There was no doubt about it, she was pretty! Her blonde hair shone in the light and the shadows about her eyes added to their beauty. Her face was round and piquant, her lips a deep crimson and tiny. Her one-piece dress on which beads sparkled, exposed a delicately rounded throat and slender white arms. Her hands were small and white and her fingernails were highly polished. Sheer silk stockings and neat, expensive shoes. A hint of cheapness about her; perhaps it was the unnatural thinness of the delicately arched eyebrows, John thought; or perhaps the shortness of her skirt; but she was pretty! "I suppose you understand that I am Mrs. Hatch?" she said. They nodded. "Now," she continued, "can you give me some assurance that you are really reporters and not detectives." They produced their press badges which she examined under the light. Apparently satisfied, she looked at them for a moment and then spoke. "I want you to help me," she said; "help me and my husband." "If there is any legitimate way we can help you, we will," Brennan assured her. "I will begin at the beginning and tell you everything," she said. "When I have finished you can tell me what you can do for me. "In the first place, I am speaking to you because my husband is afraid to say anything. He does not know that I am going to tell you this, but I am doing it to save him, because"--she hesitated--"I love him. "Jim was indicted back in New York and came here to escape arrest. We arrived here five months ago. Whether Jim is guilty of what he is charged with in New York is for him to say. All I know is that he was indicted and that we came to Los Angeles to escape the officers. "We came here because Jim was a friend of 'Gink' Cummings and he thought that Cummings would protect him. Jim saw Cummings soon after we reached the city and Cummings greeted him like a long lost brother. He said that we could hide in Los Angeles and be reasonably sure that the New York officers would never learn we were here. "A month after we came here we ran out of money and Jim decided to get to work again. You can guess how Jim planned to work. I need not tell you more than that before another month went by he had the money. It wasn't as much as he had hoped for and we were disappointed. We knew that every time he went to work he not only risked new trouble, but identification as the man who was wanted in New York. That is why his--his jobs had to be few and far between. We planned to make every cent of the money last as long as we could. "Of course, 'Gink' Cummings knew what Jim had done. When the job was completed he called Jim to his office and told him that he would have to split what money he had got with him. He told Jim that no one worked in Los Angeles without giving him at least a 10 per cent cut, for protection.