“And now--now--all the people on the street are talking about us and my little brothers won’t go to school--the others call them names--everyone saw Jimmy’s picture in your paper to-day-- “Won’t you please help us? We haven’t any men folks to fight for us now with Jimmy locked up. Please, sir, help us get Jimmy out! “I went to police headquarters and waited hours and hours to see Jimmy--and then--and then finally the detectives--they took me and said I would see Jimmy--but they took me to a room and shut the door--and they swore at me-- “They said I--better tell everything or go to--jail--why--why they talked like _I_--knew about the robbery and they were--going--to arrest--me--” She fainted; just drooped quietly back into the chair, wearily, hopelessly, woefully, without so much as a sigh. Lanagan breathed quickly as he ministered to her. “Poor little sis!” he said, softly. “Plucky little mother of the tenements! Taking a full-grown man’s place! But what a handicap!” Her eyes opened. “Oh,” she fluttered, her thin, sensitive lips quivering in apology, “I fainted, didn’t I? How queer. I never fainted before. I cannot afford to give way like that. Sometimes, though! Oh, sometimes I wish I could! I wanted to in front of the detectives--my brain whirled and whirled and whirled with fire like pinwheels but I wouldn’t--I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction!” Her slight hands with their long fingers clenched; her eyes sparkled. “Harrigan. That is his name. He was the worst. The brute! oh, if I were a man! I would kill him for what he said to me!” “Never mind Harrigan. Leave him to me,” said Lanagan. “You are only exciting yourself. Go home now and try not to worry. We are going to look into your brother’s case.” “Thank you,” she said, with shining eyes. There were at no time any tears. She had been trained in a life where tears are inadequate. Lanagan watched her as she hobbled on her one crutch down the hall to the elevator, her useless limb swinging loosely. She was a pathetic little figure, with her man’s brain, her grown woman’s pride, and her little misshapen body; a fourteen year old girl, wearing “long clothes” in grim earnest. A quick pang shot through him; cripples always saddened him. They have infinitely so much less than the meanest wastrel who has health. “The judgment of a cold-blooded detective against the judgment of a loyal sister,” mused Lanagan. “Which is it?” An hour’s study at police headquarters of the reports on all ten of the burglaries established in Lanagan’s mind one settled conviction: they were all committed by the same author, and whoever it was--whether an individual or a gang--had first become reasonably familiar with the interior arrangements of the houses entered, and with the daily routine of the households.