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are down in the basement thought that somehow the janitor had come in and built up a fire for your comfort this evening?”
    Sergeant Taylor was puzzled. “Huh?” He frowned. “Say, I’d like to find that janitor fellow. Allen and Burns don’t seem to be getting anywhere with their search downstairs—they haven’t got either the janitor or the body.”
    “You’d better go on down to the basement,” Miss Withers told him, “and tip them off that they need only search for the janitor now. I know where the body is.”
    The Sergeant’s mouth dropped open in unison with McTeague’s. “You know what … where? ”
    Miss Withers told him.
    “Good God! Come on, McTeague! You coming, Miss Withers?”
    She shook her head. “Not for anything in the world.”
    “But, ma’am, with all this going on I’d feel safer about you if you’d stick with us….”
    “There’s nothing to worry about now,” Hildegarde Withers told him calmly. “We know where the body is—and the murderer is safely out of here and far away. He—or she, for that matter—happened to know his way out of the building. And out of the playground, even if it was dark.”
    Sergeant Taylor’s face brightened. “Then all we got to do is to find out the people who know their way around this place, and the murder is solved!”
    “Simple, isn’t it?” Miss Withers agreed as they walked down the hall. “You’ve narrowed the suspects down to thirty or forty thousand. Don’t you realize that New York is full of men and women who spent the best part of eight years of their childhood in Jefferson School?”
    They came down the stair, and Miss Withers paused outside the door of the Principal’s office. “I’ll be here,” she informed the Sergeant. “I want to make a phone call.”
    Downstairs Taylor came upon the two detectives, Allen and Burns, in a hot argument.
    They were standing beside a rude grave in the far corner of the long basement. It was a dark corner, between heavy stone arches that supported the floors above, and had never been completed or floored. There was hardly room for the Sergeant to stand erect, and McTeague was bent almost double.
    “I tell you, this hole was dug this afternoon at the latest,” Burns was insisting. “Look at the shovel marks. Look at the dirt. It’s not dried, is it? Say, you can’t fool me about dirt. I used to be on a farm when I was a kid. I’ve walked plenty of miles behind a plow, and I tell you that dirt is black when it’s just dug, and then it dries out and gets grayish-like.”
    “Never mind that, boys,” Taylor told them. “We got to get busy. Quick, where’s the furnace down here?”
    Allen pointed with his thumb. “Over there in the corner. Why? Looking for a hot scent?”
    “You don’t know how hot,” the Sergeant told him. “Come on.”
    Back under the arches they went, past three gaping coal bins, and along a board walk to where a squat black furnace stood.
    “I don’t see why we’re monkeying around here,” Allen complained. “We got to get busy and find whatever there is to be found in this place. Doc Levin is outside, and he says he’s going home. He figures the whole thing is a false alarm, and he isn’t going to set around and wait …”
    Allen suddenly paused, as he saw the expression on Sergeant Taylor’s face.
    “Wha-what’s up?”
    “Plenty. You searched this basement, didn’t you? Well, you’d be a good one to send after trouble. Because you couldn’t find anything. You couldn’t find Times Square if you came out of the Paramount.”
    Gingerly, the Sergeant caught the handle of the furnace door and threw it open.
    A horrible, sickening odor burst out in their faces, and they drew back. McTeague crossed himself, and his lips moved wordlessly.
    They were a hardened little group, those four policemen, who stood there aghast at the contents of that flaming bubble of iron. The life of a metropolitan policeman is not such as to make for squeamishness, and