“No weapon, nothing but the body--and the new pin,” he mused, half to himself. “This lets out friend Walters, of course; there isn’t a shadow of evidence against him after this second murder. We can hold him for theft on his own confession--but no more. Tab, I am going down to the vault; I don’t want you to come with me. There are one or two things that I want to be certain about.” He was gone half-an-hour and Tab, whose head was throbbing, was glad to see him when he returned. Carver said nothing, walked out into the hall where the police constable was sitting. “Nobody is to be allowed into this house unless they are accompanied by me,” he said. He drove Tab to Doughty Street and went up to see the damage that the burglar had done. But he was less interested in the condition of Rex Lander’s wardrobe than he was in the torn photographs. He held their borders to the light. “No finger-prints, he wore gloves, of course. I wondered if--yes, ah, here it is.” He pieced together a torn photograph; scrawled on the face was a heavy black cross. “Yes, I expected that,” he said to himself. “If I were you, Tab, I should put the bolt on the door tonight. I don’t want to alarm you unduly but I rather think you should. The Man in Black is going to stop at nothing. Have you got a gun?” Tab shook his head and Carver slipped the automatic from his pocket and laid it on the table. “Borrow mine,” he said, “and take my considered advice--do not hesitate to shoot anybody you find in this flat, or in your room tonight.” “You are a cheerful little soul, Carver!” “Better be cheerful than dead,” said the detective cryptically, and left him to puzzle it out. XXIII The noise of the roaring presses came up to Tab as he worked in his office. The building shook and trembled, for every machine was running with the story of the mystery of Mayfield. Slip by slip his copy was rushed to the linotype room. Presently the presses would stop and the last city edition would be prepared. He finished at last, pulled the last sheet from the typewriter and hunched himself back in the chair. To the detective’s warning he gave no serious attention. He was perfectly satisfied in his own mind that the burglar had come to his flat in order to secure the key. The menace was not against himself, but against Rex Lander. What was that menace, he wondered? Had the old man some other relative who felt himself wronged when the property passed into the hands of the Babe? He was confident that the search of his own belongings had been made in order to find something that had to do with Rex. As to the tearing up of his photographs--he grinned at the thought. “I never did like those pictures anyway,” he said. “What pictures?” asked a solitary reporter in the room. “I am vocalising my thoughts and unveiling the tablet of my mind,” said Tab politely. The late duty man grinned.