otherwise," said Thornton before the superintendent could
reply. "We cannot give an absolute pledge."

CHAPTER LII

"Very well; I am content with that." The prisoner nursed his chin in his
cupped hands and stared unseeingly at the distempered walls. "It began
years ago, on a little farm in New Hampshire. That was my father's
place. He died when I was six or seven, and my mother married again. The
man was the father of Harry Goldenburg. I was eight years old when Harry
was born. Four years later, my mother died, and when I was sixteen I ran
away from home. You will know something of my career since then: the
newspapers have repeated it often enough--office-boy, journalist,
traveller, stockbroker, politician. I was still young when I became a
fairly well-known man. In the meantime I had not seen nor heard anything
of my brother except that he had left the village when my stepfather
died.

"In Vienna some years ago I became intimate with Lola Rachael--the woman
you know as the Princess Petrovska. She was a dancer then and had hosts
of admirers among the young men about town. As a matter of plain fact, I
believe she was employed by the Russian Government for its own purposes.
But of that I was never certain. Anyway she entangled me. And I believe
she really had an affection for me. It was during that time that I was
fool enough to write her letters--letters which she kept.

"Eventually I went back to the United States. I became a state senator
and became involved in politics. One day I was in my hotel in
Washington when I received a visit from my brother Harry Goldenburg. I
was in a way glad to see him, although he was practically a stranger. He
impressed me favourably--perhaps the fact that we were so alike
physically had as much to do with it as his suave ways and gentle
manners. Even at the time I believe he was suspected by the police of
being an astute swindler. Of that, of course, I was ignorant. He told me
a story of a mail order business he had established in Chicago which was
doing great things, but which was hampered for lack of capital. Well, to
cut the story short, I lent him five thousand dollars. A month later, he
wrote to me for two thousand, and got it. A few weeks after that I read
of a great fraud engineered in Central America and there was a
three-column portrait in the paper of the man at the bottom of it--my
brother. That opened my eyes. When next he came to me--he was audacious
enough to do