“Chief of Police Leslie of San Francisco,” He said, shortly. With a swift movement the girl’s hand went to her corsage and in a flash Lanagan had hurtled across the room and a tiny dagger spun to the floor. She threw herself back upon the bed, crying in sudden hysteria: “You might have let me done it! You might have let me done it!” she wailed bitterly. Lanagan was wrapping up his hand. He had got the point of the dagger through the ball of his thumb in the rush. She jumped up again and threw herself at the feet of Leslie. “It’s my first crooked trick, so help me, Chief! He dragged me into it! What was I to do? It looked easy and it was a way out of the Tenderloin!” Leighton was glancing heavily, his lips apart, from the door to the window as though planning an attempt to escape by either means. “You’ve been shading pretty close on one or two things lately, Leighton,” said the Chief grimly. “But I didn’t think you had it in you to take a chance at the scaffold.” “What do you mean by that, Chief?” gasped Leighton, with a sickly attempt at composure. “He means,” thundered Lanagan, “that you are the man back of the murder of the real Gertrude Pendelton’s child, and the indirect killing of Gertrude Pendelton, who was Mrs. Peters! He means that you are the man back of Fogarty, who is the man who secured the conviction, in Bannerman’s court, of Peters. That’s what he means!” Lanagan wheeled on the Englishman. “How much money have you already paid Leighton?” “One thousand pounds for producing this girl. He was to get four thousand more when final proof of identity was accepted by my principals in London.” Leslie and Lanagan exchanged glances. It was big pickings for Larry Leighton. Twenty-five thousand dollars in all; properly handled by Fogarty, it would go a long way to grease the wheels of justice in the police court. Leighton arose, shaking like a palsied man, and tottered, rather than walked, to the Chief. He extended his wrists. “Put on the bracelets, Chief,” he said, in a voice that was but a shadow of his rich voice. “I took my chances, I’ll take my medicine. The girl hasn’t done anything yet you can hold her on. She knows nothing about the other thing. The doctors had given me two years to live--kidneys gone--and I saw a chance for a big clean-up and the German springs. It might have saved me.” “Big!” interrupted the Englishman, awed, “one hundred and fifty thousand pounds!”