“Oh—oh—” he moaned, “the poor little mutter. She has forgiven so much, suffered so much. You can't do it. You won't do it!” He fell to his knees, clawing at the criminologist's garments with his trembling hands, the tears streaming down his face.
“What about those who have seen no compassion from you?” cried Shirley in a terrible voice. “Your vanity, your self-worship! Do they not comfort you now? This is only the suffering of another which you contemplate! Why all these hysterics?”
Warren, groveling on the floor of the reception-room, was a picture of abject, horrid soul-torture. At last, through the subtlety of this unconventional sleuth, along methods which were never dreamed of in the ordinary police category, he had been broken on the wheel which he had himself so cunningly constructed!
“And if that mother dies, cursing your memory with her last breath, cursing the love of the father, of her husband, of the ancestors, all responsible for your being in the world today, what will you think, when you watch from the other side of that great unseen wall?”
“Oh, Shirley! I can't. See—I'll destroy this stuff. I'll keep silent about the others. I mean it. Here: I tear it up now and give you the pieces to burn!”
Warren, maddened by his fears, nervously tore the sheets into bits and pressed the remnants into the criminologist's hands.
“Will you promise to keep my identity a secret?”
“I will not send word to Budapesth. You have a bad record in Paris, and other parts of the world. But, if you play fair on the confidential nature of this case, saving the innocent from disgrace and shame, I will see that the story never reaches your mother. There is no need to ask this on your honor—that does not count.”
Warren winced at this final thrust. He turned toward Shirley, eagerly.
“You don't understand me at that, Shirley. I have had a curious career. Somewhere I inherited a strain of criminality—you know how many ancestors a man has in ten generations. I was a member of a poor but prominent family. The government paid for my education in the best universities of Europe, for I was to hold a position under the Emperor, which had been held in my family for generations. But I was ruined by the extravagances and the excesses which I learned from the rich young men whom I met. I studied feverishly, yet was able to waste much time with the gilded fools, by my ability to learn more quickly. The result was that I could not be contented with the small salary of my government office. I had to keep up appearances with my companions. So, I drifted into gambling, into sharp tricks—then became a mercenary soldier, an officer, in the continuous revolutions of the southeastern part of Europe. I sank deeper and at last, in one serious escapade, I managed to have myself reported dead, so as to quiet the heartaches of my mother, who believed I was killed on the battlefield. There is the miserable story—or all I will tell. They caught me in Paris and a girl betrayed part of my name—fortunately they did not hunt me up, so my mother was saved that disgrace. Will you keep the secret now, on our understanding?”