ALIAS RED RYAN



pistol. Inside the door, which stood wide, he found
himself in a narrow hallway, and that, too, contained
several idle onlookers-unless they were participants
now posing as accidental arrivals.
  " Get in that door with ye  .  . . All of ye, and
snap into it," commanded the patrolman, herding
them ahead of him and sweeping with a swift glance
the room upon which the hall gave. He heard the mo-
torcycle chug to a stop outside, and recognized that
reinforcements were at hand, should he need them.
  The picture that met his eye through that door
frame made him catch his breath for a moment, then
he stepped in and considered it.
  The room was the office of a wholesale fur ware-
house, and this made the third robbery bearing the
same bold trade-mark that had afflicted his beat in
the last ten days-but this was the first that had
added murder to theft, and for an instant the police-
man felt jarred with the shock.
  There were, besides the casuals he had driven
ahead of him, two men in that room, or three if you
counted the dead man.
  There could be little doubt about his being dead,
even in advance of a closer examination. The set of
the eyes in the upturned face told that story to
Mahaffey's experience; that and the very proclama-
tion of lifelessness in the huddle of the still-bleeding
figure lying so awkwardly crumpled on the floor be-
side a desk.



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