yproof?"

There was no banter in his voice. It was low, so low that it had in it
the ring of something more than mere desire for answer, and when
the inspector turned, Philip observed a thing that he had never seen
before--a flush in MacGregor's face. His pale eyes gleamed. His voice
was filled with an intense earnestness as he repeated the question. "I
want to know, Steele. Are you beauty-proof?"

In spite of himself Philip felt the fire rising in his own face. In that
moment the inspector could have hit on no words that would have thrilled
him more deeply than those which he had spoken. Beauty-proof! Did
MacGregor know? Was it possible-- He took a step forward, words came to
his lips, but he caught himself before he had given voice to them.

Beauty-proof!

He laughed, softly, as the inspector had laughed a few moments before.
But there was a strange tenseness in his face--something which MacGregor
saw, but could not understand.

"Beauty-proof?" He repeated the words, looking keenly at the other.
"Yes, I think I am, sir."

"You think you are?"

"I am quite sure that I am. Inspector. That is as far as I can go."

The inspector seated himself at his desk and opened a drawer. From it he
took a photograph. For some time he gazed at it in silence, puffing out
clouds of smoke from his cigar. Then, without lifting his eyes from
the picture, he said: "I am going to put you up against a queer case,
Steele, and the strangest thing about it is its very simplicity. It's a
job for the greenest rookie in the service, and yet I swear that there
isn't another man in Saskatchewan to whom I would talk as I am about to
talk to you. Rather paradoxical, isn't it?"

"Rather," agreed Philip.

"And yet not when you come to understand the circumstances," continued
the inspector, placing the photograph face down on the table and looking
at the other through a purple cloud of tobacco smoke. "You see, Steele,
I know who you are. I know that your father is Philip Steele, the big
Chicago banker. I know that you are up here for romance and adventure
rather than for any other thing there is in the service. I know, too,
that you are no prairie chicken, and that most of your life has been
spent where you see beautiful women every hour of the day, and where
soft voices and tender smiles aren't the most wonderful things in the
world, as they sometimes are up here. Fact is, we have a way of our own
of running down records--"

"And a confound