if protesting his innocence
before a hostile judge. "I delivered the letter which you have in your
pocket. She read it, then crumpled it in her hand and threw it on the
floor.

"'Mr. Beard,' she said, 'I've betrayed George to the police. I have
denounced him as the murderer. They have my statement. They'll send
George to the electric chair. I told them all I knew.'

"I informed her that her statement to the police was not competent
evidence and that unless she repeated her testimony in court, it could
not be used against Collins.

"'They'll never make me repeat it!' she exclaimed. Opening a drawer of
the writing table she produced a pistol and before I was able to
interfere, the weapon exploded and she was dead. My account of the
suicide is absolutely true," he declared impressively,--"I swear it is
true."

His face now was as solemn as the tone in which he had uttered the last
sentence. Beard recognized that he was facing a grave moment in his
life, that it was within the power of the man to whom he had spoken,
irretrievably to mar his future, to stain him with an accusation which,
even though disproved before a jury, he could never hope to live down
entirely.

The harrowing fear and uncertainty written in the secretary's face,
produced no quiver of compassion in the detective. Britz was measuring
the man with cool, calculating eyes, that shone in their sockets like
balls of chilled steel. Long ago he had learned to turn an indifferent
ear to protestations of innocence. Such pleas drop with equal fervor
from the lips of the innocent and the guilty. And the shrewdest judge of
human nature is incapable of judging between them.

"I am innocent--before God I swear it!" cries the guilty wretch in a
voice calculated to wring tears from the Accusing Spirit itself.

"I am innocent--before God I swear it!" protests the wrongfully accused
person despairingly.

The experienced detective, or prosecutor, or judge, places as much faith
in the protestation of the one as in the other. He reserves judgment
until sufficient evidence shall have been developed to establish which
of the accused is telling the truth. For, he knows that while the guilty
man's lie may sound entirely plausible, it will collapse like a
perforated gas-bag in the end. Likewise, truth coming from the innocent
man's lips may be utterly lacking in plausibility. Yet, it will
establish itself by reason of its own indestructible qualities.

Regardless of th