Wrenn sank onto the bed, and sat there, his wrinkled face working with emotion. “I was afraid you’d arrested her, sir!” he managed to say, after a moment, in broken tones. “You had been expecting that?” He nodded. “I’ve known that the—the police were bound to find out some time that she’d been in the theater that night, and I knew what that would mean. She _would_ come, though I tried so hard to prevent her! She _would_ come!” “Wrenn,” said Barrison deliberately, “it’s a pretty tough question to put to you, but—did she shoot Mortimer?” Wrenn looked at him with haggard eyes. “Before God, Mr. Barrison,” he said earnestly, “I don’t know, I don’t know! I didn’t _see_ her shoot him, but—I know she meant to.” “You know that!” exclaimed Barrison. “I know that she had threatened him more than once, and—it was her pistol. You knew that, sir?” “Yes, I knew that. Go on!” “I’d better tell you the whole story, sir. I’m getting old, and it’s weighed on me too long—too long! If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll go back to the beginning.” CHAPTER XXVI WRENN’S STORY “I was born in the West,” said Wrenn, “and I was fairly well educated, but while I was still in college—a small, fresh-water university—I got into bad company, and was expelled. My people disowned me after that, and I drifted into the sort of ‘adventurous’ life that attracts so many young men. I never really liked the idea of living dishonestly, but I didn’t seem good for much else. I had not worked hard at college, and I had no particular ambitions, one way or another. I suppose I was lazy, and I know that I was very weak. Eventually I became what you, sir, would call a crook, though for a long time I tried to gloss it over and pretend it was just taking a chance or living by my wits, and the rest of it! Then I got more hardened, and admitted even to myself that I was no better than the rest of the crowd I went with—a cheat, a card sharper, a petty criminal. Twice I was in jail for short terms, and I don’t think either experience improved me much. “Then I married. She was a high-class Mexican girl—very beautiful. She was a Catholic, and had an idea of reforming me. So she did, for a short time, but the old wild longings came back. I’d settled down in a job as foreman on an Arizona ranch, and I was working hard and drawing good pay. We had two little girls, and things were going pretty well. Then my wife died, and I got reckless again. “There was a tough bunch of cow-punchers in our outfit, and we got to gambling a lot, and pretty soon I found out that it was easier and more exciting to win when I played crooked than when I played straight. And there were others who felt the same way. We formed a sort of combination—a gang. And we did very well, indeed.”