"They've got Griggs!" Burke answered. There was exceeding rage in his voice, as he spoke from his kneeling posture beside the body, to which he had hurried after the summons to his aides. He glowered up into the bewildered face of the detective. "I'll break you for this, Ca.s.sidy,"

he declared fiercely. "Why didn't you get here on the run when you heard the shot?"

"But there wasn't any shot," the perplexed and alarmed detective expostulated. He fairly stuttered in the earnestness of his self-defense. "I tell you, Chief, there hasn't been a sound."

Burke rose to his feet. His heavy face was set in its sternest mold.

"You could drive a hea.r.s.e through the hole they've made in him," he rumbled. He wheeled on Mary and d.i.c.k. "So!" he shouted, "now it's murder!... Well, hand it over. Where's the gun?"

Followed a moment's pause. Then the Inspector spoke harshly to Ca.s.sidy.

He still felt himself somewhat dazed by this extraordinary event, but he was able to cope with the situation. He nodded toward d.i.c.k as he gave his order: "Search him!"

Before the detective could obey the direction, d.i.c.k took the revolver from his pocket where he had bestowed it, and held it out.

And it so chanced that at this incriminating crisis for the son, the father hastily strode within the library. He had been aroused by the Inspector's shouting, and was evidently greatly perturbed. His usual dignified air was marred by a patent alarm.

"What's all this?" he exclaimed, as he halted and stared doubtfully on the scene before him.

Burke, in a moment like this, was no respecter of persons, for all his judicious attentions on other occasions to those whose influence might serve him well for benefits received.

"You can see for yourself," he said grimly to the dumfounded magnate.

Then, he fixed sinister eyes on the son. "So," he went on, with somber menace in his voice, "you did it, young man." He nodded toward the detective. "Well, Ca.s.sidy, you can take 'em both down-town.... That's all."

The command aroused d.i.c.k to remonstrance against such indignity toward the woman whom he loved.

"Not her!" he cried, imploringly. "You don't want her, Inspector! This is all wrong!"

Now, at last, Mary interposed with a new spirit. She had regained, in some measure at least, her poise. She was speaking again with that mental clarity which was distinctive in her.

"d.i.c.k," she advised quietly, but with underlying urgency in her gently spoken words, "don't talk, please."

Burke laughed harshly.

"What do you expect?" he inquired truculently. "As a matter of fact, the thing's simple enough, young man. Either you killed Griggs, or she did."

The Inspector, with his charge, made a careless gesture toward the corpse of the murdered stool-pigeon. For the first time, Edward Gilder, as his glance unconsciously followed the officer's movement, looked and saw the ghastly inanimate heap of flesh and bone that had once been a man. He fairly reeled at the gruesome spectacle, then fumbled with an outstretched hand as he moved stumblingly until he laid hold on a chair, into which he sank helplessly. It suddenly smote upon his consciousness that he felt very old and broken. He marveled dully over the sensation--it was wholly new to him. Then, soon, from a long way off, he heard the strident voice of the Inspector remorselessly continuing in the vile, the impossible accusation.... And that grotesque accusation was hurled against his only son--the boy whom he so loved. The thing was monstrous, a thing incredible. This whole seeming was no more than a chimera of the night, a phantom of bad dreams, with no truth under it.... Yet, the stern voice of the official came with a strange semblance of reality.

"Either you killed him," the voice repeated gratingly, "or she did.

Well, then, young man, did she kill him?"

"Good G.o.d, no!" d.i.c.k shouted, aghast.

"Then, it was you!" Such was the Inspector's summary of the case.

Mary's words came frantically. Once again, she was become desperate over the course of events in this night of fearful happenings.

"No, no! He didn't!"

Burke's rasping voice reiterated the accusation with a certain complacency in the inevitability of the dilemma.

"One of you killed Griggs. Which one of you did it?" He scowled at d.i.c.k.

"Did she kill him?"

Again, the husband's cry came with the fierceness of despair over the fate of the woman.

"I told you, no!"

The Inspector, always savagely impressive now in voice and look and gesture, faced the girl with saturnine persistence.

"Well, then," he bl.u.s.tered, "did he kill him?"

The nod of his head was toward d.i.c.k. Then, as she remained silent: "I'm talking to you!" he snapped. "Did he kill him?"

The reply came with a soft distinctness that was like a crash of destiny.

"Yes."

d.i.c.k turned to his wife in reproachful amazement.

"Mary!" he cried, incredulously. This betrayal was something inconceivable from her, since he believed that now at last he knew her heart.

Burke, however, as usual, paid no heed to the niceties of sentiment.

They had small place in his concerns as an official of police. His sole ambition just now was to fix the crime definitely on the perpetrator.

"You'll swear he killed him?" he asked, briskly, well content with this concrete result of the entanglement.

Mary subtly evaded the question, while seeming to give unqualified a.s.sent.

"Why not?" she responded listlessly.

At this intolerable a.s.sertion as he deemed it, Edward Gilder was reanimated. He sat rigidly erect in his, chair. In that frightful moment, it came to him anew that here was in verity the last detail in a consummate scheme by this woman for revenge against himself.

"G.o.d!" he cried, despairingly. "And that's your vengeance!"

Mary heard, and understood. There came an inscrutable smile on her curving lips, but there was no satisfaction in that smile, as of one who realized the fruition of long-cherished schemes of retribution. Instead, there was only an infinite sadness, while she spoke very gently.

"I don't want vengeance--now!" she said.

"But they'll try my boy for murder," the magnate remonstrated, distraught.

"Oh, no, they can't!" came the rejoinder. And now, once again, there was a hint of the quizzical creeping in the smile. "No, they can't!"

she repeated firmly, and there was profound relief in her tones since at last her ingenuity had found a way out of this outrageous situation thrust on her and on her husband.

Burke glared at the speaker in a rage that was abruptly grown suspicious in some vague way.

"What's the reason we can't?" he stormed.

Mary sprang to her feet. She was radiant with a new serenity, now that her quick-wittedness had discovered a method for baffling the mesh of evidence that had been woven about her and d.i.c.k through no fault of their own. Her eyes were glowing with even more than their usual l.u.s.ters. Her voice came softly modulated, almost mocking.

"Because you couldn't convict him," she said succinctly. A contented smile bent the red graces of her lips.