George Drake’s body was found shortly after midnight by a waiter on his way home from work.

He was the eighth victim taken to the morgue from Harlem that weekend resulting from what later became known as the Casper caper.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed worked all night in the precinct station, writing their report. They stuck to the bare unadorned facts, omitting all references to Casper’s private affairs and domestic life. Nevertheless, it filled fourteen sheets of foolscap paper.

It snowed all night, and Monday morning there was no letup in sight. The big suction-type snow removers had been put into use at midnight, and the city’s snow crews had worked unceasingly in a slowly losing race against the snow.

At eleven o’clock that morning Roman Hill shipped out on a cargo vessel bound for Rio de Janeiro. He put $6,500 in cash in the captain’s keeping before going to work.

Sassafras saw him off. As she was leaving the docks she met a man who reminded her of him very much. The man had a room in Brooklyn and invited her to a bar nearby to have a drink. She saw no reason why she should go all the way back to Harlem in that snow when you could find the same things in Brooklyn while the snow lasted.

At five minutes before noon two detectives from the Automobile Squad made a strike. They located the golden Cadillac in the showroom of a Cadillac dealer on midtown Broadway. It had been sitting outside the entrance to the service department, covered with snow, when the mechanics had shown up for work that morning.

No one admitted knowing how it had got there. It had been inside with the other demonstrator models when everybody left, and the place was locked eight o’clock Saturday evening.

One of the company’s oldest salesmen, Herman Rose, closely resembled the description that Roman Hill had given of the man posing as Bernard Kaufman, who had notarized the phony bill of sale Mister Baron had given him.

But there were no charges against him and no one to identify him, so nothing could be done.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were summoned to the Chief Inspector’s office in the Headquarters building on Centre Street shortly after lunch.

The office was filled with Brass, including an assistant D.A. and a special investigator from the Commissioner’s office.

They had been asked why they had attempted to apprehend the robbers single-handed, using Mrs. Holmes as a front, instead of contacting their precinct station and getting instructions from the officer in charge.

“We were trying to save his life,” Coffin Ed replied. “If the block had been surrounded by police, those hoods would have killed him for sure.”

The Chief Inspector nodded. It was a straw-man question anyway.

What the Brass really wanted was their opinion as to Casper’s guilt.

“Who knows?” Grave Digger lisped.

“It hasn’t been proven,” Coffin Ed said. “All we know is what his wife said she guessed.”