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from the man’s clothes.
    This, at first glance, seemed to be a folding ruler. But if so, it was calibrated as no ruler ever was. It didn’t have inches marked on it. It didn’t have anything marked on it but lines. That was all right; some rulers have the inches marked off but the figures omitted. However, these lines didn’t represent inches. They were spread all over the place.
    Benson had measured them a moment ago. There were five lines marked on the ruler. The first was an inch and seven eighths from the end; the second, three inches; the third, five and a half; the fourth, nine and a quarter inches; the fifth, and last, fourteen and three quarters. There was also a single mark on the other side.
    What possible sense could be made out of that?
    Furthermore, very faintly, there were traces of many previous markings, which had been rubbed out when new ones were added. It was as if this ruler had been used many times to measure many queer distances.
    “Cole,” said The Avenger, his voice calm but full of that command which made him a born leader of men, “you are sure you heard the killer apologize before he shot?”
    “Dead sure,” said Cole. “He said, ‘Sorry, my friend,’ and then he let him have it.” He ran his hand through his thick dark hair. “He’d have let me have the slug instead, of course, but he was standing at an angle where he could get the man but not me.”
    “So he killed his own friend and co-worker, rather than risk having him taken prisoner and made to talk,” mused Dick Benson.
    “That’s what it looks like, chief.” Cole, in his anxiety to give every detail that might be helpful, brought one up now that he hadn’t thought of before. “The guy was very fat.”
    Smitty and Nellie whirled on him in unison.
    “He was what?”
    “I said he was very fat. The killer, I mean,” Cole repeated, looking surprised at their consternation. “He must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds. His face was heavy-jowled, and he looked like the kind of fellow who’d need a shave an hour after he had one.”
    Smitty stared at Nellie, who slowly shook her head.
    “I know what you’re thinking, and it simply can’t be.”
    “That’s the exact description of Teebo,” said Smitty stubbornly.
    “Teebo jumped forty-four stories to hard sidewalk,” said Nellie. “Don’t be dumb.”
    “I know. Teebo’s dead. We saw his . . . er . . . what was left of him. Just the same, this guy that Cole describes sounds like Teebo.”
    “Look, you mountain of ignorance, the dead don’t walk! Particularly when they’ve been mashed as flat as a—”

    The Avenger spoke suddenly. As usual, his concentration on the problem at hand was so intense that he had heard nothing irrelevant to the job.
    “If there’s one thing certain by now,” he said, “it is that this is not an ordinary fake-masterpiece racket.”
    “Teebo acted as if it were,” retorted Nellie. “He acted as if his sole business was to sell a phony for as much money as he could get for it.”
    “I believe Teebo thought that was all there was to it,” Dick agreed. “Perhaps he had associates who believed the same way; that it was only a racket. Honest crooks, you might call them.”
    “Then where does the man fit in who came here for the painting?” asked Smitty.
    “I don’t know,” said Benson.
    “And the gang I ran into at the five corners, one of whom shot the blond guy?” said Cole.
    The Avenger shook his head. “I don’t know their place in this, either. But the fact that Teebo was murdered to prevent the sale of the fake Gauguin to me indicates that there are two separate gangs. As Nellie pointed out, members of Teebo’s own gang wouldn’t have had to kill him to prevent the sale of a fake to an organization they knew was dangerous to them. All they’d have had to do was tip Teebo off to leave the Pink Room without seeing Smitty or Nellie again.”
    “Was Teebo murdered?” Smitty murmured, looking at the ceiling.