"Where are you taking me to?" pleaded the woman, her storm of tears choking her voice. "That you will soon find out," menacingly said McNerney. "Where you ought to have been long ago!" In the long ride across the great city, McNerney grew complacent over his bold stroke in borrowing an unused store-room from the armorer of the Twenty-ninth Regiment. It was after eleven o'clock when the three entered the gloomy basement under the granite buttresses of the armory. In the lonely arched room only a table and a few chairs relieved the prison-like emptiness. A man with papers spread out before him scarcely raised his head as the three entered. While McNerney drew the terrified woman into a corner, Witherspoon anxiously paced the floor. Fifteen minutes after their arrival, a messenger lad dashed into the room with a telegram. "All right, now, McNerney!" said the lawyer, as he read the dispatch telling him: "Party on board the 'Rambler.' Set sail at once. Will telegraph from Tompkinsville." And then, with a smile of triumph, Dennis McNerney locked the door. He placed the half-fainting woman in a chair before the notary and began his inquisition. The look of utter despair in Leah Einstein's face softened under the velvety, wooing voice of the man who had boldly abducted her. In the whispered conference in the corner, he had skilfully played upon that inexhaustible mother's love which is the one undiminished treasure of a worn-out world. The poor wretch at bay little dreamed that cobbler Mulholland was standing before her, and her tortured heart had forgotten all the dangers of the cablegram and the tell-tale registered letter. "If you answer all my questions," kindly said McNerney, "and make a clean breast of it, you may save your boy. Do you want to do that young man's life? He stands next to the electric chair now, for the murder of Mr. Randall Clayton!" The heart-stricken mother was on her knees in a moment. "Kill me! Do anything you wish. But spare him! He is innocent! He knows nothing!" "Let us see what you know, then!" grimly answered McNerney. "The notary will swear you, and, if you tell us the whole truth, we will help your boy. If you lie to us, God will punish you both, and we will show no mercy." Witherspoon opened his eyes in wonder as McNerney rapidly drew out the whole story of Clayton's departure from the corner of University Place in the carriage. "You were the woman in the carriage on the day that Clayton left! I SAW YOU MYSELF!" thundered McNerney. "Your own boy brought Clayton the message. Now, where did you take him?" Witherspoon held his breath as Leah Einstein, between her sobs, told of the fatal visit to No. 192 Layte Street. It was half an hour when the sobbing woman had finished her recital. "By the God of Jacob! I never saw him after he went into the back room. Fritz was with him there, Fritz alone!"