fell to his
knees, clawing at the criminologist's garments with his trembling hands,
the tears streaming down his face.

"What about those who have seen no compassion from you?" cried Shirley
in a terrible voice. "Your vanity, your self-worship! Do they not
comfort you now? This is only the suffering of another which you
contemplate! Why all these hysterics?"

Warren, groveling on the floor of the reception-room, was a picture
of abject, horrid soul-torture. At last, through the subtlety of this
unconventional sleuth, along methods which were never dreamed of in the
ordinary police category, he had been broken on the wheel which he had
himself so cunningly constructed!

"And if that mother dies, cursing your memory with her last breath,
cursing the love of the father, of her husband, of the ancestors, all
responsible for your being in the world today, what will you think, when
you watch from the other side of that great unseen wall?"

"Oh, Shirley! I can't. See--I'll destroy this stuff. I'll keep silent
about the others. I mean it. Here: I tear it up now and give you the
pieces to burn!"

Warren, maddened by his fears, nervously tore the sheets into bits and
pressed the remnants into the criminologist's hands.

"Will you promise to keep my identity a secret?"

"I will not send word to Budapesth. You have a bad record in Paris,
and other parts of the world. But, if you play fair on the confidential
nature of this case, saving the innocent from disgrace and shame, I will
see that the story never reaches your mother. There is no need to ask
this on your honor--that does not count."

Warren winced at this final thrust. He turned toward Shirley, eagerly.

"You don't understand me at that, Shirley. I have had a curious career.
Somewhere I inherited a strain of criminality--you know how many
ancestors a man has in ten generations. I was a member of a poor but
prominent family. The government paid for my education in the best
universities of Europe, for I was to hold a position under the Emperor,
which had been held in my family for generations. But I was ruined by
the extravagances and the excesses which I learned from the rich young
men whom I met. I studied feverishly, yet was able to waste much time
with the gilded fools, by my ability to learn more quickly. The result
was that I could not be contented with the small salary of my government
office. I had to keep up appearances with my companions. So, I drifted
in