The outcome of all this was that along about 1:30 in the morning half a dozen chaps from the papers were gathered round the rain-water conductor on the front of the Cripps mansion, pushing wires and small rods up from the lower end. But nothing was found—which wasn’t so very surprising when you take into consideration that headquarters had received a rush dispatch fully an hour before the papers got it, giving the spirit message from old Mr. Cripps in full. No one in the Department had any confidence in it—unadulterated rot, all these spirit stunts. Still, when it was wired over on a “rush” from Lilly Dale and signed “H. Thompson, Sergeant State Police,” what was the good of taking chances? So the Inspector hustled a couple of plain-clothes men out to the mansion with orders to take another look up the water pipe. It was ten minutes after the detectives arrived at the mansion that they pulled Augustus Findlay’s revolver down out of the large zinc water conductor up which it had been shoved to a height of several feet, and wedged in with a branch from a shrub to hold it there. They got a grip on it with hooks and wires so that nobody’s hands came in contact with it. Two chambers of the gun were empty. As the Boston papers had no knowledge of this, the dispatch from Lilly Dale was used inconspicuously in most of them, followed by the brief statement that reporters had been out and searched, but that nothing was found in the locality mentioned. Papers elsewhere gave it more prominence, as it was too late to hit them with the news that the search made by the reporters had been in vain. * * * * * This new evidence—Findlay’s revolver found hidden near the place where the crime was committed, with two of the chambers empty and his fingerprints showing up nicely on the handle—was of the utmost value, though they’d most likely have got an indictment without it. But while it made the action of the Grand Jury a certainty, and would be damning evidence when it came to trial, it must be confessed that the views of the Chief Inspector and of the Assistant District Attorney who was to prosecute, were a trifle unsettled by the source of the information which had led to its discovery. It was certainly not an agreeable position to be placed in, and every effort must be made to keep the matter quiet. Luckily the presentation of the evidence before the Grand Jury would be behind closed doors, and by the time it had come up at the trial people would probably have forgotten what it was all about. On the following day Assistant District Attorney McVeigh went before the Grand Jury and the indictment of Augustus Cripps Findlay for the murder of Charles Michael Haworth was handed down without delay. * * * * *