But at Leffler’s they got none, after all. Leffler’s was no longer a stable. It was condemned to demolition, and in the respite between sentence and execution it had become a vague place of storage, a hospital for broken-down carriages and carts, presided over by a blear-eyed old woman who knew nothing of Flood’s garage across the way--did not even remember what had stood there before the new flat-house began to rise. “Well--we may run Leffler down somewhere; I’ve seen harder jobs done,” said McCarren, cheerfully noting down the name. As they walked back toward Sixth Avenue he added, in a less sanguine tone: “I’d undertake now to put the thing through if you could only put me on the track of that cyanide.” Granice’s heart sank. Yes--there was the weak spot; he had felt it from the first! But he still hoped to convince McCarren that his case was strong enough without it; and he urged the reporter to come back to his rooms and sum up the facts with him again. “Sorry, Mr. Granice, but I’m due at the office now. Besides, it’d be no use till I get some fresh stuff to work on. Suppose I call you up tomorrow or next day?” He plunged into a trolley and left Granice gazing desolately after him. Two days later he reappeared at the apartment, a shade less jaunty in demeanor. “Well, Mr. Granice, the stars in their courses are against you, as the bard says. Can’t get a trace of Flood, or of Leffler either. And you say you bought the motor through Flood, and sold it through him, too?” “Yes,” said Granice wearily. “Who bought it, do you know?” Granice wrinkled his brows. “Why, Flood--yes, Flood himself. I sold it back to him three months later.” “Flood? The devil! And I’ve ransacked the town for Flood. That kind of business disappears as if the earth had swallowed it.” Granice, discouraged, kept silence. “That brings us back to the poison,” McCarren continued, his note-book out. “Just go over that again, will you?”