“Better than that, Mr. Farriss,” echoed Willis.  “We’ve got something; and we dug all week to get it.”

“But it cost us real money—­enough to make the business office moan, I expect, too,” Miss Donovan added.

“Well, for Pete’s sake, shoot!” demanded Farriss.  “Cavendish, I suppose?”

The two nodded.  Their eyes were alight with enthusiasm.

“In the first place,” said the girl, with grave emphasis, “Frederick Cavendish did not die intestate as supposed.  He left a will.”

Farriss blinked.  “By God!” he exclaimed.  “That’s interesting.  There was no evidence of that before.”

“I got that from the servants of the College Club,” Willis interposed.  “The will was drawn the night before the murder.  And the man that drew it was Patrick Enright of Enright and Dougherty.  Cavendish took away a copy of it in his pocket.  And, Mr. Farriss, I got something else, too—­Enright and young John Cavendish are in communication further.  I saw him leaving Enright’s office all excited.  Following my hunch, I cultivated Miss Healey, Enright’s stenographer, and learned that the two had an altercation and that it was evidently over some document.”

Farriss was interested.

“Enright’s in this deep,” he muttered thoughtfully, “but how?  Well—­what else?”

Stella Donovan began speaking now: 

“I fixed it with Chambers, the manager of the Fairmount, to get Josette La Baum—­she’s Valois’s fiancee, you remember—­into the hotel as a maid.  Josette ‘soaped the keyhole’ of the drawers in John Cavendish’s rooms there.  I had a key made from the soap impression, and from the contents of the correspondence we found I learned that Celeste La Rue, the blonde of the Revue, had got some kind of hold on him.  It isn’t love, either; it’s something stronger.  He jumps when she holds the hoop.”

“La Rue’s mixed up in this deeply, too,” Willis cut in.  “Neither one of us could shadow her without uncovering ourselves, so we hired an International operative.  They cost ten dollars a day—­and expenses.  What he learned was this—­that while she was playing with young Cavendish and seeing him almost daily, the lovely Celeste was also in communication with—­guess who!”

“Enright?” Farriss ventured.

“Exactly—­Enright,” he concluded, lighting his half-smoked cigarette.

“Well,” the city editor tapped his desk; “you two have done pretty well, so far.  You’ve got considerable dope.  Now, what do you make of it?”

He bent an inquiring gaze on both the girl and the youth.

“You do the talking, Jerry,” Miss Donovan begged Willis; “I’m very tired.”

Willis was only too eager; Willis was young, enthusiastic, reliable—­three reasons why the Star kept him.

“It may be a dream,” he said, smiling, “but here is the way I stack it up.  The night after he quarrelled with John, Frederick Cavendish called in Enright and made a will, presumably, cutting John off with practically nothing.