here and release him—at least on bail until we can find the girl. The man's innocent, Mr. D. A.; have you forgotten?"

"Yes."

"'Yes'? Yes, what?"

"I've forgotten he's innocent," Troy said quietly. "Matter of fact, he's guilty as hell."

The Lieutenant half rose from his chair. "Now wait a minute! You heard that girl's story and you've got the evidence I turned over to you right here in this office last night. What more—"

"I'll tell you what more," Troy snapped. "That girl was a fraud, her story was a downright lie and that evidence was faked. Let me tell you something else, Mister: within five minutes after the guard downstairs reported your girl friend missing, I had five squads of my men out running down the personal information she gave me a few hours before. And you know what they found out? Every bit of what she told me was false! Hear that? False! It took my men about one hour to prove as much, for the simple reason that not one lead panned out. Not one! And you know what I think?"

Martin Kirk opened his mouth but nothing came out but a strangled croak.

"I think you and this dame worked out the whole thing between the two of you to save Cordell's neck. Who could do a better job of faking evidence than a crooked cop? What's more, you might have gotten away with it, too—only it suddenly dawned on the girl that she was getting in too deep."

"And so," Kirk cut in hotly, "she calmly walked through five locked sets of iron bars and went back to Mars!"

He stood up and crossed to the desk and leaned down with his palms in the center of the brown blotter. "You won't get away with it, Troy. You didn't want any part of this new development from the minute I called you on the phone last night. You knew it could show you and your whole organization up as a bunch of bunglers and incompetents. So you got rid of the girl, thinking that without her the truth of those murders would never get out to the voters.

"Well, it won't work, Fatso! The evidence I dug up is strong enough to reopen the case without Naia North. All I have to do is put that evidence in front of Judge Reed, and—"

Troy was smiling wolfishly. "What evidence, Lieutenant?"

Kirk stiffened. "You know damned well what evidence. It's in your files 

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