“Take me out of this place immediately, Dan,” she said. “I was mad to come here with you. I had no business to come here atall. Also, if you were a gentleman you wouldn’t ask me to come. What I said just now about loving you was not true. I only said it trying to persuade you not to murder that man. Before, when I used to read in the papers about a man being shot, I used to think it was right, but it’s a different thing when a man you know does a thing like that. Frankie killed a man too, Lord have mercy on him. Oh, God, have pity on us all.” She became slightly hysterical. “Why can’t we have peace? Why must we be killing one another? Why——” “Hush! Keep quiet. Keep quiet.” “Isn’t it cruel, Dan?” She let her head fall on her hands. Her body shook with silent sobs. Gallagher stared at her dreamily. “I will let her alone now,” he thought. “The logical sequence of this outburst will be this. Her mind will wheel around to the other extreme if I keep quiet and don’t irritate her by attempting to convince her that I am right. Her terror and her moral excitement will exhaust themselves and go to sleep. Then she will become aware of her strange surroundings, mentally, in a different way. When her mind becomes awake and normally acute again, she will see me, this place and what’s going to be done with Gypo, in an opposite light. When her mind is groping about in this new attitude it will be easy for me to influence her. I think I’m right. At least it always held good, that rule. I remember the struggle I had with Sean Conroy. But women are supposed to be different from men a lot psychologically. But I have to chance that. It would be suicidal to interfere with her now. That’s certain. Still . . . I’m not sure of myself with her somehow. . . . It’s not like the others. And . . .” Again his passion surged upwards. He sat without thought, fighting it, squeezing his palms together, with his eyes on her bent neck. CHAPTER XIII When Gallagher left the inquiry room, Mulholland went silently to a form and sat down. The three men stood nervously in front of the table watching him. They watched him intently, in silence, as if each movement he made was fraught with grave consequences to themselves. He took three matches from a box and placed them beside him on the form. He handled them slowly and deliberately, with a serious contemplative expression on his face, like an old fisherman baiting his hooks under the admiring glances of a party of tourists. Then he took out a clasp knife and opened it. He cut a piece off one match. He put the knife back into his pocket. Then, suddenly, he cleared his throat with a noise that sounded enormous in the silence. The three men started. They looked at one another fearfully, as if each had been caught by the others in the commission of an indecency.