ermissible evidence."

"Oh, the law!" the Inspector snorted, with much choler. "Well, then," he
went on belligerently, "I'll charge young Gilder with murder, and call
the Turner woman as a witness."

The District Attorney laughed aloud over this project.

"You can't question her on the witness-stand," he explained
patronizingly to the badgered police official. "The law doesn't allow
you to make a wife testify against her husband. And, what's more, you
can't arrest her, and then force her to go into the witness-stand,
either. No, Burke," he concluded emphatically, "your only chance of
getting the murderer of Griggs is by a confession."

"Then, I'll charge them both with the murder," the Inspector growled
vindictively. "And, by God, they'll both go to trial unless somebody
comes through." He brought his huge fist down on the desk with violence,
and his voice was forbidding. "If it's my last act on earth," he
declared, "I'm going to get the man who shot Eddie Griggs."

Demarest was seriously disturbed by the situation that had developed. He
was under great personal obligations to Edward Gilder, whose influence
in fact had been the prime cause of his success in attaining to the
important official position he now held, and he would have gone far
to serve the magnate in any difficulty that might arise. He had been
perfectly willing to employ all the resources of his office to relieve
the son from the entanglement with a woman of unsavory notoriety. Now,
thanks to the miscarried plotting of Burke to the like end, what before
had been merely a vicious state of affairs was become one of the utmost
dreadfulness. The worst of crimes had been committed in the house of
Edward Gilder himself, and his son acknowledged himself as the murderer.
The District Attorney felt a genuine sorrow in thinking of the anguish
this event must have brought on the father. He had, as well, sympathy
enough for the son. His acquaintance with the young man convinced him
that the boy had not done the deed of bloody violence. In that fact was
a mingling of comfort and of anxiety. It had been better, doubtless,
if indeed Dick had shot Griggs, had indicted a just penalty on a
housebreaker. But the District Attorney was not inclined to credit the
confession. Burke's account of the plot in which the stool-pigeon had
been the agent offered too many complications. Altogether, the aspect of
the case served to indicate that Dick could not have been the slayer..