Such was the chorus of praise that it is not likely that much harm
could come to the Excelsior from a single mysterious death but Mother
Pickett was not consoling herself with such reflections.
She looked at the dead man with pale, grim eyes. Out in the hallway the
doctor's voice further increased her despair. He was talking to the
police on the telephone, and she could distinctly hear his every word.
II
The offices of Mr. Paul Snyder's Detective Agency in New Oxford Street
had grown in the course of a dozen years from a single room to an
impressive suite bright with polished wood, clicking typewriters, and
other evidences of success. Where once Mr. Snyder had sat and waited
for clients and attended to them himself, he now sat in his private
office and directed eight assistants.
He had just accepted a case--a case that might be nothing at all or
something exceedingly big. It was on the latter possibility that he had
gambled. The fee offered was, judged by his present standards of
prosperity, small. But the bizarre facts, coupled with something in the
personality of the client, had won him over. He briskly touched the
bell and requested that Mr. Oakes should be sent in to him.
Elliot Oakes was a young man who both amused and interested Mr.
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