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What was the answer? Either could have killed Gilmore; but hardly both — unless they had formed some sort of crazy partnership, and in that event —

Suddenly all the facts I had gathered — true and false — clicked together in my head. I had the answer — the one simple, satisfying answer!

I grinned at the girl, and set about filling in the gaps in my solution.

“Who is Stan?” I asked.

“Stanley Tennant — he has something to do with the city.”

Stanley Tennant. I knew him by reputation, a —

A key rattled in the hall door.

The hall door opened and closed, and a man’s footsteps came toward the open doorway of the room in which we were. A tall, broad-shouldered man in tweeds filled the doorway — a ruddy-faced man of thirty-five or so, whose appearance of athletic blond wholesomeness was marred by close-set eyes of an indistinct blue.

Seeing me, he stopped — a step inside the room.

“Hello, Stan!” the girl said lightly. “This gentleman is from the Continental Detective Agency. I’ve just emptied myself to him about Bernie. Tried to stall him at first, but it was no good.”

The man’s vague eyes switched back and forth between the girl and me. Around the pale irises his eyeballs were pink.

He straightened his shoulders and smiled too jovially.

“And what conclusion have you come to?” he inquired.

The girl answered for me.

“I’ve already had my invitation to take a ride.”

Tennant bent forward. With an unbroken swing of his arms, he swept a chair up from the floor into my face. Not much force behind it, but quick.

I went back against the wall, fending off the chair with both arms — threw it aside — and looked into the muzzle of a nickeled revolver.

A table drawer stood open — the drawer from which he had grabbed the gun while I was busy with the chair. The revolver, I noticed, was of . 38 calibre.

“Now” — his voice was thick, like a drunk’s — “turn around.”

I turned my back to him, felt a hand moving over my body, and my gun was taken away.

“All right,” he said, and I faced him again.

He stepped back to the girl’s side, still holding the nickel-plated revolver on me. My own gun wasn’t in sight — in his pocket perhaps. He was breathing noisily, and his eyeballs had gone from pink to red. His face, too, was red, with veins bulging in the forehead.

“You know me?” he snapped.

“Yes, I know you. You’re Stanley Tennant, assistant city engineer, and your record is none too lovely.” I chattered away on the theory that conversation is always somehow to the advantage of the man who is looking into the gun. “You’re supposed to be the lad who supplied the regiment of well-trained witnesses who turned last year’s investigation of graft charges against the engineer’s office into a comedy. Yes, Mr. Tennant, I know you. You’re the answer to why Gilmore was so lucky in landing city contracts with bids only a few dollars beneath his competitors. Yes, Mr. Tennant, I know you. You’re the bright boy who —”

I had a lot more to tell him, but he cut me off.

“That will do out of you!” he yelled. “Unless you want me to knock a corner off your head with this gun.”

Then he addressed the girl, not taking his eyes from me.

“Get up, Cara.”

She got out of her chair and stood beside him. His gun was in his right hand, and that side was toward her. He moved around to the other side.

The fingers of his left hand hooked themselves inside the girl’s green gown where it was cut low over the swell of her breasts. His gun never wavered from me. He jerked his left hand, ripping her gown down to the waistline.