“Oh, no, sir, never, sir.”

“What made you bring this thing to the office at all?”

“Well, sir-” Ginger stood on one leg. “I’d been telling the other chaps about me shooting me Aunt Emily’s tomcat, sir, and they wanted to see it, sir.”

“You’re a dangerous man, Ginger. Nothing is safe from you. Tomcats and windows and maiden aunts-they’re all your victims, aren’t they?”

“Yessir.” Understanding this to be in the nature of a jest, Joe sniggered happily.

“How long ago did this bereavement take place, Ginger?”

“Bereavement, sir? Did you mean Auntie’s cat?”

“No, I meant, how long ago was your catapult confiscated?”

“Bit over a month ago, it would be, sir.”

“About the middle of May?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“And you’ve never laid hands on it since?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you any other catapult?”

“No, sir.”

“Has any of the other boys got a catapult?”

“No, sir.”

“Or a sling, or any other infernal machine for projecting stones?”

“No, sir; leastways, not here, sir. Tom Faggott has a peashooter at home, sir.”

“I said stones, not peas. Did you ever shoot with this, or any other catapult, on the roof?”

“On the roof of the office, sir?”

“Yes.”

“No, sir.”

“Or anybody else that you know of?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Nobody that I know of, sir.”

“Now, look here, son; I’ve got an idea that you’re a straight sort of fellow, that mightn’t like to split on a pal. You’re quite sure there isn’t anything at all about this catapult that you know and don’t like to tell me? Because, if there is, I shall quite understand, and I’ll explain to you exactly why it would be better that you should tell me.”

Ginger’s eyes opened very wide in bewilderment.

“Honest injun, sir,” he said, with earnest sincerity, “I don’t know nothing at all about no catapult, bar Mrs. Johnson taking that one and putting it away in her desk. Cross me heart and wish I may die, sir.”

“All right. What was that book I saw you reading just now?”

Ginger, accustomed to the curious habit grown-up people have of interrogating their youngers and betters on any unrelated subjects that happen to stroke a roving fancy, replied without hesitation or surprise:

“The Clue of the Crimson Star, sir. About Sexton Blake; he’s a detective, you know, sir. It’s a top-hole yarn.”

“Like detective-stories, Ginger?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I reads a lot of them. I’m going to be a detective one day, sir. My eldest brother’s in the police, sir.”

“Is he? Splendid fellow. Well, the first thing a detective has to learn to do is to keep his mouth shut. You know that?”

“Yessir.”

“If I show you something now, can you keep quiet about it?”

“Yessir.”

“Very well. Here’s a ten-bob note. Hop out to the nearest chemist and get me some grey powder and an insufflator.”

“What sort of powder, sir?”

“Grey powder-mercury powder-the man will know. And an insufflator; it’s a little rubber bulb with a nozzle to it.”

“Yessir.”

Ginger Joe hopped with speed.

“An ally,” said Mr. Bredon to himself, “an ally-indispensable, I fear, and I fancy I’ve picked the right one.”

Ginger came panting back in record time. He scented adventure. Mr. Bredon, in the meantime, had attached a discreet curtain of brown paper to the glass panel of his door. Mrs. Crump was not surprised. That proceeding was familiar to her. It usually meant that a gentleman was going out, and wished to change his trousers in a decent privacy.

“Now,” said Mr. Bredon, shutting the door, “we will see whether your catapult can tell us anything about its adventures since it left your hands.” He filled the insufflator with the grey powder and directed an experimental puff upon the edge of the desk. On blowing away the surplus powder, he thus disclosed a surprising collection of greasy finger-prints. Ginger was enthralled.

“Coo!” he said, reverently. “Are you going to test the catapult for prints, sir?”

“I am. It will be interesting if we find any, and still more interesting if we find none.”

Ginger, goggle-eyed, watched the proceedings. The catapult appeared to have been well polished by use and presented an admirable surface for finger-prints, had there been any, but though they covered every half-inch of the thick Y-fork with powder, the result was a blank. Ginger looked disappointed.

“Ah!” said Bredon. “Now is it that it will not, or that it cannot speak? We will make that point clear. Catch hold of the thing, Ginger, as though you were whanging a shot off.”

Ginger obeyed, clutching grimly with his greasy little paw.

“That ought to give ’em,” said his new friend, “the whole of the palms of the fingers round the handle and the ball of the thumb in the fork. Now we’ll try again.”

The insufflator came once more into play, and this time a noble set of markings sprang into view.

“Ginger,” said Mr. Bredon, “what do you, as a detective, deduce from this?”

“Mrs. Johnson must a-wiped it, sir.”

“Do you think that’s very likely, Ginger?”

“No, sir.”

“Then go on deducing.”

“Somebody else must a-wiped it, sir.”

“And why should somebody else do that?”

Ginger knew where he was now.

“So that the police couldn’t fix nothing on him, sir.”

“The police, eh?”

“Well, sir, the police-or a detective-or somebody like as it might be yourself, sir.”

“I can find no fault with that deduction, Ginger. Can you go further and say why this unknown catapult artist should have gone to all that trouble?”

“No, sir.”

“Come, come.”

“Well, sir, it ain’t as though he stole it-and besides, it ain’t worth nothing.”

“No; but it looks as though somebody had borrowed it, if he didn’t steal it. Who could do that?”

“I dunno, sir. Mrs. Johnson keeps that drawer locked.”

“So she does. Do you think Mrs. Johnson has been having a little catapult practice on her own?”

“Oh, no, sir. Women ain’t no good with catapults.”

“How right you are. Well, now, suppose somebody had sneaked Mrs. Johnson’s keys and taken the catapult and broken a window or something with it, and was afraid of being found out?”

“There ain’t been nothing broke in this office, not between Mrs. Johnson pinching my catapult and me breaking the window with the Yo-Yo, and if one of the boys had took the catapult, I don’t think they’d think about finger-prints, sir.”

“You never know. He might have been playing burglar or something and just wiped his finger-prints away out of dramatic instinct, if you know what that is.”

“Yessir,” agreed Ginger, in a dissatisfied tone.

“Particularly if he’d done some really bad damage with it. Or of course, it might be more than dramatic instinct. Do you realize, Ginger, that a thing like this might easily kill anybody, if it happened to catch him in just the right spot?”

“Kill anybody? Would it, sir?”

“I wouldn’t like to try the experiment. Was your aunt’s tomcat killed?”

“Yessir.”

“That’s nine lives at a blow, Ginger, and a man has only one. You’re quite sure, sonnie, that nobody you know of was larking about with this catapult the day Mr. Dean fell downstairs?”

Ginger flushed and turned pale; but apparently only with excitement. His small voice was hoarse as he answered:

“No, sir. Wish I may die, sir, I never see nothing of that. You don’t think somebody catapulted Mr. Dean, sir?”

“Detectives never ‘think’ anything,” replied Mr. Bredon, reprovingly. “They collect facts and make deductions-God forgive me!” The last three words were a whispered lip-service to truth. “Can you remember who might have happened to be standing round or passing by when Mrs. Johnson took that catapult from you and put it in her desk?”

Ginger considered.

“I couldn’t say right off, sir. I was just coming upstairs to the Dispatching when she spotted it. She was behind me, you see, sir, and it made me pocket stick out, like. A-jawing me, she was, all up the stairs, and took it off of me at the top and sent me down again with the basket to Mr. ’Ornby. I never see her put it away. But some of the other boys may have. ’Course, I knowed it was there, because all the things as is confisticated-”