“Clayton’s back,” observed Carruthers.

They stepped over the threshold, and the heavy voice greeted them.

“Ah, here’s Carruthers now!  H’are you, Carruthers?  They told me you’d been here, and were coming back, so I’ve been keeping the boys waiting before handing out the dope.  You’ve had a look at that—­eh?” He flung out a fat hand toward the bed.

The voices rose again, all directed at Carruthers now.

“Bubble’s burst, eh, Carruthers?  What about the ‘Prince of Crooks’?  Artistry in crime, wasn’t it, you said?” They were quoting from his editorials of bygone days, a half dozen reporters of rival papers, grinning and joshing him good-naturedly, seemingly quite unaffected by what lay within arm’s reach of them upon the bed.

Carruthers smiled a little wryly, shrugged his shoulders—­and presented Jimmie Dale to Inspector Clayton.

“Mr. Matthewson, a new man of ours—­inspector.”

“Glad to know you, Mr. Matthewson,” said the inspector.

Jimmie Dale found his hand grasped by another that was flabby and unpleasantly moist; and found himself looking into a face that was red, with heavy rolls of unhealthy fat terminating in a double chin and a thick, apoplectic neck—­a huge, round face, with rat’s eyes.

Clayton dropped Jimmie Dale’s hand, and waved his own in the air.  Jimmie Dale remained modestly on the outside of the circle as the reporters gathered around the police inspector.

“Now, then,” said Clayton coarsely, “the guy that’s croaked there is Metzer, Jake Metzer.  Get that?”

Jimmie Dale, scribbling hurriedly in his notebook like all the rest, turned a little toward the bed, and his lower jaw crept out the fraction of an inch.  Both gas jets in the room were turned on full, giving ample light.  A man fully dressed, a man of perhaps forty, lay upon his back on the bed, one arm outflung across the bedspread, the other dangling, with fingers just touching the floor, the head at an angle and off the pillow.  It was as though he had been carried to the bed and flung upon it after the deed had been committed.  Jimmie Dale’s eyes shifted and swept the room.  Yes, everything was in disorder, as though there had been a struggle—­a chair upturned, a table canted against the wall, broken pieces of crockery from the washstand on the carpet, and—­

“Metzer was a stool pigeon, see?” went on Clayton, “and he lived here.  Moriarty wasn’t on to him.  Metzer stood in thick with a wider circle of crooks than any other snitch in New York.”

Jimmie Dale, still scribbling as Clayton talked, stepped to the bed and leaned over the murdered man.  The murder had been done with a blackjack evidently—­a couple of blows.  The left side of the temple was crushed in.  Right in the middle of the forehead, pasted there, a gray-colored, diamond shaped paper seal flaunted itself—­the device of the Gray Seal.  In Jimmie Dale’ hand, hidden as he turned his back, the tiny combination of powerful lenses was focused on the seal.