The Seven Sinister Sombreros

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Lester Leith lifted the lid from the humidor of carved ivory which held his cigarettes. Gently tapping the tip of a cigarette on his thumbnail, he snapped a match into flame, sucked in a deep inhalation of fragrant smoke, and started blowing smoke rings.

Men who have lived together in months of intimate association learn to know each other’s habits with an almost clairvoyant perception; and Edward Beaver, the police undercover man, who had so long been masquerading as Lester Leith’s valet, watched him with glittering eyes. Experience had taught him that if Lester Leith should start tracing the perimeters of those smoke rings with the tip of his extended forefinger, the time would be ripe to trap the man upon whom he spied. That trap had already been set. It remained only for the spy to bait it by interesting Leith in a crime problem which had been carefully selected by Police Sergeant Ackley as the pitfall which would lead the unsuspecting victim to his undoing.

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