or! That man is Starr
Wiley, and you know how he carried out his threat!"

Wiley made a sudden convulsive leap for the window, but paused
transfixed at her significant gesture. The government officials had
closed in about him, but he saw only the girl before the bar and the
pointed bulge in her cloak, beneath her hidden hand.

"Better not try it, Starr Wiley, although I almost wish you would!"
Her voice rang out in the suddenly stayed tumult. "I've had you
covered from the first, and I'll drop you with a shot through my pocket
if you make another move! The rest of you know only what he has done
to me, but you shall hear how he has served you, too!

"I left the Halstead house, and then by a miracle Tia Juana was
restored to me. After her disappearance little Jose remembered her
interest in a conversation between her landlady and a friend concerning
some Spanish gypsies who had settled in squatters' cabins north of the
city, and conceiving the idea that she had joined them, he slipped away
to find her. He succeeded, although how she ever reached her
destination we cannot know, for she was bewildered and lost her mind,
temporarily enfeebled. Jose, as a vender of tomales, established
himself near the garage where I kept my car, hoping to attract the
attention of my chauffeur, Dan Morrissey here, who had helped me all
through that trying time and whom Jose knew he could trust.

"Once he was frightened away, but the second time he succeeded and Dan
brought him to me. I took Tia Juana away to another city, but she was
ill for a long time. When I could leave her, I placed her and Jose in
the care of Dan's sister whom I summoned from New York, and went West
myself to disprove Starr Wiley's story if I could.

"I found a witness who can swear to my identity as the daughter of
Ralph and Violet Murdaugh and prove it by a scar I bear from the fire
which cost my mother her life, but Mr. Thode, unknown to me, had gone
West also in my interest and his efforts were even more successful than
mine.--Will you show them, please, what you obtained in Arizona?"

She turned to Kearn Thode, who drew forth a folded paper which he
handed to Mason North.

"It is a confession, signed and witnessed, from the forger Starr Wiley
employed to manufacture that false article of adoption," he announced.
"The child who died in the trapper's cabin was his own daughter and it
was Willa Murdaugh who went on with Gentleman Geoff. I did not know