“You’ll find a good many that say she went with me, Captain; Gibson, the doorman, and probably Mrs. Sparling and some of the guests. But it wasn’t me, Captain.” Mullaney squinted his eyes as he looked at Jerry and then he looked at me. “Where was you, Mr. Steve Fanneal?” he challenged. “I’d gone home, then.” “Then where was you?” he swung back to Jerry. “I’d gone to the Drake.” “Leavin’ your partner at Mr. Sparling’s? I thought you said you took her there.” “I did.” “Then why didn’t you take her away?” “I’ll tell him, Jerry,” I said; for I felt the sudden strength of his suspicion. At first, he had spoken alike to Jerry and to me; but now he treated me and my word in one way and Jerry and his word in another. I was the known, actual son of Austin Fanneal; Jerry, as everybody knew, was the waif of any blood from anywhere. “You can’t, Steve,” Jerry warned. But there, like the fool I was, I started to tell. Two big men in uniform came in and each took an arm of Jerry. The doctor was doing things during most of this time; now and then I noticed a hypodermic needle. Dorothy Crewe breathed and her eyelids fluttered; she opened her eyes. Only the grimy ceiling was in her sight; she stared at this and then saw a blue coat, and some realization and remembrance began to reach her; and she jerked and shivered violently. Jerry started to her, pulling the two big men with him. The motion made her turn her eyes and she saw Jerry; and she screamed! It sent me shaking; it dropped Jerry down, hiding his face. She was convulsing in a spasm of hysteria. “He! He! He! He!----” She seemed to try to cry “He did it” but she could only scream “he, he,” until it went into a crazy laugh. The doctor tried to calm her; the big men dragged Jerry away. He was making no resistance, God knows; he was limp. Could a man go against a thing more awful than he’d just met? Here was the girl he loved; she’d trusted herself to him and she believed that, for the diamonds about her neck, he’d attacked her! She told something more in that scream of a laugh; she told a little, at least, of how she had struggled before she’d been strangled and knocked senseless and thrown into the street. And she had thought Jerry did it! I stepped along beside him. “Keeban,” he whispered desperately to me. “You see there’s Keeban.” It meant nothing at all to the police. To me? What did I know? “Go back to her, Steve,” Jerry begged. “But, old fellow!” he held me. “What?” “You’ll believe there’s Keeban? Think, Steve! If you don’t, you’ll believe I did that!” “No! I know you couldn’t.” “And you’ll keep on knowing? You’ll always know?” “Jerry!” I cried. “Your word, Steve?” “Of course.” “Go back, now, to her.” I left him to be dragged, limp, down the corridor between the big, uniformed men. In the grimy room, Dorothy Crewe had lost consciousness again; she was quiet; there was nothing I could do for her. A pair of shots sounded; a couple more, almost together; and yells.