She shook her head. “I didn’t reason about it very clearly,” she said. “I had been under a good deal of strain, you must remember. All I thought of was that he was on my track, and that the sooner I put him where he couldn’t harm me, the better for me. So far as any one else was concerned, I suppose, if I thought of them at all, I thought that it was worth a chance. I’ve got out of some pretty tight places before now; I’m always inclined to hope till the last moment.” “I am afraid, Miss Legaye,” said the inspector seriously, “that you have come to that last moment now.” She glanced at him, and she had never looked more charming. “Sure?” she said, in her prettiest, most ingénue way. “I haven’t been before a jury yet, you know, and—and men usually like me!” The inspector was red with indignation. But more than one of the men present suppressed a chuckle at his rage and Kitty’s composure. “Why,” asked Jim, “did you sign Miss Templeton’s name to that decoy telegram of yours?” Kitty shrugged her shoulders. “I certainly couldn’t sign my own, could I?” she rejoined calmly. “And she’d been suspected at the beginning. She seemed a good one to pick.” There was not much more to clear up, but Barrison was on the point of putting one more question when an officer came in and whispered to the inspector. “Bring them in,” he said at once. The new arrivals were the Blankleys, accompanied by the detective who had found them in Indianapolis. They looked frightened, but Lowry quickly relieved their minds and assured them that they would only be required as witnesses. The meeting between the sisters was curious. Seeing them together for the first time, Barrison saw the resemblance plainly, though Rita looked more Mexican than Kitty, and was, he knew, far the better woman of the two. “Well, Kit?” said she quietly, almost compassionately, but Kitty looked straight in front of her, and neither then nor at any other time deigned to recognize her existence. Barrison prompting the inspector, the latter turned to Marita and held out the letter which Jim had turned over to him the day before, the note which both he and the younger man had accepted as conclusive evidence of her guilt. “Did you write this, Mrs. Blankley?” he asked. She glanced down the page and nodded. “Certainly,” she responded; “when I returned the coat Kitty had lent me.” When they read it over, they found that its wording was innocent enough. It was only Kitty’s evil ingenuity which had twisted it deliberately. “Did you really hate me as much as all that, Kit?” asked Marita, almost in wonder, but Kitty said never a word, and did not even look in her direction. A little later, Jim Barrison was bidding Inspector Lowry good-by.