“Marita was always hard to manage, sir,” he said, in a faint voice. “She turned against me—her own father, and——” “I should think she might!” “And she turned against Mortimer, and against Mr. Dukane, who offered her money. She said she would wait for Nick to come out of prison, and would spend the rest of her life in getting even!” “Well, I sympathize with her!” said Barrison sincerely. So that was the meaning of the tragic and haggard lines about her mouth and the weary look in her eyes. “Well, Wrenn,” he went on quietly, “I don’t know just how the blame is to be divided in all this, but I imagine you’ve had almost your share of suffering. And Mortimer is done for. Dukane will get his eventually. I shall be sorry personally if your daughter Marita has to pay the penalty for the death of a rotter like the man who died the other night. I wish you could tell me something about her visit which would make her case look a little better.” Then Wrenn broke down, and, burying his head in his hands, cried like a child. He might have been a crook, a weakling, neglectful of his children through all the days of his life, but he was suffering now. His gaunt old body quivered under the storm of grief that swept him. In that abasement and sorrow it was even possible for Barrison to forget the despicable things he had just admitted. He was now merely an old man, bitterly punished not only for the sins of his youth, but those of his age. “That’s what I keep saying,” he panted at last, lifting his swollen eyes to the younger man’s pitying gaze. “I keep asking myself if there isn’t something that’ll clear her. Though we’ve been apart so long, and I was always a bad father to her, and a false friend to her husband, it will kill me altogether if I find that she is guilty of murder!” “She wrote those letters—the ones threatening Mortimer?” “Yes.” “And she took advantage of the time permitted her by the hours of her act at Coyne’s to come to the theater that night?” “Yes, sir. Let me tell you just how it was. She slipped in while Roberts was out getting the taxi for Kitty.” He spoke his daughter’s name shyly and with embarrassment. “She came straight into the dressing room—though why no one saw her I can’t see! She was dressed just as she had come from the theater, in a khaki skirt and a white waist. And she pulled a pistol out of her dress as she came in. I knew the pistol, because it was always a fad of hers, in all her stunts, to carry guns like that—very small, and very much decorated, and with a letter that might be either an M or a W, according as you looked at it. “The moment she and Mortimer saw each other they flew out like two wild cats. I’d always tried to keep this from happening, because I knew that they were both past controlling when their blood was up, and they both had a lot to fight for.”