CHAPTER IX.“Our Case.”—Harcout’s Egotism and Interference.—The strange Chain of Evidence.—A Trail of Spiritualism, Lust, and Licentiousness.—Superintendent Bangs locates the Detectives.—A pernicious System.—Three Old Maids named Grim.—Mr. Bangs baffled by Mr. Lyon, who won’t be “worried.”—One Honest Spiritualistic Doctor.—The Trail secured.—A Tigress.—Mr. Bangs “goes West.”
ON my return to New York I found that the splendid Harcout had been using the interim in a succession of heated rushes from the St. Nicholas Hotel to the Agency, where he had given my superintendents and clerks voluminous instructions as to how the investigation should be conducted, and, in explaining his idea of how detectives should work up any case, permeated the entire establishment with his fragrant pomposity. He
