y?"

"Yes," he answered dully, his hands folded, like a woman's, against his
body.

Braceway put more imperiousness into his voice.

"You know you're under arrest for embezzlement, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And you did take money from the Anderson National Bank?"

Morley squirmed and looked at each of the three in front of him before he
replied to that.

"Yes," he said finally, swallowing hard, his voice high and strained.

"Good! That's the sensible way to look at it," Braceway jogged him with
rapid speech. "We needn't bother any more about that tonight. How about
the jewelry you pawned in Baltimore today?"

The prisoner licked his lips and fixed on Braceway a look that grew into
a stare.

"You mean the rubies?"

"Well, yes."

"I didn't pawn them, and--and they were my mother's."

"How about the diamonds and emeralds?"

"I had no diamonds and emeralds."

"You didn't! Where were you all the afternoon preceding the time you
showed up at Eidstein's?"

This was his first intimation that he had been watched. He hesitated.

"Do I have to tell that?"

"Certainly. Why shouldn't you?"

A film, like tears, clouded his weak eyes. His voice was disagreeably
beseeching.

"It would bring my mother into this," he objected, twining his fingers
about each other and shuffling his feet.

"You'll have to tell us where you were and what you did," Braceway
persisted.

"Oh, very well," he said desperately; "I was in a room in the Emerson
Hotel with--with my mother. And I was--I was confessing to her that I'd
stolen from the bank. She knew I needed money. I had told her I'd been
speculating, and needed some extra money for margins. She gave me the
rubies from her earrings; and she followed me to Baltimore. If I couldn't
raise the money on the rubies, she was to borrow it on our house. She
owns that."

He paused, on the verge of tears.

"Buck up!" Braceway prodded him. "You confessed to her, did you?"

"Yes. At the last, somehow, I couldn't stand the idea of her giving up
the last thing she had, but--but she would have done it."

"Could she have mortgaged her home in Baltimore?"

"Yes. Mr. Taliaferro, A. G. Taliaferro, the lawyer, would have fixed it
for her. He's a friend of the family--used to be of father's."

"Now, about the emeralds and diamonds?" Braceway began another attack.

"I don't know what you mean."'

"They belonged to Mrs. Withers."

Morley shook his head impatiently.

"I don't know anythi