robe. “I haven’t told you all yet.” She spoke fast and low, gazing fixedly at the door in the rear. “Yesterday afternoon Mr. Gage got a letter from—from a party he’s got good reason to be scared of. He hadn’t heard from him in years, and he’d been hoping he was rid of him for good. Well, I was watching him while he read the letter, and I saw him turn white as a sheet. Later, while he was out to lunch, I went to his desk and read the letter. I was just that curious. It told Mr. Gage that the writer would call on him inside forty-eight hours.”

“Was that all?”

“All but the name at the bottom—and the name was the main thing.”

“Eh?”

“It was the name of the man Mr. Gage has been afraid of all these years. When I saw that name at the bottom of the note I felt a chill all over. Say,” raising her voice, “why don’t you break in that door?”

Pinto stroked his chin, as if strongly impressed by what the woman had told him. Another group of spectators had gathered at the entrance, and he gruffly ordered them to disperse. Then he faced the inner door, turned the knob, pushed. The door did not yield, and he looked back over his shoulder.

“Whose name was signed to the note?” he demanded.

A look of awe crossed the housekeeper’s face. She raised a bony arm and steadied herself against the counter. A grayish pallor had suffused her shriveled features.

“I—I can’t tell you,” she whispered. “I mustn’t. Hurry—for Heaven’s sake!”

Something of her excitement seemed to have been communicated to Pinto, but even now he appeared loath to attack the door.

“If your boss was so all-fired scared of the guy that sent him the note, why didn’t he call up the police?” he queried suspiciously. Then a look of comprehension dawned in his face. “I guess, though, that he wasn’t very anxious to have the department butt into his affairs, and maybe he thought the other fellow’s bite was worse’n his bark. Well, here goes.”

He stepped back a few paces, squared his shoulders for action, then hurled his massive figure against the door. The woman stood rigid, straining forward a little, yet holding her hands before her face as if dreading the sight that might meet her eyes. Again and again Pinto flung his body against the door, and finally, with a crash and a long splintering sound, it flew open, precipitating him headlong into the inner room.

A queer sound rose in the woman’s throat and she lowered her hands. She made as if to follow the policeman, but something held her back. From where she stood, staring through the doorway, she could see that the inner room was dark, and she heard the policeman’s grunts and mutterings as he struggled to regain his feet. Then came an interval of silence, broken only by groping footfalls, and presently a light appeared in the rear. Pinto had found the electric switch.

The housekeeper shuddered as an exclamation issued from the other room. Evidently the officer had discovered something. Crouching in front of the counter, she strained her ears, listening. Pinto was speaking in low, quick accents, but she could not make out the words, and she heard no answering voice.

Finally, Pinto came out. His face was a little white and his lips were set in a tight line.

“He’s dead,” he declared.

The woman shrank back against the counter. “Murdered?”

The officer bawled a command to the neck-craning group at the entrance to stand back. Without answering the housekeeper’s question, he looked quickly about the store till he spied a telephone on a shelf behind the counter. The woman listened abstractedly as he called a number and spoke a few words into the transmitter. Then he stepped out from behind the counter and faced her.

“Your boss is lying on the floor in there,” he announced, jerking his huge head toward the inner room, “with a knife wound in his chest. He was breathing his last just as I got to him.”

The housekeeper jerked herself up, a look of sullen passion in her blanched face. “Breathing his last, was he?” Her voice was loud and shrill. “Then he wasn’t dead yet! If you’d hurried, as I told you to, we might have saved his life. I’ll report you for this, Officer Pinto.”

“Cut that stuff! Nothing could have saved him. He was too far gone. Say,” and Pinto bored his sharp eyes into her twitching face, “what name was signed to that letter?”

Twice she opened her lips to speak, but no words came.

“Out with it! You’ve got to tell me now.”

The woman swallowed. “Why do you want to know?” she asked faintly.

“I’ve got a reason. Just as Gage was drawing his last breath, I got down beside him and asked him if he could tell me who stabbed him. I guess he read my lips; anyhow, he was able to whisper a name. I want to know if it jibes with the name signed to the letter Gage got yesterday.”

“Well, then”—she pressed her hands against her breast—“the name on the letter was the Gray Phantom’s.”

Pinto ejaculated hoarsely.

“It jibes, all right!” he declared.

CHAPTER II—THE MISSING BAUBLE

Just then a youngish man with a slouching gait and a dead cigar between his teeth pushed through the little knot of spectators at the entrance and leveled a mildly inquisitive glance at Pinto and the housekeeper.

The patrolman, after introducing the new arrival as Lieutenant Culligore of the detective bureau, told briefly what he had discovered.

Culligore doffed his dripping raincoat and banged his soggy slouch hat against the counter. His dull face and sluggish manners gave the impression that he was never quite awake, but now and then a furtive little gleam in his cinnamon-colored eyes betrayed a saving sense of humor. He seemed unimpressed until Pinto reached that point in his story where the dying man had told the name of his assailant. Then Culligore curled up his lip against the tip of his nose, as was his habit when interested in something, and motioned the patrolman to follow him into the inner room.

There was an indefinable air about the chamber that vaguely suggested the abode of one whose life is hidden from the world. The ragged carpet and the ancient wall paper were of neutral tones, and the atmosphere was stale and oppressive, as if seldom freshened by sun or wind. Lieutenant Culligore’s drowsily blinking eyes traveled over the scene, yet he appeared to see nothing. The safe in a corner seemed rather too large for the modest requirements of a tobacconist. Near by stood an ink-stained writing desk and a chair. The clothing on the narrow iron cot looked as though the occupant, suddenly disturbed in his sleep, had sprung from it in a hurry.

In the center of the room lay a curiously twisted figure, garbed in pajamas of pink flannel. Over the heart was a dull stain, and the right arm lay across the chest in a manner hinting that the dead man had used his last ounce of strength to ward off a blow. One of the legs was drawn up almost to the abdomen, and the eyes were fixed on the ceiling in a glassy stare.

“Well, Pinto?” Culligore looked as though he expected the patrolman to do the necessary thinking.

“The corpse told me the Gray Phantom did it,” said Pinto in a tone of finality. “Don’t you think we’d better start a general alarm, sir?”

“Corpses are sometimes mistaken, Pinto.” The lieutenant fumbled for a match and slowly kindled his cigar. “I’ll bet a pair of pink socks that the Phantom had nothing to do with this. The Phantom always fought clean. I’d hate like blue blazes to think that he pulled off this job.”

Pinto scowled a little, as if he couldn’t