when most of her jewelry was secretly in pawn, when still she had not
yet been given the telltale plates, but daily was being tortured by
threats of exposure unless she surrendered yet more money, poor badgered
beleaguered little Mrs. Propbridge, being an honest and a
straightforward woman, took the course she should have taken at the
outset. She went to her husband and she told him the truth. And he
believed her.

He did not stop with believing her; he bestirred himself. He had money;
he had the strength and the authority which money gives. He had
something else--he had that powerful, intangible thing which among
police officials and in the inner politics of city governments is
variously known as a pull and a drag. Straightway he invoked it.

Of a sudden Chappy Marr was aware that he had made a grievous mistake.
He had calculated to garner for himself a fat roll of the Propbridge
currency; had counted upon enjoying a continuing source of income for so
long as the wife continued to hand over hush money. Deduct the cuts
which went to Zach Traynor, alias Townsend, for playing the part of the
magazine editor, and to Cheesy Mike Zaugbaum, that camera wizard of
newspaper staff work turned crook's helper--Zaugbaum it was who had
worked the trick of the photographs--and still the major share of the
spoils due him ought, first and last, to run into five gratifying
figures. On this he confidently had figured. He had not reckoned into
the equation the possibility of invoking against him the Propbridge pull
backed by the full force of this double-fisted, vengeful millionaire's
rage. Indeed he never supposed that there might be any such pull. And
here, practically without warning, he found his influence arrayed
against an infinitely stronger influence, so that his counted for
considerably less than nothing at all.

Still, there was a warning. He got away to Toronto. Traynor made Chicago
and went into temporary seclusion there. Cheesy Zaugbaum lacked the luck
of these two. As soon as Mrs. Propbridge had described the ingratiating
Mr. Murrill and the obliging Mr. Townsend to M. J. Brock, head of the
Brock private-detective agency, that astute but commonplace-appearing
gentleman knew whom she meant. Knowing so much, it was not hard for him
to add one to one and get three. He deduced who the third member of the
triumvirate must be. Mr. Brock owed his preeminence in his trade to one
outstanding faculty--he was an honest man who could