IM MERKER, member of the city detective force, stretched himself in his chair so that he could rest his feet on the bench before him, and puffed at his freshly lighted cigar. He was the only man in the detectives' room at headquarters save the desk sergeant, who was busy with his reports.
“I said it,” Jim Merker grumbled. “A man of genius, such as your humble servant, is liable to go stale around this place. What have I been doing the past six weeks? Gathering reports from pawn shops and second-hand stores, investigating neighborhood rows, and pinching men for putting boxes on the sidewalks.”
“We can't have a murder sensation every week just to please you fly cops,” the sergeant observed.
“Tell me what's the use of being on the homicide squad then?” Merker demanded. “I might as well be pounding a beat.”
“Want to get your name in the papers?”
Jim Merker's feet hit the floor with a threatening thud, and the desk sergeant looked up quickly and grinned. He knew that he had touched the popular detective on a sore spot.
“I care a lot about getting my name in the papers, and you know it,” Jim Merker declared forcefully. “But I do like a tough case to work on. I like to make wild guesses and then find that they are correct. I like to have rogues try to fool me, and get the better of them. I like the game—confound it!”
“Be that as it may,” the desk sergeant observed, “seems to me we ought to be having a sensation of some sort.”
“It's long overdue,” Detective Jim Merker complained. “I'm getting rusty. If something doesn't happen before long I'll”
He swung around in his chair and looked through the window at the street seething with humanity. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, and it was a warm spring day.
“Can't even go to a baseball game and nab a pickpocket,” Merker said. “Season doesn't open for a week yet.”
“And when it does open you won't be so eager for cases to work on,” the knowing desk sergeant replied, grinning at the detective again.
A buzzer sounded, and the sergeant spoke into the telephone in front of him. He whirled around and faced Merker.
“Captain's office—you!” was all he said.
Merker groaned as he got out of his chair and adjusted his belt. Also, he made a wry face as he stalked toward the door.
“Lost kid, probably,” he remarked. “Or maybe the wife of some estimable citizen wants me to get a pet cat down out of a high tree. Homicide squad—huh!”
A moment later he stood beside his captain's desk and looked down at him expectantly.
“Dead man—shot—may be murder—possibly suicide—here's the address!”
As he took the little slip of paper hope flamed into Detective Merker's heart. The address, he found, was in a street in that section of the city where, it might be said, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat mingled. Anything was possible in that district of small shops with private apartments on the second and third floors. Merker did not hope that some person had met a violent death, but, if some person had, he was glad to be assigned to the case.
He hurried from headquarters, caught a car, and rode downtown. He had two squares to walk after he left the car, and he made them quickly. Half a block from the address he saw that a crowd had gathered. Merker thrust his way through it, to find a patrolman on guard before the entrance to a stairway.
“What is it?” Merker asked.
“Looks like homicide,” the patrolman answered, “I guess it is in your line, all right. Little apartment up one flight. I've kept the crowd out. Janitor found the body—here he is.”
“Who is it?” Merker asked the janitor.
“I'm not quite sure, sir. When he rented the apartment about a month ago he said that his name was Jones. He was middle-aged, and a distinguished-looking man, sir.”
“What happened?” Merker snappily questioned.
“I didn't hear any shot, sir, though I was sittin' here by the door, like I always do in the afternoons when the weather is nice. I just happened to go up and along the hall to get a broom out of my closet. The door of the apartment was half open, sir, and I glanced inside and saw a man on the floor. I went in, of course, thinking he might be sick, or somethin' like that. He was sprawled there dead, with a revolver on the floor beside him. I shut the door and hurried down the stairs, and the policeman was just passing along”
“I hurried up and took a look and then telephoned headquarters,” the patrolman told Merker. “I've been keeping out the crowd since then.”