"It was a fat, smug-faced little man, with heavy pouches under his eyes and a cocky air about him? That's Hobart Wallace, or I'm a Dutchman! Among the papers we found in Mike Hannigan's bag when we nabbed him at the Porter Street address on your plucky tip, were two hundred shares in a fake copper mine with his endorsement. He would have let himself be bled dry rather than have an inkling of that reach the press!"
"I was sent on one more errand," the girl continued, "to the courtroom where the Huston trial was in progress. I recognized the prisoner as the young chauffeur who had rescued me in the storm and brought me home the night the strange woman came, and as I listened to the testimony and learned that the murder of his wife had been committed on that night and his life depended on the alibi which I alone could supply, I faced the worst moment of all! Seated with him was poor Miss Pope, the dressmaker, who had risked everything to warn me to leave Mrs. Atterbury. I met her afterward in the corridor, and when she told me that Huston was her half-brother, all she had in the world to care for, and I heard his story from her lips, I did not know what to do! My father's good name was very dear to me, but here was a human life at stake. All that night I fought my battle, but in the morning I wrote a letter to Huston's lawyers, signing my real name and assuring them that I would appear if necessary and testify on a certain date. I had just placed the letter in the postbox that morning when I met you on the North Drive, Herbert."
She turned to Ross and he answered her with a quick pressure of her hand, but his eyes twinkled as he remarked:
"You haven't told the Chief yet who paid the blackmail to you in the courtroom, dear!"
"It was the judge, himself," she exclaimed. "He dropped the envelope in my lap as he passed out to his chambers when court adjourned."
"Judge Garford!" McCormick started in his chair. "What on earth could they have on him? It doesn't seem possible!"
"Don't forget there was more than a suspicion of bribery in connection with the Taylor case," Ross reminded him. "The opposition made a lot of it at the last election. The Atterbury crowd may have held some evidence of that over his head."
"Lord! They didn't mind who they tackled, did they?" McCormick chuckled. "It took just one little woman, though, to put the whole bunch out of business! Go on, Miss Westcote; I am anxious to hear the rest."
The girl told her story to the end, and when she had finished dusk was fast settling down outside the office windows. The Chief's eyes sparkled with admiration as she told of her desperate venture in the music room and the chloroforming of Wolvert, but his bluff, kindly face grew grave when he learned of the concerted rush upon her by the conspirators and the blast of the whistle which meant life or death to the girl who had dared all, and won out in the face of inconceivable odds.
"You ought to have taken me into your confidence, Ross." He turned reproachfully to his operative. "When you came to me with all that inside dope about the murder of 'the Comet' and the rest of it, and told me to round the boys up for a raid on the North Drive at the signal of a whistle, I agreed to let you boss the job, but if you'd given me an inkling that this young lady was in danger at the hands of that pack of thugs—!"