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of Major Benson, Markham had immediately put to work two good men from the Detective Division assigned to the District Attorney’s office, with instructions to confine their investigations to Benson’s women acquaintances so as not to appear in any way to be encroaching upon the activities of the Central Office men. Also, as a result of Vance’s apparent interest in the housekeeper at the time of the interrogation, he had sent a man to look into the woman’s antecedents and relationships.
    Mrs. Platz, it was learned, had been born in a small Pennsylvania town, of German parents, both of whom were dead; and had been a widow for over sixteen years. Before coming to Benson, she had been with one family for twelve years, and had left the position only because her mistress had given up housekeeping and moved into a hotel. Her former employer, when questioned, said she thought there had been a daughter, but had never seen the child, and knew nothing of it. In these facts therewas nothing to take hold of, and Markham had merely filed the report as a matter of form.
    Heath had instigated a city-wide search for the grey Cadillac, although he had little faith in its direct connection with the crime; and in this the newspapers helped considerably by the extensive advertising given the car. One curious fact developed that fired the police with the hope that the Cadillac might indeed hold some clue to the mystery. A street-cleaner, having read or heard about the fishing-tackle in the machine, reported the finding of two jointed fishing-rods, in good condition, at the side of one of the drives in Central Park near Columbus Circle. The question was: were these rods part of the equipment Patrolman McLaughlin had seen in the Cadillac? The owner of the car might conceivably have thrown them away in his flight; but, on the other hand, they might have been lost by someone else while driving through the park. No further information was forthcoming, and on the morning of the day following the discovery of the crime the case, so far as any definite progress towards a solution was concerned, had taken no perceptible forward step.
    That morning Vance had sent Currie out to buy him every available newspaper; and he had spent over an hour perusing the various accounts of the crime. It was unusual for him to glance at a newspaper, even casually, and I could not refrain from expressing my amazement at his sudden interest in a subject so entirely outside his normal routine.
    â€œNo, Van, old dear,” he explained languidly, “I am not becoming sentimen’al or even human, as that word is erroneously used to-day. I cannot say with Terence, ‘
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto
,’ because I regard most things that are called human as decidedly alien to myself. But, y’know, this little flurry in crime has proved rather int’restin’, or, as the magazine writers say, intriguing—beastly word! … Van, you really should read this precious interview with Sergeant Heath. He takes an entire column to say, ‘I know nothin’. A priceless lad! I’m becoming pos’tively fond of him.”
    â€œIt may be,” I suggested, “that Heath is keeping his true knowledge from the papers, as a bit of tactical diplomacy.”
    â€œNo,” Vance returned, with a sad wag of the head; “no man has so little vanity that he would delib’rately reveal himself to the world as a creature with no perceptible powers of human reasoning—as he does in all these morning journals—for the mere sake of bringing one murderer to justice. That would be martyrdom gone mad.”
    â€œMarkham, at any rate, may know or suspect something that hasn’t been revealed,” I said.
    Vance pondered a moment.
    â€œThat’s not impossible,” he admitted. “He has kept himself modestly in the background in all this journalistic palaver. Suppose we look into the matter more