y.
I admitted it. Then he asked if I would give him a few minutes, and we
went aside to sit facing each other in a couple of the lobby chairs.
Weyburn, that young man is in the employ of a private detective agency,
and what he wished to do, and did do, was to warn me that I was
sheltering a dangerous criminal in my house!"

In a flash all the small mysteries that had been befogging me for
months made themselves transparently clear: the man I had called a
traveling salesman who had followed me from the prison gates to the
scene of my first humble effort; the memorandum Chief Callahan had
consulted; the "outfit" that was to be notified when my next
destination was known; the second appearance of the "salesman" on the
train at the capital, and his disappearance when he had learned from
the conductor the name of my next stopping-place; and after this the
long series of hitherto unaccountable blacklistings. My mouth was dry,
but I contrived to tell Whitley to go on.

"I will," he conceded; "but you must promise me to control yourself.
Naturally, my first impulse, when this scamp began on me, was to cut
him off short and tell him what I thought of the despicable business to
which he was lending himself. But the second thought was craftier, and
I hope I may be forgiven for yielding to it. By leading him on I got
the entire brutal story. It seems that the two old men upon whose
complaint you were indicted knew when you were to be paroled. They
profess to believe that you are a menace to society; that the prison
authorities were at fault in releasing you short of the limit of your
sentence. Hence, through his employers, they have set this man upon
your track to see to it--I use his own words--that you do not have an
opportunity to rob some one else."

I suppose I should have been driven mad with vindictive fury at this
plain revelation of the true cause of most of my misfortunes, but there
is a point beyond which the beaten man cannot rise to renew the fight,
and I had reached and passed it. Wherefore I found myself saying,
quite calmly:

"Neither Abel Geddis nor Abner Withers would spend one copper penny for
any such altruistic reason as this man has given you, Whitley. Their
motive is strictly selfish and personal. They are either afraid that I
may go back to Glendale and try to expose them; or that I may take the
shorter and surer way of balancing the account by killing them--as, at
one time, I meant to."

"O