Chief McCormick's honest face beamed as he sat back in his office chair and regarded the pale young girl before him with the frank, genuine admiration of one colleague for another.
"It was wonderful! I couldn't have engineered it better myself. You've pulled off the greatest stunt in years, Miss Shaw."
"Westcote," she corrected him, smilingly. "I'm glad to drop my friend's name at last, and sail under no more false colors. But I did very little, Mr. McCormick. If it hadn't been for Herbert I would have been murdered as poor George Breckinridge was, and the man called 'Mike' would have escaped."
"'Herbert,' eh?" The detective glanced quizzically at the self-conscious young man who stood beside the girl's chair. "I suppose congratulations are in order, but first let us get down to business. You used the name of some friend, Miss Westcote?"
"And her birthmark. It proved to be a frightful nuisance, wearing off and having to be renewed every day. That was what ultimately betrayed me, you know. But I want to tell you my story from the beginning; I know you will respect my confidence and you have earned it by your kindness in saving me from the police.
"My real name is Ruth Westcote, and I am the daughter of Alden Westcote, a retired broker. My mother died years ago, and we lived alone together in Bruce Manor, an exclusive colony on Long Island. As I grew up I noticed that father was aging rapidly and seemed breaking in spirit and it was borne in upon me that something was preying on his mind. I watched him and observed that his nervous depression reached an acute state regularly every three months on the arrival of certain visitors who came late at night and were received privately in his study.
"When I insisted upon knowing their errand he put me off on the plea of a confidential business transaction which I would not understand, and he had become so unapproachable of late that I dared not press the matter, although it worried me to distraction.
"One night about three months ago—it was the eighth of December, and the first big snowstorm of the year—I returned home late. I had been spending a day or two with a girl friend who lived on the South Shore and was motoring back in my own little car when I stuck in a snowdrift and the engine froze. A chauffeur came along with a big limousine just as I was on the point of freezing, myself, and took me home. I noticed the huge bulk of another limousine with gaudy wide stripes standing beneath our porte-cochère and there was a light in father's study window. My heart sank, for it was about the time for those mysterious visitors to call once more. I had never seen them, but I had heard their voices raised in dispute on several occasions.
"To my surprise, that night it was the murmur of a woman's voice which drifted out to me as I started up the stairs to my room, and on a sudden impulse I turned and ran down to the library to wait until she had gone. She seemed to be urging father to something and once I thought I heard him groan. A low choking cough interrupted her constantly and when at last the door opened and she came out into the hall, I could see at a glance from where I was standing behind the library portieres, that she was very ill.
"Father followed her from the study but he did not speak to her again; instead he turned and groped his way up the stairs, bowed and shaking as if he had received a blow.