y door. Burke
stood just within the library, a revolver pointed menacingly.

"Hands up!--all of you!" The Inspector's voice fairly roared the
command.

The belligerent expression of his face vanished abruptly, as his eyes
fell on Dick standing by the couch and Mary reclining there in limp
helplessness. His surprise would have been ludicrous but for the
seriousness of the situation to all concerned. Burke's glance roved the
room sharply, and he was quickly convinced that these two were in fact
the only present spoil of his careful plotting. His face set grimly, for
the disappointment of this minute surged fiercely within him. He started
to speak, his eyes lowering as he regarded the two before him.

But Dick forestalled him. He spoke in a voice coldly repellent.

"What are you doing in this house at this time of night?" he demanded.
His manner was one of stern disapproval. "I recognize you, Inspector
Burke. But you must understand that there are limits even to what you
can do. It seems to me, sir, that you exceed your authority by such an
intrusion as this."

Burke, however, was not a whit dismayed by the rebuke and the air of
rather contemptuous disdain with which it was uttered. He waved his
revolver toward Mary, merely as a gesture of inquisitiveness, without
any threat.

"What's she doing here?" he asked. There was wrath in his rough voice,
for he could not avoid the surmise that his shrewdly concocted scheme to
entrap this woman had somehow been set awry. "What's she doing here, I
say?" he repeated heavily. His keen eyes were darting once more about
the room, questing some clue to this disturbing mystery, so hateful to
his pride.

Dick's manner became that of the devoted husband offended by impertinent
obtrusion.

"You forget yourself, Inspector," he said, icily. "This is my wife. She
has the right to be with me--her husband!"

The Inspector grinned sceptically. He was moved no more effectively by
Mary's almost hysterical effort to respond to her husband's leading.

"Why shouldn't I be here? Why? Why? I----"

Burke broke in on the girl's pitiful histrionics ruthlessly. He was
not in the least deceived. He was aware that something untoward, as he
deemed it, had occurred. It seemed to him, in fact, that his finical
mechanisms for the undoing of Mary Turner were in a fair way to be
thwarted. But he would not give up the cause without a struggle. Again,
he addressed himself to Dick, disregarding completely