be
able to handle the situation, and any girl living. But the boy's all
right, Mr. Gard, even if Mahr isn't. And after all, there may not be a
word of truth in that romance I spun to you. We couldn't land a thing.
What made us think there might be something in it was that we got it
second hand from an old servant of Mahr's. _He_ told the man that told
us; but the old boy's gone, too."

Gard rose from his chair and resumed his pacing. Brencherly remained
seated, patiently waiting. Presently Gard turned on him.

"That'll do, Brencherly. You may go; and don't let me catch you tipping
Mahr off that I've been having you rate him, do you understand?"

The detective sprang to his feet with alacrity. "Oh, no, Mr. Gard--never
a word. You know, sir, you're one of our very best clients."

Left alone, Gard sat down wearily, ran his hands through his hair, then
held his throbbing temples between his clenched fists. Somehow, on his
slender evidence, that was no evidence in fact, he was convinced of the
truth of Mahr's perfidy; convinced that the lady rated A1 by the keenest
detective bureau in the country had obtained the proofs of guilt and
used them with the same perfect business sagacity she had used in his
own case. It sickened him. Somehow he could forgive her handling such a
case as his. It was purely commercial; but this other was uglier stuff.
His soul rebelled. He would not have it so; he would not believe--and
yet he was convinced against his own logic. He had tried to cheat the
arithmetic when he had tried to make her extortion money an honestly
made acquisition. And she had refused to be a party to the flimsy
self-deception.

Mrs. Marteen was a blackmailer, an extortioner--that was the truth, the
truth that he would not let himself recognize. Her depredations probably
had much wider scope than he guessed. He must save her from herself; he
must somehow reach the submerged personality and awaken it to the
hideousness of that other, the soulless, heartless automaton that
schemed and executed crimes with mechanical exactitude. He took a long
breath of determination, and again grinned at the farce he was playing
for his own benefit. Through repetition he was beginning to believe in
the fiction of his former intimacy with Marteen. True, he had known him
slightly, had once or twice snatched a hasty luncheon in his company at
one of his clubs; but far from liking each other, the two men had been
fundamentally antagonistic.