the effect of his behavior on the others. He had simply felt the impulse to action and had obeyed it with characteristic promptness, energy and enthusiasm.
On the sidewalk he paused for a moment.
The night was pitch-black. Not a star was visible. The fog still hung over the city in heavy folds and at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet almost obliterated the street lights. A little crowd of morbidly curious sensation-seekers had gathered in front of the house and, much to their dislike, were now being herded away from the immediate scene of the crime by two uniformed policemen.
Turning up the collar of his coat. Peret wiggled his way through the crowd and sped across the street to the drug store. Entering a telephone booth, he ordered a taxi. He then called up his office, and when the connection was made, poured a volley of instructions into the receiver in language that must have burnt the wires.
Replacing the receiver on the hook, he left the store and, when his taxi arrived a few minutes later, started out on a feverish round of inquiries.
His first call was at the Army and Navy Building. Evidently luck was against him, for after a moment's stay he emerged from the building, with a scowl on his face. Hopping into the taxi, he ordered the chauffeur to drive to the Treasury Department.
Owing to the lateness of the hour, he had, as expected, some difficulty in gaining admittance. A cabalistic message sent to some mysterious personage within, however, had a magical effect on the watchman, who swung wide the doors for him.
His stay within was brief, and after the portals had again been opened to let him out, he sped down the flight of steps in front of the building and crossed the street on a dead run. From the corner drug store he fired a message over the wire to police headquarters, then, quitting the store, once more boarded the taxi and instructed the chauffeur to drive him to a certain street corner.
After a short run, the cab came to a stop at the corner of a dark street in one of the residential sections of the city. Instructing the chauffeur to wait for him, Peret left the car and, wrapping his coat around him, glided off in the darkness.
Half way down the block, at the intersection of an alley, the Frenchman paused. Though the fog had lifted somewhat, the mist had turned into a heavy sleet and, if such a thing were possible, it was even darker than it had been an hour previously. Except for the taxi waiting at the corner, the street, so far as Peret could see, was deserted.
Stepping behind a tree-box, Peret surveyed the row of houses on the opposite side of the street. A dim light burned in several of the vestibules; otherwise the houses were wrapped in darkness. Satisfied that he was not observed, Peret stepped from behind the tree-box and gave a peculiar, birdlike whistle.
In answer to the signal, the eye of a flash-light blinked near the front door of one of the houses in the middle of the block, and Peret, clinging to the shadows, crossed the street. Drawing his automatic, he traversed the lawn to the house.
"Bendlow?"
"H'luva night to be abroad, Chief," came a hoarse whisper. "What's the row, anyway?"
Although it was too dark to distinguish the speaker's features, or, as a matter of fact, even to see the outline of his form, there was no mistaking the foghorn voice of Harvey Bendlow, former Secret Service agent and, at the present time, night manager of Peret's Detective Agency. Restoring his automatic to his pocket, the Frenchman gripped the other's hand.
