Betty slowly retreated a step or two from him.
"I do believe in you—in your friendship, I mean. I know that you want to help me, that you have my interests, my very safety at heart and I am grateful. But there is something stronger than the fear of death. Don't make it any harder for me than it is. I realize my position; I know the danger in which I stand alone, the end that waits for me if they discover my purpose, or the consequences if the police come. And still I must remain! No power on earth can move me!"
"I can't believe you do fully realize your danger!" Ross pleaded. "I did not mean to tell you, I did not want to frighten you until I had taken you to a place of safety, but dear, you must know the truth. It is not the Atterbury creature or the others of her gang for whom the police are searching, but you—you! The newspapers today fairly blazed with it and every detective in the city is out after 'the girl with the scar'! Do you know what you have been doing, what you have been guilty of on these commissions as the tool of this woman?"
"Yes," answered Betty quietly. "I knew, but if I had refused, someone else would have gone in my place and I would have been dismissed, my own plan thwarted. I suppose I was hard and bitter, but it seemed to me that the ends justified any means. Those people came voluntarily to meet me; they had an alternative but they made their choice. If I had gone to the police myself I would not only have defeated my own purpose, but theirs also. Let the detectives search for the girl with the scar! I am safe until they trace me here and by that time I may have succeeded in my plan. No one can know where I am to be found but you, and I am not afraid that you will betray me!"
"But I have!" he groaned. "My chief knows. As a private detective myself I was employed in the first place to find you, you can guess by whom. My chief learned that I was on the trail of a girl with a scar and he thinks I've double-crossed him and gone crooked in trying to protect you. He's honest and he's got bull-dog courage; you can't bluff him or buy him."
"Not even with information?" Betty asked on a swift inspiration. "Will he hold off for only a day or two, just to give me another chance, if you can tell him something that will be of great value to him?"
"What do you mean, dear? What have you learned?" The question sprang eagerly from his lips. "I could not bribe McCormick, but I might stall him until I can take you out of his reach—"
"McCormick!" A sentence she had read a week before stood out across the girl's consciousness in letters of fire. "Listen! There's a man who uses the title of Professor—Professor Stolz, they called him here—who has just been arrested in Chicago."
Ross uttered a startled exclamation, but she went on:
"I believe he has escaped or broken parole before, because he is being held on an old verdict concerning someone named Hamilton, but your Mr. McCormick is trying to find new evidence against him. He's an accomplice of Mrs. Atterbury and the evidence is in this house. Have you ever heard of a woman called 'The Comet'?"