"You don't know what you're sayin'.
Wally, hold your tongue for God's sake! Where's your spirit? Are you
goin' to break down now like a reformatory brat, you that had 'em all
guessin' for twenty years!"

The gaunt woman had recovered from the sudden shock of her husband's
unexpected revelation and now towered protectingly over his collapsed
form, her palsied hands for once steady and firm upon his shoulders,
while her keen eyes glittered shrewdly at the young operative
confronting them.

"Look here!" she said, shortly. "If you wanted us for receiving stolen
goods, you wouldn't come around here with a warrant for Wally's arrest
as a suspicious character, an' you wouldn't have worked that Brunell
plant. What's your lay?"

"Information," responded Morrow, frankly. "The police don't know where
the plate was, for those ten days, and there's no immediate need
that they should. Blaine cleaned up that case eventually, you
know--recovered the plate and caught the butler in Southampton, under
the noses of the Scotland Yard men. I want to know what you can
tell me about Brunell--and about your nephew, Charley Pennold."

Walter opened his lips, but closed them without speech, and his wife
replied for him.

"We're no snitchers," she said coldly. "There's nothin' we can tell.
Jimmy Brunell's run straight for near twenty years, so far as we
know."

"And Charley?" persisted Morrow.

"It's no use, Mame," Walter Pennold repeated, dully. "If I go up
again, it means the end for me. Charley's got to take his chance, same
as the rest of us. God knows I tried to do the right thing by the boy,
same as Jimmy did by his daughter, but Charley's got the blood in
him. It's hell to peach on your own, but it's worse to hear that iron
door clank behind you, and to know it's for the last time! After all,
there ain't nothin' in what we can tell about Charley that a lot of
other people wouldn't spill, an' nothin' that could land him behind
the bars. I ain't the man I was, or I'd take my medicine without
squealin', but I can't face it again, Mame, I can't! I'm an old man
now, old before my time, perhaps, but it's been so long since I
smelled the prison taint, so long since I had a number instead of a
name, that I'd die now, quick, before I'd rot in a cell!"

The terrible, droning monotone ceased, and for a moment there was
silence in the squalid little room. The woman's face was as impassive
as Morrow's, as she waited. Only the tightening of he