“She’s a heavenly angel!” he said. “I don’t know what God Almighty meant by setting her in the game with the bunch of crooks that He’s got running the world—unless He counted on me.” The laugh became a sort of chuckle in his big throat—“Ain’t she a heavenly angel?” He whipped a worn photograph out of his pocket and reached it across the table to me. It was the photograph of a girl with a narrow slit cut out across the face. It had been taken from a painting; one could tell from the flat surface. A strange background of beauty and an indescribable charm in the pose of the girl remained even in the mutilated picture. “I cut the face,” he added, “so she wouldn’t come into the case if you caught me; your little Westridge must have been slaughtered at the loss of her.” Again he touched me at an unexpected point. Shortly after the thing had happened, Lord Westridge returned to England. He had come to visit some rich Americans, and there was a rumor that some adventure had befallen him. Nothing definite ever came to me, and I liked the man too little to inquire; all the blood from the original Glasgow solicitor would “bite a shilling.” But again I replied as though I were in his secret. “What happened to Westridge?” I said. The man twisted around in his chair. “Friend,” he said, “you’ve got a head full of brains or you wouldn’t be Chief of the United States Secret Service; now answer me a question—What’s the biggest notion in the Christian Church?” “I don’t know,” I answered him truthfully. “Well, I know,” he went on. “It’s the notion that you’ll get what’s a-comin’ to you!” He looked at me with a big, cynical leer. “That’s what happened to your little Westridge—and the next time you see him he’s a-goin’ to get another jolt. He will be damned sorry that you found me. He couldn’t squeal, any place along the line, but I’ll bet a finger he didn’t let Scotland Yard forget about me.” And again I saw an incident of this long search, for the man before me, from another angle. The Blackacre Bank had kept the search hot for him, pretending the public welfare. I saw it now, that was Westridge’s money box—that would be little Westridge in the background. He eyed me curiously in a moment’s pause. “He kept slippin’ you the word, eh? Well, she blocked him at that, even if she didn’t know it.” There came a sudden energy into his voice. “An’ if the plague hadn’t got me I’d ’a’ saved her that trouble; I’d ’a’ played ring-a-round-a-rosy with you.” He lifted himself in the chair with the strength of his hands on the broad arm-rests. And I realized more fully what a physical wreck he was—the lower part of his body was motionless. “I want to tell you about this thing,” he said. “And then you can go ahead with your warrant.” “I fear,” I replied, “that a somewhat higher authority has got in before the King’s writ.” He chuckled as though the deadly fact were a sort of pleasantry. “Sure,” he said, “the big Judge has beat you to it.”