"It was not luck, Mr. Hite. John insisted on coming along with me. Anyone would think to hear him talk that I am unable to take care of myself, but perhaps it was fortunate after all that he and Hale were there. Don't laugh at Hale's eye; he got it in that fight." "Huh, huh, I see. Anything I can do for you, Professor, while we're waiting for a report?" "I should like to send some telegrams, Mr. Hite, please." "Why, sure, wires, phones, anything. Jimmy'l help you; he knows the ropes." The door closed behind him. Professor Brierly murmured: "What a perfectly astonishing person. He literally takes your breath away. Is that his manner all the time, Hale?" "No, not all the time, Professor. Usually he's worse." The two young men left him and for the next hour and a half Professor Brierly kept several copy boys and the telephone operator on the jump. He was not disturbed. The managing editor was told who was in his office when he came in and he took a desk in the city room, where he transacted his routine morning business. Professor Brierly was sitting at the desk mentally going over the tangled threads of the case. He was rejecting one by one the many fanciful hypotheses that imaginative newspaper writers had woven about the case. With cold, precise logic, he was fastening link to link in his strange chain of evidence. Such was his impersonal absorption in the case that the attack on him with its possible consequences, was now forgotten. The telephone bell tinkled. Orders had been given the operator not to disturb Professor Brierly and to ring the phone in the managing editor's office only if the call was for the old scientist. He picked up the instrument; this might be the answer he was awaiting to a telegram. He was hanging the instrument back in its pronged cradle with a shade of disappointment, when the door was thrown open. Hite came in. "Professor, they got the bird who bumped off Schurman. The D.A. was on the phone about it, up in that camp of his. He gave orders that you be permitted to cross-examine this bird. He told 'em to hold him for you." Professor Brierly scrambled to his feet. "Indeed, I shall be glad to see him. How interesting." He was taken to the office of the district attorney, where an assistant and a sergeant of police met him. Sergeant Conners, who had met Professor Brierly on previous matters, said to the scientist. "We should 'a' had this bird sooner, but it seems he was sleepin' off a drunk somewhere and no one knew where he was. 'Fingy' Smith is his name, Professor. We got his record. His finger prints are the ones we found on the file. And he is the bird who always eats a lot whenever he does a job, specially eggs. How this bird can put away eggs is a wonder; he's a little feller, too." The monologue was cut short by the entrance of the prisoner who was chained to a burly headquarters man, accompanied by another officer in civil clothes.