"You two men," Brooks and Billy moved forward to take his orders, "take another look through the house--don't leave the building--I'll want you pretty soon." Brooks--or Jack Bailey, as we may as well call him through the remainder of this narrative--started to obey.

Then his eye fell on Miss Cornelia's revolver which Anderson had taken from beside Fleming's body and still held clasped in his hand.
"If you'll give me that revolver--" he began in an offhand tone, hoping Anderson would not see through his little ruse.

Once wiped clean of fingerprints, the revolver would not be such telling evidence against Dale Ogden.
But Anderson was not to be caught napping.

"That revolver will stay where it is," he said with a grim smile.
Jack Bailey knew better than to try and argue the point, he followed Billy reluctantly out of the door, giving Dale a surreptitious glance of encouragement and faith as he did so.

The Japanese and he mounted to the second floor as stealthily as possible, prying into dark corners and searching unused rooms for any clue that might betray the source of the startling phone call from nowhere.