THE COLOR OF MURDER

The room was a shambles. Arlene Brewster had fought valiantly, but now her beaten, battered body lay dead on the bed. It was vicious, insensate murder. The open window onto the fire escape spoke mutely.

The Professor removed his hat, dripping from the steady rain. He got to his knees, crawled from one irregularly-shaped, bluish-colored spot on the floor to another. They were about the size of a dime. H’mmm. The criminologist toyed with his ear lobe. He was puzzled. Then he “got the picture.”

Four hardened suspects were brought in for grilling: Joe Maxon, Roy Young, Gig Putnam and Dave Rubin. One of the four had been out of prison only ten days after doing nine years.

Before the interrogation began Fordney picked up the following meager facts:

1. The underworld was unusually cooperative because the murderer, who had been in the city only a short time, was not one of them.

2. In a search of Dave Rubin’s apartment in the swank Dresden Arms where he had lived luxuriously ever since the unsolved Washburton jewel robbery three years before, Fordney found a startling clue to that puzzling crime.

3. Gig Putnam denied that he had fingered Roy Young, a hoodlum with eight local arrests, when Young’s cousin, Paul Bruce, accused him of doing so. Bruce said Putnam was motivated by Young’s persistent refusal to let his sister join a local gang of female blackmailers which Putnam had headed for two years.

From the above Fordney knew the name of the murderer, that he wore poorly dyed, blue socks and had a hole in his shoe.

Who was the murderer? Turn page for solution.