gh here in a second." He went on with the
writing.

Garson moved forward slightly, to the single chair near the end of the
desk, and there seated himself mechanically. His face thus was turned
toward the windows that gave on the corridor, and his eyes grew yet more
clouded as they rested on the grim doors of the cells. He writhed in his
chair, and his gaze jumped from the cells to the impassive figure of
the man at the desk. Now, the forger's nervousness increased momently it
swept beyond his control. Of a sudden, he sprang up, and stepped close
to the Inspector.

"Say," he said, in a husky voice, "I'd like--I'd like to have a lawyer."

"What's the matter with you, Joe?" the Inspector returned, always with
that imperturbable air, and without raising his head from the work that
so engrossed his attention. "You know, you're not arrested, Joe. Maybe,
you never will be. Now, for the love of Mike, keep still, and let me
finish this letter."

Slowly, very hesitatingly, Garson went back to the chair, and sank
down on it in a limp attitude of dejection wholly unlike his customary
postures of strength. Again, his fear-fascinated eyes went to the row
of cells that stood silently menacing on the other side of the corridor
beyond the windows. His face was tinged with gray. A physical sickness
was creeping stealthily on him, as his thoughts held insistently to the
catastrophe that threatened. His intelligence was too keen to permit
a belief that Burke's manner of almost fulsome kindliness hid nothing
ominous--ominous with a hint of death for him in return for the death he
had wrought.

Then, terror crystallized. His eyes were caught by a figure, the figure
of Cassidy, advancing there in the corridor. And with the detective
went a man whose gait was slinking, craven. A cell-door swung open, the
prisoner stepped within, the door clanged to, the bolts shot into their
sockets noisily.

Garson sat huddled, stricken--for he had recognized the victim thrust
into the cell before his eyes.... It was Dacey, one of his own cronies
in crime--Dacey, who, the night before, had seen him kill Eddie Griggs.
There was something concretely sinister to Garson in this fact of
Dacey's presence there in the cell.

Of a sudden, the forger cried out raucously:

"Say, Inspector, if you've got anything on me, I--I would----" The cry
dropped into unintelligible mumblings.

Burke retained his manner of serene indifference to the other's
agitation. S