Where is he now--Tom Dorgan?"

"Tom Dorgan!"

"Yes. I was sure I saw him sail, but, of course, I was mistaken. He
has sent you after me, has he? I can hardly believe it of
Tom--even--even yet."

"I don't know anything that connects you with Dorgan. If he was in
with you on this, you'd better remember, before you say anything more,
that it'll all be used against you."

The curtain had gone down and gone up again. I was watching the star.
She has such a boyish way of nodding her head, instead of bowing, after
she waddles out to the center; and every time she wipes her lips with
her lace handkerchief, as though she'd just taken one of the cocktails
she makes in the play with all the skill of a bartender. I found
myself doing the same thing--wiping my lips with that very same
gesture, as though I had a fat, bare forearm like a rolling-pin--when
all at once the thought came to me: "You needn't bother, Nancy. It's
all up. You won't have any use for it all."

"Just what is the charge?" I asked, turning to the man beside me.

"Stealing a purse containing three hundred dollars from Mrs. Paul
Gates' house on the night of April twenty-seventh."

"What!"

It was Obermuller. He had pushed the curtains aside; the crashing of
the orchestra had prevented our hearing the clatter of the rings. He
had pushed by the man standing there, had come in and--he had heard.

"Nance!" he cried. "I don't believe a word of it." He turned in his
quick way to the men. "What are your orders?"

"To take her to her flat and search it."

Obermuller came over to me then, and took my hand for a minute.

"It's a pity they don't know about the Gray rose diamond," he
whispered, helping me on with my jacket. "They'd see how silly this
little three-hundred dollar business is.... Brace up, Nance Olden!"

Oh, Mag, Mag, to hear a man like that talk to you as though you were
his kind, when you have the feel of the coarse prison stripes between
your dry, shaking fingers, and the close prison smell is already
poisoning your nostrils!

"I don't see--" my voice shook--"how you can believe--in me."

"Don't you?" he laughed. "That's easy. You've got brains, Nance, and
the most imbecile thing you could do just now, when your foot is
already on the ladder, would be just this--to get off in order to pick
up a trinket out of the mud, when there's a fortune up at the top
waiting for you. Clever people don't do asinine things. And other
cleve