"Fifth Avenue!" announced Drew as they reached the corner. "Now, downtown, Delaney," he added cheerily. "Old Kris Kringle has nothing on us to-night. I believe we're the only ones out." The operative caught his chief's humor, and glanced into his face with a smile. "Whew!" he breathed. "Whew!" he repeated from the depths of his lungs. "I'm glad, Triggy, to get from that damn house and that damn magpie and that----" "So am I!" said Drew, thrusting out his hand and linking his elbow into the cove of Delaney's arm. "So am I. Fine night for the poor firm of Drew and Company." Delaney glanced around and over his left shoulder. He blinked with frosty lids as he saw the towering façades of Stockbridge's mansion; its turrets and towers spiraled in the winter sky. He drew in his lips and compressed them. He puffed them out as he turned. "I'm deducting," he said, "that there's more at the bottom of this thing than we think. Put it down for me that the Germans are mixed up in it." Drew walked on for a block before he answered. He gripped the operative's arm by closing his own as he said: "Quit deducting! It's fatal! Get your facts! Get all of them. The answer will come then, without an effort. It will be the right answer or none at all." "Just the same, Chief----" "The trouble with you," broke in Drew severely, "the trouble is, that you are forcing a conclusion to meet your own suspicions. The Germans, with the exception of a small clique, are behaving very well in this country at the present time. In other words, the most of them are good Americans and sane." "That walley-sham?" "He is not even under consideration! Did you notice him?" "Sure, Chief!" "Anything strike you as peculiar?" "N--o." "There were tears in his eyes--the only ones shed in that house for Stockbridge--outside of the daughter." Delaney gulped. "I didn't see them," he said frankly. "No! Well, I did--and when he wasn't expecting me to see them. A woman is never wholly lost who can blush, or a man who can shed tears." "Sounds like good deduction," admitted the operative. "But then, Chief, there are a lot of fine actors in this world. I think there has been some in this case." "This case, Delaney," Drew said, "is like many others which appear at first impossible of solving. All things can be solved by first principles. Give me all the facts and I'll give you the answer to any riddle. The answer will come! Don't try to write your plot until you have words to form your story. Don't make the mistake of forcing an answer to father a wish. In other words, Delaney, best of friends, we haven't all the facts we are going to get in this case and therefore it is idle to attempt to deduce who shot Stockbridge!" "Or how he was shot, Chief?"