The detectives--Harrigan and Thomas--took the boy to headquarters for further questioning, and he had there said he found the ring on the sidewalk. On that contradiction he was placed under arrest and locked up in detinue. Further, the police regarded as damaging the fact that a robbery a week previous had been committed in the same neighbourhood in a home where the cleaning apparatus had been engaged, the Ward boy serving as the helper in that house also. He had worked with a different crew of men than had been on the Robbins house, and this fact, in the police theory, eliminated the remaining employees of the company as it was highly improbable that they were all in a “second story” ring. They redoubled their efforts to find the supposed connections of Ward on the theory that he operated with an outside gang. “‘Jimmy said he found the ring and if he said he found it he did find it,’” said Lanagan, repeating the sister’s earnest declaration. “Well, for her sake--I hope he did.” Hour after hour Lanagan, tirelessly, kept at his rounds, visiting in turn each of the ten homes in the western addition that had been robbed during the last three months. Long before he reached the Robbins home, the last of the ten, he had formed his startling theory. In nine of the cases he had discovered that which he set out in search of: a constant condition present in them all. There was just one question that he wanted to ask at the Robbins home. He found the home in a flurry of excitement. Police headquarters had rung up and asked that a member of the household come at once to the detective bureau to identify if possible a bracelet that it was believed had been among the stolen articles and that had been recovered. Lanagan, arriving just as the senior Robbins was leaving in his automobile, was invited to accompany him. He did so; but first he had asked and had had answered the one question he came to ask. In the office of O’Rourke, night captain of detectives, they found O’Rourke, Harrigan and Thomas grouped around a woman, huddled down on a chair. Lanagan caught a low sob, a helpless, forlorn, frightened sob, that sent a curious sensation of nausea through him. He stepped quickly forward to gaze down upon the misery-racked form of the cripple, Jennie Ward. “I don’t know anything! Oh, I don’t know anything!” she wailed. “I found it on the door step!” O’Rourke had turned as they entered. He stepped to his own desk, holding the bracelet toward Robbins. “That is my daughter’s bracelet, sir,” Robbins said. “It was my Christmas present to her.” Harrigan, listening, nodded in satisfaction. “I knew it,” he said. “I guess we had better throw the little gutter snipe in, cap; a little pressure now and she’s bound to squeal.” “Oh, oh, oh!” Sobs were shuddering from the girl. “_Squeal!_ You damned clodhopper! Give her a bullet and kill her now if you are trying to! You don’t throw her in!”