s, that's all--and mind you play your part!
Come on!"

It was two doors down the hall to Mike Hagan's room, and there one of
the officers, putting his shoulder to the door, burst it open and sprang
in. The other shoved Jimmie Dale forward. It was quickly done. The three
were in the room. The door was closed again.

Came a cry of terror out of the darkness, a movement as of some one
rising up hurriedly in bed; and then Mrs. Hagan's voice:

"What is it! Who is it! Mike!"

The table--it was against the right-hand wall, Jimmie Date remembered.
He sidled quickly toward it.

"Strike a light!" ordered the officer in charge.

Jimmie Dale's fingers were feeling under the edge of the table--a quick
sweep along it--NOTHING! He stooped, reaching farther in--another sweep
of his arm--and his fingers closed on a sheet of paper and a piece of
hard gum. In an instant they were in his pocket.

A match crackled and flared up. A lamp was lighted. Larry the Bat sulked
sullenly against the wall.

Terror-stricken, wide-eyed, Mrs. Hagan had clutched the child lying
beside her to her arms, and was sitting bolt upright in bed.

"Now then, no fuss about it!" said the officer in charge, with brutal
directness. "You might as well make a clean breast of Mike's share in
that murder downstairs--Larry the Bat, here, has already told us the
whole story. Come on, now--out with it!"

"Murder!"--her face went white. "My Mike--MURDER!" She seemed for an
instant stunned--and then down the worn, thin, haggard face gushed the
tears. "I don't believe it!" she cried. "I don't believe it!"

"Come on now, cut that out!" prodded the officer roughly. "I tell you
Larry the Bat, here, has opened everything up wide. You're only making
it worse for yourself."

"Him!" She was staring now at Jimmie Dale. "Oh, God!" she cried.
"So that's what you are, are you--a stool-pigeon for the cops? Well,
whatever you told them, you lie! You're the curse of this neighbourhood,
you are, and if my Mike is bad at all, it's you that's helped to make
him bad. But murder--you LIE!"

She had risen slowly from the bed--a gaunt, pitiful figure, pitifully
clothed, the black hair, gray-streaked, streaming thinly over her
shoulders, still clutching the baby that, too, was crying now.

The officers looked at one another and nodded.

"Guess she's handing it straight--we'll have a look on our own hook,"
the leader muttered.

She paid no attention to them--she was walking straig