The cloud settled, and in its place came a look of intense relief. He
was like most men. Whatever his own morals, he demanded a high standard
in her.

"We formed an amateur partnership in crime," she hurried on. "He lost
his life, was unable to stand up against the odds, while he was alone,
away from me. Since then I have been helping those who have become
involved, on the wrong side, with the law. There," she concluded
simply, "I have put myself in your power. I have admitted my part in
something that, try as they would, they could never connect me with. I
have done it because--because I want to help you. Be as frank with me."

He eyed her keenly again. The appeal was irresistible.

"I can tell you Graeme Mackenzie's story," he began carefully. "Six
months ago there was a young man in Omaha who had worked faithfully for
a safe deposit company for years. He was getting eighty-five dollars a
month. That is more than it seems to you here in New York. But it was
very little for what he did. Why, as superintendent of the safe deposit
vaults he had helped to build up that part of the trust company's
business to such an extent that he knew he deserved more.

"Now, a superintendent of a safe deposit vault has lots of chances.
Sometimes depositors give him their keys to unlock their boxes for
them. It is a simple thing to make an impression in wax or chewing gum
palmed in the hand. Or he has access to a number of keys of unrented
boxes; he can, as opportunity offers, make duplicates, and then when
the boxes are rented, he has a key. Even if the locks of unrented boxes
are blanks, set by the first insertion of the key chosen at random, he
can still do the same thing. And even if it takes two to get at the
idle keys, himself and another trusted employe, he can get at them, if
he is clever, without the other officer knowing it, though it may be
done almost before his eyes. You see, it all comes down to the honesty
of the man."

He paused. Constance was fascinated at the coolness with which this man
had gone to work, and with which he told of it.

"This superintendent earned more than he received. He deserved it. But
when he asked for a raise, they told him he was lucky to keep the
job,--they reduced him, instead, to seventy-five dollars. He was angry
at the stinging rebuke. He determined to make them smart, to show them
what he could do.

"One noon he went out to lunch and--they have been looking for him ever
since. He ha