Carroll reached a muscular hand across the table. His sinewy fingers closed around a glass paperweight. He held this poised steadily. "One more crack out of you, Eric, and I'll slam this against your head. You're a pretty good chief of police--but you're a rotten humorist." "Just the same," grinned the chief, "I can see that this joke is on you! And now--what?" "For one thing," and Carroll's manner was all business again, "I want every bit of dope I can get on Gerald Lawrence and his wife. I know that Warren was very intimate at the house: friendly with both wife and husband, according to what Miss Rogers says. That connects them up. What I want to find out now is where both of 'em were the night Warren was killed. Put a couple of your best men out to gather this dope--there isn't any of it too minor to interest me. Meanwhile, I'll pump the kid. I have a hunch that this isn't going to be a cold trail." "It better not be--or Mr. David Carroll is going to find himself with one unsolved case on his hands. Yes, sir--if this is a blind lead, we're up against it for fair." "It isn't going to be entirely blind," postulated Carroll. "Barker assures us of that!" CHAPTER XII A CHALLENGE At four o'clock the following afternoon Carroll received from Chief Leverage a detailed report on Gerald Lawrence: "He's a manufacturer," said Leverage. "President of the Capitol City Woolen Mills. Rated about a hundred thousand--maybe a little more. He's on the Board of Directors of the Second National. Has the reputation of being hard, fearless--and considerable of a grouch. Age forty-two. "Married Naomi Rogers about five years ago. She was twenty-five then--thirty now. Supposed to be beautiful--and would be a society light except that Lawrence doesn't care for the soup-and-fish stuff. Report has it that they're not very happy together. His parents and hers all dead. Evelyn, her kid sister, lives with them. "They employ a cook and two maids. No man-servant at all. Roland Warren was pretty intimate at the house, but so far as I can discover there was no scandal linking the names of Warren and Mrs. Lawrence. Of course, him knowing her pretty intimately and being friendly at the house, you could probably find a good many folks who would say nasty things. But there hasn't been the real gossip about her and him that there was about a heap of other women in this town. "Warren and Lawrence were pretty good friends. Warren was a stockholder in the woolen mills. On the other hand it seems as though Warren was at the house a good deal more than just ordinary friendship would have indicated. But that's just an idea. And there's your dope--" "And on the night of the murder?" questioned Carroll. "Where were they?" "Mrs. Lawrence was at home. Lawrence--if you're thinking of him in connection with it--seems to have an iron-clad alibi. He went to Nashville on a business trip and didn't get back until the following morning."