Mr. Foster fingered his chin, but seemed disinclined to argue the ethics of the case. He eyed his companion interestedly and mentally compared her, as he did every woman he met, with Agatha. She certainly was very pretty (somehow this reflection came before its immediate successor, that she was after all more sinned against than sinning) and there was an undoubted fascination about her. Fancy! This delicate creature had killed at least one man and, on her own confession, a good few others as well. Oh, yes, the situation was intriguing enough, and so was she. It would be pleasant to earn her unbounded gratitude. But, of course, Agatha must not know. Agatha would hardly understand. “But you must beware for yourself,” observed the intriguing young woman very earnestly. “The Man with the Broken Nose is merciless. Human life means nothing to him. If he knew you were sheltering me, he’d kill you as soon as that beetle.” “Would he?” said the startled Mr. Foster. Perhaps earning this young woman’s unbounded gratitude would not be quite so pleasant after all, if it involved being killed as soon as a beetle. Then he recovered himself. These were civilised times, and people would not go about killing other people like beetles. “Would he, though?” he repeated more truculently. “I think you’d find I’d have something to say about that, my dear.” Dora reflected that, if the reports of Mr. Foster’s friends were founded upon fact, this was probably true. She took advantage of the psychological moment to clasp her hands and assume her most piteous expression. “What are you going to do with me, Mr. Foster?” she wailed. “Are you going to turn me away, or hand me over to the police? Or are you going to help me?” “You intend—hm!—you intend to go straight if I give you your chance?” inquired Mr. Foster in stern, manly accents. “Oh, yes; I promise. I’ll never shoot anybody again, I swear it. Oh, do say you’ll shelter me, Mr. Foster? They’ll kill me if you don’t.” Mr. Foster coughed with some importance. “Don’t distress yourself, my dear. I’ll shelter you.” “And they’ll probably kill you if you do,” remarked the girl gloomily. “Come, come,” adjured Mr. Foster, hiding a certain apprehension under a very hearty manner. “This sounds almost as bad as a penny-dreadful, you know.” “There’s no penny-dreadful ever written half so terrible as The Exploits of the Man with the Broken Nose,” replied Dora, coining a snappy title. “Ah, yes. Now, my dear, we must go into that. I want you, if you won’t interview the police yourself, to give all possible information about him to _me_,”—here Mr. Foster, who had become a little deflated, swelled once more—“and I’ll see that it is put to the best possible use. Without involving yourself, of course. Now, I’m just going up to the house to cancel something I was going to do this morning, and then I’ll come back to hear your story.” “Very well,” nodded Dora. The door clicked behind him.