“Here’s wishing you luck, Morton,” Clifford said with a control that surprised himself. He gave Mary Regan a look that was quite as composed as her own. “And you, Miss Regan, I hope that all your best dreams come true.” He maintained his control until he had managed a very decent exit. But out in the corridor, he leaned against the wall, a very sick man, with ejaculations and questions stabbing him through and through. This, then, was what his long waiting had come to, his hopes and his dreams of a different Mary Regan! This affair with Jack Morton, a good enough fellow of his sort, that was her plan!... Yes, but what lay behind that plan?... And did she care for Morton?... And why had she not frankly written him of her purpose?... And Peter Loveman, where did Loveman come in?... And Bradley, guide and protector of young Morton, what might be Bradley’s part?... And what kind of person, after these months, was really behind that exterior which Mary Regan had presented him?... In bitter revulsion Clifford straightened up and walked away. What she was, and what she was doing, and what she had got herself in for, these matters were now none of his affairs. For him Mary Regan was a closed incident. CHAPTER V CLIFFORD HAS A NEW PURPOSE Half an hour later Clifford entered the octagonal reception room at Police Headquarters and sent his name in to Commissioner Thorne. Word came back that Thorne was engaged and would be so for half an hour; but in the meantime wouldn’t Clifford visit about the building. Clifford descended to the great corridor on the main floor. Here he met captains and lieutenants and first-grade detectives--old friends, with whom, until the events that had sent him out of the Department, he had worked for close upon a decade. They treated him with a respect that, coming after his scene with Mary Regan, was soothing to his rasped spirit. The very surroundings, too, affected him--begot in him a formless longing; in a way it was like coming back to one’s home town. Here, too, he ran into little Jimmie Kelly. With Jimmie he descended to the pistol range in the subcellar, and for half an hour they practiced with the regulation police revolvers, which recoil like ancient shotguns--their targets those little posters seen everywhere, headed “Wanted for Murder,” over the heart of the pictured fugitive an inch circle of white paper to serve as bull’s-eye. And then they practiced with Jimmie’s pistol, a .25 automatic so tiny that it could lie in a closed hand and not be seen. “Wish you were back here with us, Bob,” remarked Jimmie when Clifford announced that he was due up in the Chief’s office. “It would be great stuff--working with you again!” There was hearty sincerity in Jimmie’s voice; and the vague longing begot by it was still upon Clifford when at length he was seated beside Commissioner Thorne’s desk.