Mr. Crown believe
Mr. Webster's guilty and my father's protecting him."

"Let me think," Mrs. Brace said, coolly.

Lucille exulted inwardly, "She'll do it! She'll do it!" The hard eyes
dissected her eager face. The girl drew back in her chair, thinking now:
"She suspects who sent me!"

At last, the older woman spoke:

"The detective, Hastings, would never have allowed you to come here,
Miss Sloane.--Excuse my frankness," she interjected, with a smile she
meant to be friendly; "but you're frank with me; we're not mincing
matters; and I have to be careful.--He'd have warned you that your
errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something
incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more
strongly than I do, you'd never have been driven to--this."

She leaned the rocker back and crossed her knees, the movement throwing
into high relief the hard lankness of her figure. She gazed at the wall,
over Lucille's head, as she dealt with the possibilities that presented
themselves to her analysis. Her manner was that of a certain gloating
enjoyment, a thinly covered, semi-orderly greediness.

"She's not even thinking of her daughter," Lucille thought, and went
pale a moment. "She's as bad as Mr. Hastings said--worse!"

"Then, too," Mrs. Brace continued, "your father discharged him last
night."

Lucille remembered the detective's misgivings about Jarvis; how else had
this woman found that out?

"And you've taken matters into your own hands.--Did your father send you
here--to me?"

"Why, no!"

The other smiled slyly, the tip of her tongue again visible, her
eyebrows high in interrogation. "Of course," she said; "you wouldn't
tell me if he had. He would have warned you against that admission."

"It's Mr. Webster about whom I am most concerned," Lucille reminded,
sharpness in her vibrant young voice. "My father's being annoyed is
merely incidental."

"Oh, of course! Of course," Mrs. Brace grinned, with broad sarcasm.

Lucille started. The meaning of that could not be misunderstood; she
charged that the money was offered at Arthur Sloane's instigation and
that the concern for Berne Webster was merely pretence.

Mrs. Brace saw her anger, and placated it:

"Don't mind me, Miss Sloane. A woman who's had to endure what I
have--well, she doesn't always think clearly."

"Perhaps not," Lucille assented; but she was aware of a sudden longing
to be done with the degrading work. "Now that we unde