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When Morgan reached the second floor on his way down, he paused a moment before Marsh's door. So far as he had gone in this case, Morgan was confronted with two factors; the connection of this man with the case, and the bearing which Miss Atwood and her father might have upon it. Without doubt, some singular conditions surrounded the Atwoods, but his knowledge of these was still too vague to give him even a basis for reasoning.

A policeman on his nightly rounds in one of the most exclusive residential areas of Chicago hears a shot - but prompt investigation yields no clues, no victim, and no witnesses. Still, Detective Sergeant Morgan soon determines that something has happened and someone has disappeared, leaving only the slenderest of clues. Will he get to the bottom of this Uptown mystery?

It was a still, balmy night in late October. The scent of burned autumn leaves hung in the air, and a hazy moon, showing just over the housetops, deepened the shadows on the streets. Policeman Murphy stopped far a moment, as was his custom, at the corner of Lawrence Avenue and Sheridan Road. He knew that it was about two o'clock in the morning as that was the hour at which he usually reached this point. He glanced sharply up and down Sheridan Road, which at that moment seemed to be completely deserted save for the distant red tail-light of a belated taxi, the whir of whose engine came to him quite distinctly on the quiet night air. JUST THEN POLICEMAN MURPHY HEARD A SHOT! Instantly his body quickened with an awakened alertness, and he glanced east and west along the lonely stretch of Lawrence Avenue. He saw nothing, and concluded that the sound he had heard must have come from one of the many apartment buildings which surrounded him. Murphy pondered for a moment. Was it a burglary, a domestic row, or perhaps a murder? The position of the shot was hard to locate, for it had been but the sound of a moment on the still night. Murphy, however, decided to take a chance, and started stealthily north on Sheridan Road, keeping within the shadow that clung to the buildings.

Sheridan Road is a Chicago route that goes parallel with the Lake Michigan's shoreline. A policeman on the watch hears the shot that rings through the night, and shortly after that runs into a disturbed man. The man claims that the shot was fired in an apartment above his, but when the policeman goes upstairs to check, there is no sign of a body. Since the regular police can't solve the mystery, case is assigned to the best detective in Chicago, Dave Morgan