Guy Garrick | Page 5

me that I must rest, or at least combine pleasure with
business. Thus I had taken the voyage across the ocean to attend the
International Electrical Congress in London, and had unexpectedly
been thrown in with Guy Garrick, who later seemed destined to play
such an important part in my life.

Garrick was a detective, young, university bred, of good family, alert,
and an interesting personality to me. He had travelled much, especially
in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, where he had studied the
amazing growth abroad of the new criminal science.
Already I knew something, by hearsay, of the men he had seen, Gross,
Lacassagne, Reiss, and the now immortal Bertillon. Our acquaintance,
therefore, had rapidly ripened into friendship, and on our return, I had
formed a habit of dropping in frequently on him of an evening, as I had
this night, to smoke a pipe or two and talk over matters of common
interest in his profession.
He had paused a moment in what he was saying, but now resumed, less
reflectively, "Fortunately, Marshall, the crime-hunters have gone ahead
faster than the criminals. Now, it's my job to catch criminals. Yours, it
seems to me, is to show people how they can never hope to beat the
modern scientific detective. Let's strike a bargain."
I was flattered by his confidence. More than that, the idea appealed to
me, in fact was exactly in line with some plans I had already made for
the "World," since our first acquaintance.
And so it came about that the case brought to him by McBirney and
young Warrington was responsible for clearing our ideas as to our
mutual relationship and thus forming this strange partnership that has
existed ever since.
"Tom," he remarked, as we left the office quite late, after he had
arranged affairs as if he expected to have no time to devote to his other
work for several days, "come along and stay with me at my apartment
to-night. It's too late to do anything now until to- morrow."
I accepted his invitation without demur, for I knew that he meant it, but
I doubt whether he slept much during the night. Certainly he was up
and about early enough the following morning.
"That's curious," I heard him remark, as he ran his eye hastily over the
first page of the morning paper, "but I rather expected something of the

sort. Read that in the first column, Tom."
The story that he indicated had all the marks of having been dropped
into place at the last moment as the city edition went to press in the
small hours of the night.
It was headed:
GIRL'S BODY FOUND IN THICKET
The despatch was from a little town in New Jersey, and, when I saw the
date line, it at once suggested to me, as it had to Guy, that this was in
the vicinity that must have been traversed in order to reach the point
from which had come the report of the bloody car that had seemed to
tally with the description of that which Warrington had lost. It read:
"Hidden in the underbrush, not ten feet from one of the most travelled
automobile roads in this section of the state, the body of a murdered
girl was discovered late yesterday afternoon by a gang of Italian
labourers employed on an estate nearby.
"Suspicion was at first directed by the local authorities at the labourers,
but the manner of the finding of the body renders it improbable. Most
of them are housed in some rough shacks up the road toward Tuxedo
and were able to prove themselves of good character. Indeed, the
trampled condition of the thicket plainly indicates, according to the
local coroner, that the girl was brought there, probably already dead, in
an automobile which drew up off the road as far as possible. The body
then must have been thrown where it would be screened from sight by
the thick growth of trees and shrubbery.
"There was only one wound, in the chest. It is, however, a most
peculiar wound, and shows that a terrific force must have been exerted
in order to make it. A blow could hardly have accomplished it, so
jagged were its edges, and if the girl had been struck by a passing
high-speed car, as was at first suggested, there is no way to account for
the entire lack of other wounds which must naturally have been
inflicted by such an accident.

"Neither is the wound exactly like a pistol or gunshot wound, for,
curiously enough, there was no mark showing the exit of a bullet, nor
was any bullet found in the body after the most careful examination.
The local authorities are completely mystified at the possible problems
that may arise out of