ita Lawton would be merciful--her thirst for vengeance upon her
father's murderer sated by his self-inflicted death--to those of his
blood, who, innocent, must be dragged in the mire by the disclosure of
his infamy.

When Henry Blaine presented himself an hour later at her home, he
found Anita inexpressibly shocked by the tragic event of the night.

"He was guilty!" she murmured. "He took his own life to escape falling
into your hands! That gunshot was no accident, Mr. Blaine. He murdered
my father in cold blood, but he has paid. I abhor his memory, and yet
I can find it in my heart to be sorry for him!"

In silence, the detective placed in her hands the letter of the dead
man, and watched her face as she slowly read it. When she looked up,
her eyes were wet, and a tiny red spot glowed in either cheek.

"Poor Father!" she moaned. "With all his leadership and knowledge of
men, he was helpless and unsuspecting in the hands of that merciless
fiend! And yet even he thought of his own people at the last, and
wanted to spare them. Oh, how I wish we could! If we might only keep
from them forever the knowledge of his wickedness, his crime!"

"We can, if you are willing."

Blaine met her look of startled inquiry, and replied to it with a
brief resume of his interview of the previous evening with Rockamore.
When he added his suggestion that the matter of the way in which her
father came to his death be buried in oblivion, and the public left to
believe the first report, she was silent for a time.

"But the coroner who performed the autopsy night before last," she
remarked, at length, hesitatingly. "He will make the truth public,
will he not?"

"Not necessarily. That depends upon you. If you wish it, nothing will
ever be known."

"I think you are right, Mr. Blaine. Father's death has been avenged;
neither you nor I can do more. The man who killed him has gone to his
last account. Further notoriety and scandal cannot help Father, or
bring him back to me. It would only cause needless suffering to those
who are no more at fault than we ourselves. If the coroner can be
silenced, we will keep our secret, you and I."

"Unless,"--Blaine's voice was very grave--"unless it becomes necessary
to divulge it in order to get the rest of them within our grasp."

"The rest?" she looked up as if she had scarcely heard.

"Mallowe and Carlis and Paddington and the horde of lesser conspirators
in their hire. We must recover your father'