his language on the wire; "Tonio
Ravelli, a sub-contractor here, was murdered last night."

Mary's hand slid away from the key after sending that, and the always
faint tint in her cheeks faded out, and her eyes flickered up in a
scared way to the stern faces in front of her. The shock of the news
that a man had been slain, and that he was a man who, only the previous
day, had proffered his love to her, was for a moment disabling. But the
habit of her employment controlled her, and she awaited the further
dictation.

"His body was found this morning in the furnace of the steam boiler."
O'Reagan resumed deliberately, "where it had evidently been placed in a
vain attempt to destroy it."

A shudder went through Mary, and she convulsively wrung her small hands
together, as though to limber them from a cramp. But her fingers went
back to the key.

"The murderer has been discovered," the detective slowly continued, and
the operator kept along with his utterance word by word. "He killed
Ravelli for revenge. It was a love affair." Here the girl grew whiter
still, and the clicks became very slow, but they did not cease.
O'Reagan's voice was cold and ruthless: "The motive of the murderer was
revenge. His name is Gerald Heath."

All but the name flashed off on the wire. Mary Warriner's power to stir
the key stopped at that. She did not faint. She did not make any outcry.
For a moment she looked as though the soul had gone out of her body,
leaving a corpse sitting there. A grievous wail of wind came through the
trees, and a streak of lightning zig-zagged down the blue-clouded sky.

"Go on," said O'Reagan.

"I will not," was the determined response.

"Why not?"

"Because it is not so. Gerald Heath never murdered Ravelli."

Gerald had stood motionless and silent. Now he gave way to an impulse as
remarkable as his previous composure had been singular. If there had
been stagnation in his mind, it was now displaced by turbulence. He
grasped Mary's hands in a fervid grip; then dropped them and faced the
others.

"I did not kill the Italian," he said. "He attacked me with my knife
which he had stolen. In the struggle his hand was cut, but I took the
weapon away from him. He quitted me alive and unhurt. I never saw him
again. You don't believe it? Mary does, and that is more than all else."

"The circumstances don't favor you," the detective retorted, "they
convict you. You killed Ravelli because you and he were both in love