"I shall certainly try to get him the limit," declared the attorney. "It'll be a long time before you need fear another midnight call from him, Miss Langham. While you are at the matinée to-morrow, please remember that I am vociferating frantically at the jury in your behalf. I surely deserve a cup of tea for that, don't I?"
"Well, on consideration, perhaps you do," asserted Nancy judicially, as she poured. "I'll relent."
She sat smiling, her dainty hand on the old silver urn, not observing how the smile had been stricken from Echo's face. Meredith noted the latter's strained look, however, and said, as he seated himself, "You mustn't think we are prone to such melodramatics. We don't have them often. This case is somewhat peculiar from the fact that the police can't identify the man we are trying. We don't know who he is or what is his record. For of course he has one."
"But," interposed Mrs. Moncure, "I thought criminals were always photographed—don't they call it the 'Rogues' Gallery'?—and measured, so they could be identified."
"My dear lady," he replied, "for two years I've been trying to bring this city up to date in that very thing. The state has the Bertillon system, but it's in use only in the penitentiary, as a permanent record. The data, however, should be taken when a criminal is arrested, and there ought to be a system of exchange of these records with all penal institutions. There would be no temptation then to turn a bare-faced burglary, coupled with felonious assault, into a romantic mystery, as this man's counsel, my friend, Mason, judging from the line he took to-day, will try to do."
There was a pause, as he possessed himself of another scone.
"I wonder," said Mrs. Moncure, presently, "if we shall ever know who she was—the woman who was with Craig when he was shot."
Meredith laughed a little. "I imagine it's not likely," he returned. "He has declared once that he didn't know her, and we can all understand her own passionate reticence on the subject!"
Mrs. Moncure smiled as she rose.
"Oh Sin! Oh Sorrow! and Oh Womankind! (she quoted)
How can you do such things and keep your fame,
Unless this world, and t'other too, be blind?
Nothing so dear as an unfilched good name!"