"I puts the picture back, and I goes out to where she is and tries to argue with her. It's no use. She goes down on her knees and holds the baby up, and tells me it ain't for her sake she's asking this--it's for the bambino. And she calls on a lot of Italian saints that I never even heard the names of some of them before--and so on, like that. It's pretty tough. "She's such a stupid, ignorant thing you can't help from feeling sorry for her--nobody could." He hesitated a moment as though seeking for words of explanation and extenuation that were not in his regular vocabulary. "I got kids of my own, commissioner," he said suddenly, and stopped dead short for a moment. "I'm no Italian, but I got kids of my own!" he repeated, as though the fact constituted a defense. "Well, well--what happened then?" The deputy commissioner's frosty voice seemed to have frozen so hard it had a crack in it. And now then the Semitic face of Weil twisted into a grin that was more than shamefaced--it was downright sheepish. "Why, then," he said, "when I comes back out of the Bertillon room the second time she goes back down on her knees again and she says to me--of course she ain't expected to know what my religion is--maybe that explains it, commissioner--she says to me that all her life--every morning and every night--she's going to pray to the Blessed Virgin for me. That's what she says anyway. So I just lets it go at that." He halted as though he were through. "Then do I understand that, without an order from any superior authority, you gave this here woman certain property belonging to the Police Department?" Old Donohue's voice was gruffer than common, even. He whetted his talon forefinger on the desk top. "Yes, sir," owned up the Jew. "There's nobody there but just us two. And I don't know how Captain Meagher comes to find the picture is gone and that it was me took it--but it's true, commissioner. She goes away kissing it and holding it to the breast of her clothes--that Rogues' Gallery picture! Yes, sir; I gives it to her." The third deputy commissioner's gold-banded right arm was shoved out, with all the lean fingers upon the hand at the far end of it widely extended. He spoke, and something in his throat--a hard lump perhaps--husked his brogue and made his r's roll out like dice. "Lieutenant Weil," he said, "I congratulate you! You're guilty!" End of Project Gutenberg's The Escape of Mr. Trimm, by Irvin S. Cobb