Harrison Grant carried home with him that night the vision of a handcuff, its metal seared through by the electric current, hanging empty by the switch in the power house. A potpourri of emotions seethed through his mind. A feeling of distaste that one who was, in all outward appearances, so square and true, so refined, should lend her cleverness to the furtherance of German plots, mingled with his feeling of personal disappointment. He owned frankly, to himself, that he did not want Dixie Mason to be anything but as good and true as she was beautiful, that he had wanted her so because--he had cared for her. But any such feeling was impossible now. She had proved it. Her apparent friendliness with the German element was born of co-partnership in their crimes; her interest in Von Lertz had come through the fact that she, too, was a co-worker in Imperial Germany's great game of murder, a co-plotter in the destruction of American industries, American peace of mind, American lives! He could see no alternative but that he should blot out this love for her that had grown in spite of him, and once more register a report against her. Early the next morning he made his report at the chief's office. "We will investigate the charge," he was assured. "You need concern yourself no further with it." The similarity of the announcement to those following his other reports of Dixie Mason jarred strangely on Grant. He could not fathom the mystery of events unless--a subtle hope suddenly sprang into existence. Could it be possible that there was some good reason for her activities, other than interest in the Germans? Might it be that the main office was holding information from him that would explain it all? Grant pursued this line of reasoning because it held out a hope for him and removed the cause of his distrust for Dixie Mason. But once more it brought him up against a blank wall of useless conjectures. If Dixie Mason had been in the Secret Service, she would have told him so in the power house instead of allowing him to think her a German spy, arrest her, and then put her to the trouble and danger of freeing herself by such precarious means. If the arrest had gone through, and she had been a member of the Service, she would have had to tell everything about herself later, so why not in the beginning? More than that, what possible reason could there be for her to conceal her affiliation with the Service--if she were in it?