"It's nearly midnight," she protested. "I have no clothes but this costume. I must go home." "Oh, come on!" Skeet pleaded. "Don't you see that doesn't do any good, Ina? You can get something at our house to wear." She gave me a long look, her chin still high, her eyes hard and unreadable. Then, "For the present, I shall go to a hotel." She laid a hand on Skeet's shoulder, but it was only to push her away. "Tell mother," evenly, "that I'll not bring my trouble into her house. Oh--you want Ernestine and Cora? Well, get them and go." And with firm step she walked to her car. I nodded to Cummings. "Have one of Dykeman's men pick her up and hang tight," I said, and he smiled back understandingly, with, "Already done, Boyne. I want to speak to Miss Wallace--if I may. Will you please see for me?" A moment later, he marched shining and jingling, in through a door that he left open behind him, pulled off his Roman helmet as though it had been a hat, and stood unconsciously fumbling that shoe-brush thing they trim those ancient lids with. "Barbara," he met the eyes of the girl in the chair unflinchingly, "you told me last night that the only words I ever could speak to you would be in the way of an apology. Will you hear one now? I'm ready to make it. Talk doesn't count much; but I'm going the limit to put Worth Gilbert's release through." There was a long silence, Barbara looking at him quite unmoved. Behind that steady gaze lay the facts that Worth Gilbert's life and honor had been threatened by this man's course; that she herself was only alive because the bullet of that criminal whom his action unconsciously shielded missed its aim by an inch: Worth's life, her life, their love and all that might mean--and Barbara had eyes you could read--I didn't envy Cummings as he faced her. Finally she said quietly, "I'll accept your apology, Mr. Cummings, when Worth is free." CHAPTER XXX A CONFESSION In the dingy office of the city prison, with its sand boxes and barrel stove, its hacked old desks, dusty books and papers, I watched Bronson Vandeman, and wondered to see how the man I had known played in and out across his face with the man Edward Clayte, whom I had tried to imagine, whom nobody could describe. Helping to recover Clayte's loot for Worth Gilbert looked to the opposition their best bet for squaring themselves. Dykeman from his sick bed, had dug us up a stenographer; Cummings had climbed out of his tin clothes and come along with us to the jail. They wanted the screws put on; but I intended to handle Vandeman in my own way. I had halted the lawyer on the lock-up threshold, with,