"My father!" she gasped. And then, seeking the refuge of her own room, she hid her tell-tale face. "Even if it leads up to the guilty past, I can defend his memory. He was guiltless of this crime; and Randall Clayton's name shall be cleared of all stain!"

Over her virgin heart came the memory of the cold bargain which had linked her name to the crafty Ferris.

"Never, never, so help me, God! shall he lay his hand again in mine!"

For the first time in her life she felt the delicious power of wealth. Only the silver-haired Lemuel Boardman knew of the armed neutrality now secretly arranged, which was to buy a legal separation after six months from her nominal husband in that obscure Western State.

"Thank God!" she cried. "The sale of his honor, his manhood, for one hundred thousand dollars will seal his lips. He will keep his bargain; but, if he should be found guilty?"

All that night the heiress tossed upon uneasy pillows, waiting for the tidings which might in time parade her name as the innocent wife of a desperate felon.

The motley crowd pouring along the Bowery at ten o'clock swept past the Cooper Union on either side in search of the garish delights of the oblong oasis of pleasure. Down Fourth Avenue from the Square, down along Third Avenue, they swarmed.

Eager, hard-faced men; painted, hopeless-eyed women, the vacuous visitor from "Wayback," drunken soldiers, stray sailors, lost marines, all were kaleidoscopically mingled.

The strident voices of street peddlers mingled with the hoarse seductions of pullers-in.

Hebraic venders beamed alluringly from their open doors, gin palaces, shooting galleries, mock auctions, second-hand stores and brilliantly-lit "dives" awaited the unwary. "Coffee parlors,"

museums, cheap theaters, and music halls, as well as the "side rooms," were thronged with those pitiless-eyed Devil's children, the women of the night side of New York!

Roar of elevated train, clang of street cars, hurrying dash of the ambulance, wild onward career of the fire engine, punctuated this human maelstrom sweeping toward its duplex outlets of the morgue or Sing Sing's gloomy prison cells.

No one noted Witherspoon and Doctor Atwater seated in two different carriages drawn up under the shades of lonely buildings on the side street near the Dry Dock Bank.

The window-curtains were down in each of these waiting vehicles, and the drivers nodded upon their boxes.

In all the guilty bosoms on the bedlam-like street no hearts beat as wildly as those in the breasts of McNerney and Condon.

"It's the one chance of our lives, Jim," said McNerney, as he crouched in a dark doorway before posting his comrade. Both were now in uniform, ready for a dash, and McNerney's upper lip wore a movable prototype of his cherished mustache. "The boy comes down Fourteenth Street always and by Fourth Avenue," whispered Dennis.

"You watch the corner from this side. I'll nab the woman from the other. Remember, not till they have met and finished their talk.

Then you can take the boy along with Atwater. I'll rush the woman away with Mr. Witherspoon."

It was twenty minutes past ten when McNerney saw the dark-clad form of Leah Einstein swiftly gliding along in the shade from Third Avenue. Onward she sped, never turning her veiled face to the right or left, until she slackened her pace under the gloomy cornices of the Dry Dock Bank.

The policeman sprang into a dark hallway as she passed, holding his breath lest the shy bird should take alarm.

In a few moments Emil Einstein sauntered across the Bowery and circling around the deserted bank corner, then settled down into a slow, searching pace, threading the lonely south side of the darkened cross street.

From his hidden post, McNerney could see the woman clinging to the boy's arm and pleading, while she murmured her prayers in a low tone.

"Not yet, not yet," mused McNerney. "He must get her whole message.

She must have time to get his last report."

At last, as the tiger springs upon its prey, McNerney leaped out of his hiding place, for the sobbing woman had turned alone toward the East River.

With a frightened half scream, the timorous woman staggered back speechless as the uniform of the tall officer flashed before her eyes.

In a moment she was in the carriage, and both her wrists grasped by Witherspoon's sinewy hands.

But, before the carriage started, McNerney, tearing away the rear curtain, saw Policeman Condon hustling the struggling Emil into the other carriage. When it rapidly dashed away, McNerney grimly said, "All right! Go ahead!"

The officer's quick ear caught the woman's despairing murmur, "Emil!

My boy, my poor son! They will kill him!"

"Not if you are sensible, Mrs. Leah Einstein," growled the policeman.

"But your boy's life depends now only on you."

"Where are you taking me to?" pleaded the woman, her storm of tears choking her voice. "That you will soon find out," menacingly said McNerney. "Where you ought to have been long ago!"

In the long ride across the great city, McNerney grew complacent over his bold stroke in borrowing an unused store-room from the armorer of the Twenty-ninth Regiment.

It was after eleven o'clock when the three entered the gloomy basement under the granite buttresses of the armory.

In the lonely arched room only a table and a few chairs relieved the prison-like emptiness. A man with papers spread out before him scarcely raised his head as the three entered.

While McNerney drew the terrified woman into a corner, Witherspoon anxiously paced the floor. Fifteen minutes after their arrival, a messenger lad dashed into the room with a telegram.

"All right, now, McNerney!" said the lawyer, as he read the dispatch telling him: "Party on board the 'Rambler.' Set sail at once. Will telegraph from Tompkinsville."

And then, with a smile of triumph, Dennis McNerney locked the door.

He placed the half-fainting woman in a chair before the notary and began his inquisition.

The look of utter despair in Leah Einstein's face softened under the velvety, wooing voice of the man who had boldly abducted her.

In the whispered conference in the corner, he had skilfully played upon that inexhaustible mother's love which is the one undiminished treasure of a worn-out world.

The poor wretch at bay little dreamed that cobbler Mulholland was standing before her, and her tortured heart had forgotten all the dangers of the cablegram and the tell-tale registered letter. "If you answer all my questions," kindly said McNerney, "and make a clean breast of it, you may save your boy. Do you want to do that young man's life? He stands next to the electric chair now, for the murder of Mr. Randall Clayton!"

The heart-stricken mother was on her knees in a moment.

"Kill me! Do anything you wish. But spare him! He is innocent! He knows nothing!"

"Let us see what you know, then!" grimly answered McNerney. "The notary will swear you, and, if you tell us the whole truth, we will help your boy. If you lie to us, God will punish you both, and we will show no mercy."

Witherspoon opened his eyes in wonder as McNerney rapidly drew out the whole story of Clayton's departure from the corner of University Place in the carriage.

"You were the woman in the carriage on the day that Clayton left!

I SAW YOU MYSELF!" thundered McNerney. "Your own boy brought Clayton the message. Now, where did you take him?"

Witherspoon held his breath as Leah Einstein, between her sobs, told of the fatal visit to No. 192 Layte Street.

It was half an hour when the sobbing woman had finished her recital.

"By the God of Jacob! I never saw him after he went into the back room. Fritz was with him there, Fritz alone!"

The three men were as unmoved as sphinxes while McNerney led her along. "I only thought Fritz wanted him to meet the pretty woman, the one they called Irma, and then, while he was there, take his things from him. He had only a leather valise; no diamonds. I saw no money, and I was with the sick woman. Mr. Clayton loved her, and used to come and see her."

"Where does this Fritz live?" sternly said the policeman. "Everybody knows Fritz Braun, the druggist of Magdal's Pharmacy. Ask Mr.

Lilienthal of the Newport Art Gallery. He is his friend."