“I’d gone to the Drake.”

“Leavin’ your partner at Mr. Sparling’s? I thought you said you took her there.”

“I did.”

“Then why didn’t you take her away?”

“I’ll tell him, Jerry,” I said; for I felt the sudden strength of his suspicion. At first, he had spoken alike to Jerry and to me; but now he treated me and my word in one way and Jerry and his word in another. I was the known, actual son of Austin Fanneal; Jerry, as everybody knew, was the waif of any blood from anywhere.

“You can’t, Steve,” Jerry warned.

But there, like the fool I was, I started to tell.

Two big men in uniform came in and each took an arm of Jerry.

The doctor was doing things during most of this time; now and then I noticed a hypodermic needle.

Dorothy Crewe breathed and her eyelids fluttered; she opened her eyes.