The Canary Murder Case

Twice, from behind her closed door, Margaret Odell screams for help. The man who left her apartment minutes before is at the switchboard, in the night operator's plain sight, when she does; he knocks, and she calls back that nothing is wrong and to go home. By morning the Follies girl Broadway called the Canary lies strangled on her davenport, her rooms ransacked, her jewel case forced by a tool never found.

The apartment has one way in, and the operator swears no one used it. Four wealthy men had reason to want her quiet, and each can prove he was elsewhere. Philo Vance leaves the fingerprints and timetables to the police and asks instead for a card table, certain that how a man bets will give him away.