e to him and leaned her chin on her
hands, her loose sleeves falling away from her arms and revealing, to
the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came
the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new
character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto
seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she repeated her
question.

"Do you really think you will find out who the thieves are?" she
exclaimed.

"One I already know," he replied, fixing his eyes on her as his square
jaws set firm in his effort to refrain from allowing his features to
relax into the smile which was hovering so near.

For a moment the lines round her eyes hardened, and the sparkle became a
flash before it melted again as a rippling laugh came from her lips.

"How terribly stern you look!" she cried in a mocking voice. "Do you
ever think of anything but your work, Mr. Durham?"

"Not when I have anything at all difficult on hand," he replied.

"Then this does puzzle you?"

"It has its difficulties; but, for all that, it is a problem I shall
solve."

Again the rippling laugh rang through the room.

"Why, of course! Was there ever a case the police had in hand where they
did not have a clue at the very beginning?"

"Several," he answered. "A clever, resourceful criminal, Mrs. Burke,
always has the advantage. Where they fail ultimately is in becoming too
sure of themselves and too forgetful of the network of snares laid to
entrap them and always waiting to trip them."

"I suppose that is so," she said slowly. "I suppose that is so. Poor
things--I can't help pitying them, Mr. Durham. One never knows what lies
behind their wickedness--what it was which first sent them rolling down
the slope that ends--often--on the gallows."

She shuddered as she spoke, averting her face from him.

"This is a dismal subject," he exclaimed. "Let us change it. Will you
answer the questions I want to ask you about the bank affair?"

"Ask them. Oh! ask the wretched things and let me get it over. Sure I
begin to hate the mention of it," she exclaimed as she shrugged her
shoulders impatiently.

Without apparently heeding her objection, he asked her to say whether
anyone was in the passage as she passed from the dining-room to the
entrance of the bank.

"Of course there was. Didn't I tell Brennan at once?" she said.

"Who was it?"

"His wife."

"Brennan's?"

"Brennan's! No! The bank manager'