fax, on the night I met you first, and placed them on the neck of
some bold young woman in the house next door, where, as you may
remember, I saw you dressed as Mephistopheles. You----"

"I stole nothing of the kind!" interrupted Theodore. "She's got
them----"

"Never mind that," Garrison interposed. "Let's go on. You installed a
'phone in your closet, at the house in Ninety-third Street, and on the
night when you overheard an appointment I made with Mrs. Fairfax, you
plugged in, overheard it, abducted Dorothy, under the influence of
chloroform, stole her wedding-certificate, and delivered me over to the
hands of a pair of hired assassins to have me murdered in Central Park.

"All this, with the robbery you hired Tuttle to commit at Branchville,
ought to keep you reflecting in prison for some little time to come--if
you think you'd like to go to court and air your grievances publicly."

Theodore was intensely white. Yet his nerve was not entirely destroyed.

"All this won't save your bacon, when I turn over all my affidavits,"
he said. "The property won't go to you when the will's before the
court. The man who married you in Rockbeach was no justice of the
peace, and you know it, Mr. Jerold Garrison. You assumed the name of
Fairfax and hired a low-down political heeler, who hadn't been a
justice for fully five years, to act the part and marry you to Dorothy.

"I've got the affidavits. If you think that's going to sound well in
public--if you think it's pleasant to Dorothy now to know what a
blackguard you are, why let's get on the job, both of us flinging the
mud!"

Dorothy was pale and tense with new excitement.

"Wait a minute, please," said Garrison. "You say you have legal
affidavits that the man who performed that marriage ceremony was a
fraud, paid to act the part?--that the marriage was a sham--no marriage
at all?"

"You know it wasn't!" Theodore shouted at him triumphantly, pulling
legal-looking papers from his pocket. "And you were married to another
wretched woman at the time. Let Dorothy try to get some joy out of
that, if she can--and you, too!"

"Thank you, I've got mine," said Garrison quietly. "You're the very
best friend I've seen for weeks. Fairfax, the man who has done this
unspeakable wrong, is a lunatic, somewhere between here and up country,
at this moment. He was here in town for a couple of days, and I
thought you might have met him."

"You--what do you mean?" demanded