“I feel I was to blame in a way, sir,” concluded Martin, wiping his eyes. “After all I would have been a jailbird anyway if she hadn’t saved me, most like. I thought I could protect her, too, sir, by confessing. I supposed if I said I committed the murder that would settle it.” Lanagan glanced at his watch. It was half-past one. “There’s one more move yet, Chief,” he said, “and I go to press in thirty minutes.” In a moment or two they had all reached the Hemingway home again, surprised to find it brilliantly lighted. Servants were running about frantically. An excited voice was at the telephone as the quartet walked through the door. It was the butler. “Hurry! Hurry!” he was crying. “Hemingway’s! Pacific Avenue! For God’s sake hurry!” “What is it?” demanded Lanagan. “Carbolic, I think,” replied the butler. “She escaped from the nurse and got to the bathroom. She had been raving for an hour entirely out of her head crying to Elvira to forgive her--that she--” he stopped suddenly, his lips coming together in a taut line. “Another loyal family retainer,” thought Lanagan as he and the chief exchanged quick glances. “Only this one can keep his secret for all of me.” They hurried to render first aid, but one look convinced the reporter and the policeman, used to deaths in violent form, that the troubled and frightfully burdened mother’s soul had gone to a higher court for judgment. Lanagan raced back downstairs for the telephone. It was five minutes to two. By the accident of being on the ground he would have at least that tremendous exclusive of the mother’s suicide. And that--good story as it was--was all the _Enquirer_ printed, for it was all that I finally got from Lanagan just before the clock struck two. Leslie, standing by the telephone, said, tentatively and curiously, when the receiver was hung up: “What about the real story? Saving that for to-morrow?” “No, Chief,” drawled Lanagan, full brother in the Fourth Estate. “No, Chief, that’s _all_ the story. She’s dead, isn’t she? They have had about enough trouble, this family.” V THE AMBASSADOR’S STICK-PIN V THE AMBASSADOR’S STICK-PIN The manner of Lanagan’s acquiring the Ambassador’s stick-pin is nearly, if not quite, as interesting as the matter of his losing it. His possession of the pin was simple enough when one understands the chromatic ways of a police reporter’s daily routine: and Jack Lanagan was the “star” police reporter of the city. The surrender of the pin is as easily understood, when one comes to learn something of the devious paths the police reporter is sometimes called on to follow, and the curious and startling situations into which they sometimes lead.