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wolves or something had worked on it.
    Fergus MacMurdie and Cole Wilson came in, obviously in answer to a recent summons to headquarters.
    MacMurdie was as tall as Josh Newton and almost as thin. He had feet almost as big. His ears were bigger, sticking out like sails from his sandy-haired head. He had bleak, bitter blue eyes under sandy ropes of eyebrows and a raw, freckled skin. But while he would never win a beauty prize, he had won all sorts of reprieves from death with his strength, quickness and general fighting ability.
    “Raring to go, chief,” said Wilson impulsively. “What’s the job you want done?”
    It would be Cole Wilson who blurted out something. He was the latest member of the little band and the most impulsive. He lived for action, looked it and could move like chain lightning. He had the sharp features and slanting forehead of an Indian, and his hair was heavy and dark and had never known a hat.
    “Have you read up on the Foley murder?” Dick Benson asked them.
    “We’ve read what there was to rrread,” burred Mac. “It wasn’t much. Partner in Thornton Heights killed late one night in his own office. Murderer must be some 1942 Jack the Ripper, from the way the body looked. Leaves a widow—second wife—and a nephew.”
    The Avenger nodded.
    “Better have a talk with the widow and the nephew,” he said to them.

    The unfortunate Carl Foley had not lived in his own development. His home, a big gray stone house with newly installed iron bars over the basement and first-floor windows, was a mile from Thornton Heights.
    Wilson looked at those bars as the two men approached the front door. They were an inch thick, and the cement and lead in which they were set still gleamed pale and fresh.
    “Foley was certainly scared of something, just before he died,” Wilson observed.
    Then the door was opening for them. A trim maid said she’d tell Mrs. Foley they wanted to see her.
    Mrs. Foley came immediately into the rather musty drawing room of the house. She looked inquiringly at them. She was under thirty and wore a most attractive gray negligée which set off her dark hair. She had beautiful greenish eyes which instantly gave MacMurdie, who was completely woman-proof, the conviction that she wasn’t to be trusted as far as he could throw a locomotive.
    “You are special police, or something?” she asked, in a wan, sad voice. Instinctively, she addressed her words to Cole Wilson, who was as darkly presentable as Mac was homely.
    “Special police,” said Wilson. Which was the truth. All the members of Justice, Inc. held special cards from the police departments of a dozen big cities. “We wanted to ask you a few questions about Mr. Foley, if you can take them.”
    She waved a limp and beautiful hand to indicate that she would manage to bear up under questioning.
    “We noticed thick steel bars, newly installed at the lower windows,” said Wilson. “Was Mr. Foley afraid he would meet some untimely end?”
    “I believe he was,” Mrs. Foley said. “He acted very nervous, very strange, for weeks before he . . . before his—”
    “How do ye mean—strrrange?” burred the Scot.
    “He hired a chauffeur who was an ex-wrestler, as a sort of guard,” said Mrs. Foley. “And he had those prison bars put over the windows. He jumped when anyone came near him unexpectedly. Even when I did. And he always seemed to be listening.”
    “Listening?” said Wilson. “Listening to what?”
    “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Foley. “I never heard anything. And if I didn’t, I don’t see how he could have. Yet, he was always listening as if he did hear something.”
    “Did what he thought he heard scare him?”
    “I should say it did,” sighed Mrs. Foley. “Carl lost at least thirty pounds in the month before he died. The doctors said there wasn’t a thing the matter with him. So it must have been just that he was so afraid.”
    “He was killed in his office, I understand,” Cole said, very