He was at her side now and seized both her hands. "Why, Helen, what's the matter? Your hands are cold as ice." He spoke warmly and tenderly, while at the same time his eyes were everywhere about the room and he was listening with the wary alertness of a rodent. There was more than a little of the rat in the soul inclosed in this splendid envelope. "It's nothing--only I'm faint," she said tremulously. "That policeman has been talking to you--hasn't he?" he said quietly. "Yes, he has," she blurted, with a catch in her throat. "Did he tell you who he was?" He measured out each word and conveyed the sense. "Did he tell you who he pretended to be?" "Yes," the girl responded, scarcely above a whisper. He took her by the shoulders and turned her squarely toward him, looking down into her face with frowning eyes. "Now, Helen, I want you to tell me the truth--the truth, you understand? I shall know it even if you don't. Who did he say he was?" A feeling of repugnance took possession of the girl and she shook herself free and stood back. Her body had warmed into life again and she looked steadily into his eyes as she answered: "Travers Gladwin!" He needed all his great bulk of flesh and steel-fibred nerve to fend off this shock. Not the remotest fancy had crossed his mind that Travers Gladwin might be in New York. It was with a palpably forced laugh that he ejaculated: "Travers Gladwin! Oh, he did, eh?" The girl had read more than he imagined the sudden contraction of his features and dilation of his eyes had revealed. "I want you to tell me the truth--you must!" she said passionately. "_Who are you?_" "A man who loves you," he let go impulsively. The desire to possess her had sprung uppermost in his mind again. "But are you the man you pretended to be--are you Travers Gladwin?" she insisted, compelled against her convictions to grope for a forlorn hope. "And if I were not?" he cried, with all the dramatic intensity he could bring to voice. "If instead of being the son of a millionaire, a pampered molly-coddle who never earned a dollar in his life--suppose I were a man who had to fight every inch of the way"---- He stopped. His alert ear had caught a sound in the hallway. He sped noiselessly to the folding door and forced one back, revealing Officer Murphy. "Come in," he said threateningly, and Gladwin came in a little way. "Where's that bag?" said the thief, with a glare and a suggestive movement with his hands. "What bag, sorr?" said Gladwin, feeling that for the moment discretion was the better part of valor. "The one you brought in here." "You told me to unpack it, sorr. It's upstairs, sorr." "Go and get it. Go now--and don't waste time."