was running a bluff. I had some evidence,
but not enough to convict. You might have got away with it, Lerton, if
you had had any nerve. But you happen to be a rank coward--and a guilty
man!"

"You--you----" George Lerton gasped.

He had been holding two fingers in a pocket of his waistcoat. Now he
withdrew them and, before Farland could reach him, he had swallowed
something.

"You'll never----" he began, and then his head fell forward to the desk.
"Get the ladies outside, Murk!" Farland commanded suddenly. "And tell
that secretary out there to send in a call for a physician and the
police. Lerton was right--he'll never go to the electric chair!"

* * * * *

Ten minutes later, Sidney Prale and Murk were waiting for the elevator
with Kate Gilbert and Marie, but each couple was standing at some
distance from the other.

"I have proved my innocence, and now I ask you to remember your promise
and grant me your friendship," Prale was telling Kate Gilbert.

"I shall remember," she said. "You have my address, haven't you? If you
haven't, ask Murk. He knows it. You sent him to spy on me, remember."

"Jim Farland did that," Prale protested.

Murk was talking to the gigantic Marie at that moment.

"You're mighty nice!" he was saying. "Say, I'd like to see you some
more. I've got an idea my boss will be calling on your mistress, and
when he does I might come up to the corner, and you might slip out and
meet me, and we might take a walk in the Park. You wouldn't want to stay
in the apartment and bother them, would you?"

"It would be a shame!" said Marie. "Which corner, Murk?"

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Brand of Silence, by Harrington Strong

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