Felix Markle was at the very top of his profession. A man of rare culture and natural refinement and of indomitable will and courage, he might have made a name for himself in any walk of life he had chosen to follow. It was a pity that so much that was fine in him should have gone to make a master thief instead of the noble leader he might have been.

The possession of Detective O’Gorman’s notebook was of the greatest importance to him. The deciphering of it would tell exactly how much the secret service knew concerning him and his accomplices. How much was known concerning his aliases and if his wife was suspected or had been at any time.

He was determined to protect her at any cost, but everything was going so well he could see no reason to doubt that they could go on with their clever schemes indefinitely. Every now and then one of the supposed owners of the180 elegantly furnished apartments determined to have a sale and then large sums would be realized on the stolen treasures. The firm of Simpkins & Markle would handle the sale, taking out their commission and Markle would have the part of seeing that the fictitious owners got their share of the profits. All transactions appeared on the books of the real estate firm and any expert examiner of those books would have pronounced everything to be in perfect form and order.

Josie O’Gorman had hoped to keep up with the case unaided by mere man, but things were getting too much for her. She began to lose sleep going over and over how best she could trap the persons of whose dishonesty she was assured. Her idea was not to spring the trap too soon for fear she might lose some of the principal offenders. After many sleepless nights, she determined to take Chief Charley Lonsdale into her confidence and ask for his support.

On this visit she found the man at the door awake and taking notice.

“You can’t see the chief,” he announced decisively, looking at Josie as though she were thin air. “He’s that busy he says he can’t see181 a soul. If you are after making a complaint about a neighbor’s hens? or the like, there’s a man at the desk for such business.”

Josie’s eyes took on the dull look she loved to assume when there was important business on hand.

“It’s worse than hens—it’s tigers!” she exclaimed. “A man at the desk can’t attend to tigers. I must see the chief.”

The astonished man let her pass. Of course tigers were a little too important for a small man like the one at the desk to cope with.

The chief was alone and busy looking over some papers. A worried frown was on his brow. He looked up a moment after Josie entered.

“Ah, the little O’Gorman! Nothing doing, I fancy, and you have come for help.”

“I have come for help but not because there is nothing doing. I could handle that situation alone,” replied Josie in a cool drawl that was ludicrously like the tone her father had used and it made Chief Lonsdale smile. “There is so much doing that I have had to come for help. I hate to do it, as I’d like the glory along with the work, but I can’t let the whole school of fish182 escape just so I can have the honor of landing the biggest one of the lot. Father used to say that a detective must first consider his duty to society; that is, to get the wrong-doers caught, never mind who does the catching.”

“Humph! I wish there were more of his way of thinking. Now tell us all about it.”

Josie sat down and unfolded her tale from the beginning. She made the man’s eyes wide with astonishment when she told of the Markles’ entrance into her shop and the purloining of the notebook. He laughed delightedly over what Markle was spending so much time trying to master.

“The Hound of Heaven!” he cried. “That sounds like good stuff. And who is this young newspaper chap who has drawn the blank? Does he know it yet?”

“He has been very busy and has not yet opened the book,” explained Josie. “I have seen him once and he tells me he has it in his breast pocket and is waiting for an evening off when he intends to untie the hard knot of the ribbon and then try to unravel the cipher. I was sorry not to put him on to the fake, but I felt I had better not take anyone else into our183 confidence just yet. I’ll set his mind at rest when he finds it out, because, of course, he wil............