words came
confusedly:

"No, Joe! No, no, no!"

Again, Garson shook his head in absolute refusal of her plea.

"There's no other way out," he declared, wearily. "I'm going
through with it." He straightened a little, and again looked at the
stenographer. His voice came quietly, without any tremulousnesss.

"My name is Joe Garson."

"Alias?" Burke suggested.

"Alias nothing!" came the sharp retort. "Garson's my monaker. I shot
English Eddie, because he was a skunk, and a stool-pigeon, and he got
just what was coming to him." Vituperation beyond the mere words beat in
his voice now.

Burke twisted uneasily in his chair.

"Now, now!" he objected, severely. "We can't take a confession like
that."

Garson shook his head--spoke with fiercer hatred, "because he was a
skunk, and a stool-pigeon," he repeated. "Have you got it?" And then, as
the stenographer nodded assent, he went on, less violently: "I croaked
him just as he was going to call the bulls with a police-whistle. I used
a gun with smokeless powder. It had a Maxim silencer on it, so that it
didn't make any noise."

Garson paused, and the set despair of his features lightened a little.
Into his voice came a tone of exultation indescribably ghastly. It
was born of the eternal egotism of the criminal, fattening vanity in
gloating over his ingenuity for evil. Garson, despite his two great
virtues, had the vices of his class. Now, he stared at Burke with a
quizzical grin crooking his lips.

"Say," he exclaimed, "I'll bet it's the first time a guy was ever
croaked with one of them things! Ain't it?"

The Inspector nodded affirmation. There was sincere admiration in
his expression, for he was ready at all times to respect the personal
abilities of the criminals against whom he waged relentless war.

"That's right, Joe!" he said, with perceptible enthusiasm.

"Some class to that, eh?" Garson demanded, still with that gruesome air
of boasting. "I got the gun, and the Maxim-silencer thing, off a fence
in Boston," he explained. "Say, that thing cost me sixty dollars, and
it's worth every cent of the money.... Why, they'll remember me as the
first to spring one of them things, won't they?"

"They sure will, Joe!" the Inspector conceded.

"Nobody knew I had it," Garson continued, dropping his braggart manner
abruptly.

At the words, Mary started, and her lips moved as if she were about to
speak.

Garson, intent on her always, though he seemed to look only