It was Lanagan. He had whirled from the huddled form to send the words cutting through the air at Harrigan like a whiplash. The girl flung up a white face in a swift look of wild hope. “_I don’t know anything, Mr. Lanagan! Don’t let them put me in jail!_” She threw herself from her chair in an attempt to clasp his arm but her withered and shrunken limb crumpled under her and she sank to the floor with a sharp cry of pain. Lanagan leaned and lifted her to the chair. Harrigan had an ugly look as he measured the distance from himself to Lanagan. “Yes, Harrigan; you rotten thief. Clodhopper is too mild for you!” “You bum,” said Harrigan, with deadly levelness. “You drunken bum.” Lanagan’s leap was catlike. It took all the mighty O’Rourke’s strength to tear his fingers free. Lanagan was not a Queensbury fighter when tackling two hundred pounds of policeman. O’Rourke had Harrigan by the arms. Thomas had Lanagan. For a second or two there was not a sound but the panting of grappling men. Then discipline told. Harrigan’s arms relaxed. “You are relieved from duty, Officer Harrigan,” said O’Rourke. “Until I lay the matter of your insubordination before the Chief.” The detective turned on his heel and walked from the room, stopping at the door. “I’ll get you, Lanagan,” he said. Lanagan ignored him. “Now, Jack,” said O’Rourke, grimly, as Thomas freed the reporter. “Why won’t we throw this girl in?” “Because,” said Lanagan, still breathing heavily, “she is innocent.” “How do you know?” “I know. That is enough. If you won’t take my word ring up the Chief and he will.” O’Rourke knew the close friendship between Lanagan and Chief Leslie and the confidence the chief had in his judgment. He gazed doubtfully at the girl and then at Robbins. Secretly, he respected Lanagan also and he was impressed by Lanagan’s assurance. “We aren’t justified in holding the girl,” he said to Robbins. Then to Lanagan: “All right. You win.” But as Lanagan left the room with the girl to send her home in the police automobile, O’Rourke had an afterthought. He turned to Thomas. “We might just as well cover up. Watch the house to-night. There’s something queer about this whole business that I don’t get yet.” “Whatever happens keep calm until I see you again,” was Lanagan’s last counsel to the girl. Through the scene in O’Rourke’s office she had kept crouched down in her chair, watching with wide eyes; save for one quickly shrilled: “_Give it to him!_” as Lanagan’s sinewy fingers twined around Harrigan’s throat. “It was terrible of me to say that, wasn’t it?” she asked. “But I couldn’t help it! He is a bad man! I feel it!” “He’s what we call a ‘wrong’ detective,” said Lanagan, drily. “Don’t think about him any more.” “Let me have Norton,” he said, some moments later to Sampson, and to me he said: