Every time Mr. Grundle came to the house, they fought.  And one time, just a few days before the murder, Mr. Dawbridge shouted that he was going to kill Mr. Grundle."
"Your honor–" Dawbridge began, and choked.
"What did they fight about?" Gillian asked.
"The graft."
"What graft?"
"Well, you see, Mr. Dawbridge had put Mr. Grundle on the board of education and the board of charities, and he grafted.  And Mr. Dawbridge thought Mr. Grundle was holding out on him."
"OBJECTION!" roared Mr. Dawbridge, who was now purple.
"Sustained!" cried the judge somewhat hastily.
"And then," the girl went on sweetly, I suppose I knew too much about the masquerade party."
"What masquerade party?" Gillian gently prompted her.
"The firemen's ball, held in Hook and Ladder Company Number Seven's firehouse last Washington's Birthday."
"Did Mr. Dawbridge attend that masquerade party?"
"Indeed, he did, sir.  He won the second prize."
"How was he dressed"'
Dawbridge sprang up.  But the girl answered so rapidly that he could not even force words out of his throat.
"He was dressed as a gold-miner.  He wore a thick black beard, a black sateen shirt, a bright, red bandanna handkerchief, a black slouch hat, and scuffed brown oxfords."
"Could you identify the costume if you saw it?"
"Yes, sir."
Gillian opened a paper package on his table; held up, in turn, a thick black false beard, a black sateen shirt, a bright red bandanna handkerchief, a pair of old blue pants, and a pair of scuffed brown oxfords.
"Where," Mr. Dawbridge roared, "did you get those?"
"Out of your bedroom closet," Gillian snapped.
Mr. Dawbridge now found his voice.  He shouted objections.  He insisted that every line of Mary Nolan's testimony be stricken from the record.  He shouted at the girl that every word of her testimony was a flagrant lie, manufactured testimony.
"Didn't you wear this costume at the Firemen's Washington's Birthday masquerade party?" Gillian demanded.
"Yes!  What of it?  What does it prove?  You dirty trickster!  Your honor–"
But his voice was lost in bedlam.  He was still fighting, not knowing that the battle was over.  Judge Lindley, however, was fully aware that Elton Dawbridge's powerful machine was smashed.  The judge was, in fact, the first rat to leave the ship.
He demanded order.  He gave instructions to the jury so brief that his address consumed no more than five minutes.  What he told them, in so many words, was to bring in an acquittal verdict for James Truman, and to bring it in on the jump.
Dawbridge had the look of a man distracted beyond all normal mental bounds.  His face white, his hair and eyes wild, he attempted, in the hubbub, to denounce Gillian.  He used the word trickster, with profane and picturesque variations, forty times in two minutes.
"Am I accusing you of the murder?" Gillian finally countered.  "My dear Elton, I am not a detective or policeman – I am not even suggesting that the State prosecute any one for Grundle's death.  I am merely a hardworking lawyer, struggling to bring the light of justice into the dark places of the land."
The frantic county attorney left him and pleaded with the newspapermen.  Nettie Jarvis had seen him at the party; she had been coached; he had been framed, he declared.  The reporters laughed at him.
Mr. and Mrs. James Truman seemed in a daze.  They sat at the table, holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes.
No one heard what Nellie said to her husband: "Isn't it marvelous, darling?  You won't have the slightest shadow on your conscience, because there's not the slightest doubt about it.  Mr. Hazeltine's proved that it was the bullet – not the diamond."
Her husband looked ten years younger already.
Yet there was just a shade of doubt, just a suspicion of suspicion, in more cynical quarters. Josh Hammersley had Gillian in a corner.
"Come clean, you old vulture," he was saying.  "You know damned well that whole bogey man story, including Hoffman's films, is phony.  Your secret will be safe with me, Gill.  Come clean."
"Josh," Gillian protested, "you astonish me.  You hurt me.  If any of you reporters had ever taken Nettle Jarvis's 'mysterious stranger' story seriously enough, you might have begun asking yourself where someone would have come up with an outfit as much like a theatrical costume as she described.  Or, you might have begun the other way. and asked yourselves why Dawbridge was so determined to convict and hang Jim Truman that he'd even hire perjured witnesses.  He even went so far as to have a couple of members of the local mob try to rub me out with a Tommy gun along a dark road one night.  That's what started me thinking."
"Yeah, I heard about that," the crestfallen reporter replied.  "Are you going to follow this up and get out an indictment for Dawbridge?"
"Why should I?"
"You mean, you've smashed him for life.  Sure, you have.  But are you going to follow it up?"
"No, Josh.  I am going abroad with my wife, and spend part of the hundred and fifty thousand dollar profit I made recently in a business deal.  We are going to London-Paris-Florence-Rome."
"Listen!  What was that exclusive story you were going to hand out?"
"Ah, yes," Gillian murmured.  "It's a nice little story.  It's about Jim Truman and his bride.  It's about their honeymoon.  They are going to the same little village in southern France where my wife and I spent our honeymoon.  Villeneuve.  It's in the rose orchards, Josh.  It's near the champagne orchards, too, Josh.  What a wonderful, romantic spot for a honeymoon – with the azure Mediterranean before you, the glorious snow-capped Alps behind you!  And what charm.  And after the honeymoon, we are all going to meet in Paris-for a little whoopee."
"Listen, Gillian, just satisfy my personal curiosity, won't you?  Was that Nolan girl telling the truth?"
"Didn't she take an oath?"
Josh scratched his head.  "You know damned well that Jarvis woman is the worst liar in the world.  She could have seen that costume when Dawbridge wore it, and remembered."
"Don't forget," Gillian said sternly, "that, at least once in their lives, the worst liars in the world may break all laws and tell the truth."
But Seth Peters, overhearing this conversation, still doubted. He was remembering another conversation, when Gillian had joked that to save their client his personal inclination was to "pin the job on Elton Dawbridge or Judge Lindley."  Had that been nothing more than a joke?  Or was his victory today simply the result of another of the Silver Fox's famous courtroom tricks?
But Gillian was supremely unconcerned, as he puffed contentedly on his cigar and fought his way out of the courtroom. He paused resignedly to pose for several hundred feet of motion picture film, and then walked over to the telegraph office.
To Governor Judson Withrow he sent the following cryptic telegram:

"The Rat Wears a Bell."

There was a smile on Gillian's face when he left.

END

The Gillian Hazeltine Court Room Mysteries

The Lies at Any Price Murder Case
The Love Bandit Murder Case
The Who Killed Ezra Klagg Murder Case
The Screen of Ice Murder Case
The Crime Circus Murder Case
The Haunted Yacht Club Murder Case
The Reptile Named Robard Murder Case
The Lost Punch Murder Case
The "Murder!  Murder!"  Murder Case
The Jungle Justice Murder Case
The High Seas Murder Case
The Diamond Bullet Murder Case
The Grapevine Murder Case
The Black Ice Murder Case
The Magpie Murder Case
The Michigan Mystery Murder Case
The Decoy Murder Case
The Missing Will Murder Case
The Gold Coffin Murder Case
The Honest Forger Murder Case
The Five Bald Men Murder Case
The Witness Murder Case
The Some Degree Murder Case
The Teen Rebel Murder Case
The "Mr. Hazeltine Murderer" Murder Case