ed him, "but there's no way out
of it."

"No, there's no way out of it. So I give myself up!"

"But it is n't you I want,--it's Arsdale."

"No, I guess it's I. See how your descriptions fit me."

Saul pressed closer.

"What the devil do you mean?" he demanded.

"Just this," answered Donaldson dully, "I can't see an innocent man go
to jail."

To his mind Arsdale was as innocent to-day as though not a shadow of
suspicion rested upon him.

"Are you mad?"

"Not yet," answered Donaldson.

Saul waited a moment. In all his professional career he had never
received a greater surprise than this. He would not have believed
enough of it to react had it not been for Donaldson's expression. Back
of the impassiveness he read guilt, read it in the restless shifting of
the eyes and in the voice dead to hope. Then he said deliberately,

"I don't believe you, Don."

"No? Yet you 've got as much evidence against me as against Arsdale."

"But, God A'mighty, Donaldson, why should you do such a thing?"

"Why should the boy?"

Saul seized his arm.

"You don't tell me that you've fallen into that habit?"

"Sit in a law-office and do nothing for three years, then--then,
perhaps, you 'll understand."

Saul threw away his cigar. He studied again the thin face, the
haggardness that comes of opium, the nervous fingers, the vacant shifty
gaze of those on the sharp edge of sanity. Then he lighted a fresh
cigar and declared quietly,

"I don't believe you!"

"You 'll have to for the sake of those in the house. They 've been
good to me in there."

His voice was as hard as black ice and as cold. He looked more like a
magnetized corpse than he did a man.

"I wish," he continued evenly, "I wish I might have been knocked over
the head before it came to this. If I had known I had to face you, I
would have let it come to that. But I didn't expect this, Beefy."

"If this story is on the level, you 'd better shut up," warned Saul.
"What you say will be used against you."

"Thanks for reminding me, but things have come out so wrong that I
can't even shut up. If you should go inside that house with the dream
you sprang on me, you 'd drive the boy crazy and kill the girl. The
boy has been in a bad way, but he's all straight again now, and yet you
might make him believe he did these jobs when out of his head. And
then--and then--why, it would kill them both! That's why I could n't
let you do it. That's why you _mus