“My dear Norrie, when you meet a girl like that take her into your confidence. Did you get that ‘to whom’? She smelt a rat and would have looked the number up and blown the glad tidings all over the office that a couple of detectives or newspaper men had been interviewing her on the murder. Recollect, too, that the telephone from the reporters’ room at police headquarters comes in on this exchange. It’s just possible that some of those gay young blades on night police have affiliations with some of these gay young blondes. I have got many a story through ’phone girls--and have occasionally lost a story through the same medium. Get me? As it stands, she is all puffed up with her own importance and pat with us. There are times when you have got to take a chance at spilling your hand. This was one of them.” I subsided, humbled. Not to occupy too much space with the merely routine details of working out the clue, we met Adams, another substantial chap. The chief operator recalled distinctly the number, more particularly because the woman calling it had been nervous and irritable. The call came, she said, from the public booth at Shumate’s pharmacy. It was only a couple of blocks away, and we went there. It was a large establishment with half a dozen clerks. We worked down the list. The fourth man had been on duty Monday night and recalled a young woman who had entered the booth repeatedly on that evening. She lived some place in the vicinity, he said, and usually got off the Sutter Street car shortly after 5.30 o’clock. The car stopped directly in front of the door, and if we would wait he would point her out to us if she came that way this evening. I took a position outside to signal in when a car approached and Lanagan remained inside. It was then just after five. Among the passengers from one car I noticed Miss Northrup, and was about to step forward and speak to her on a chance of her dropping something additional when I caught a glimpse out of the tail of my eye of Lanagan signaling me with a swift gesture. I dodged around the corner before she saw me. She passed on up Sutter Street, and in a few moments Lanagan picked me up, his sallow face taking on a tinge of colour and his dark eyes sparkling. “Pretty near scrambled the eggs that time, didn’t you?” he chuckled. “_That’s the woman who did the telephoning._” I stared. “Do you recall that furtive look with which she followed me at the office? She lives just up there, where we will let her rest for a time with her troubles. And I fancy she has them. Let us go back to Connors’. I am to meet Monahan there.” The King was waiting for us. He took Lanagan to one side. All I could hear was Lanagan’s “Good!” once, and then the King had slipped out the side door.