Except for a few bootlegging cases, the last few weeks had been singularly uneventful, and on this bright spring morning the equally bright red head of the young detective was full of visions of leafy woods and murmuring brooks, where trout rose audaciously and leaped, a flash of rainbow and silver, in the glancing sunlight. "If nothing comes across to-day," he ruminated, dreamily, "I'll turn over this righteous old burg to O'Malley's tender care, beat it out to Jersey, and have a hack at the trout with Harry Carlisle, darned if I won't." The pleasant thoughts engendered by this determination were rudely interrupted by the sharp ringing of the telephone at his elbow. "Another lot of hooch unearthed," he muttered to himself disgustedly, as he took the receiver off the hook and held it to his ear. "Hello," he cried, with an unnecessary accent on the first syllable. "Who wants me, Maggie? Oh, all right. I don't know him, but put him on." An instant's pause, then--"Hello, yes. Peter Clancy speaking. Yes?" a rising inflection on the last word. Suddenly the expression of annoyance left his face. He listened intently. His eyes narrowed to slits of flashing blue, his relaxed body tautened in every fibre. Once or twice he shot a question into the transmitter, but the entire conversation over the wire could have been measured by seconds. At the end--"Ninety-nine Waverly Place? I'm there!" he said, and flinging the receiver upon its hook, he dashed into the street, picked up a passing taxi, and made good his word. The street door of Ninety-nine Waverly Place was ajar. Clancy, flinging it wide as he reached the threshold, was greeted by a fluent ejaculation in profane and picturesque brogue, winding up with-- "It's the divil and all that's in it at all, at all! Bangin' me in the stomach with the whole side of a house!" "Hello, Sullivan! What're you doing here?" cried Clancy, catching the arm of the uniformed policeman with a gesture which was, in itself, a hasty apology. "Anything to do with----" A motion of his head indicated the upper part of the house. The officer nodded, and through his suddenly assumed air of preternatural sagacity there appeared a deep perplexity. "Are you on it, yourself?" he asked, though he anticipated the affirmative answer. "Mr. Morris called you up, I suppose," he continued. "Said he was going to get the best man in New York, and I guess he has, at that," with a complimentary grin. "Ye can't down the Irish, eh, Mr. Clancy? Well, and what d'ye make of it?" "Don't know many of the facts yet," Clancy replied, hastily. "Am just going after 'em. But what are you doing down here? Why aren't----"