"Good Lord! So somebody named March fell for a ten thousand dollar jolt and was willing to disgorge fifty thousand more under pressure, eh? Let's see what the rest of it says." He picked out the words slowly with a thick forefinger: "'Laramie game up. Comet sold us out to pink. Bud killed her; safe on way Japan. Red held in Denver, alibi straight. Meet Professor Chicago Saturday, he has instructions. New substitute success, blockhead but conscientious. No danger discovery so use this code in letting us know result Westcote affair. End.' So she calls you a blockhead, does she? Whoever 'Shirley' may be, he didn't meet the professor after all, for I got to him first."
"Yes. 'Shirley' replied to her in the same code. This is his original letter. Mrs. Atterbury dropped it in the hallway and I took possession of it. Stripped of the superfluous words, it reads:—'Professor caught Chicago. Held on old Hamilton verdict but McCormick getting evidence new trouble. Marked letters seized. Hear Westcote sanitarium for good. Nothing doing, refuses communicate. Trust nobody, but lie low. Business dead. End.'"
"They felt the net closing!" McCormick brought his great fist down upon the desk. "One by one we were gathering them in: Red in Denver, the 'Professor' in Chicago, Mortimer Dana here—"
"Oh, then it was you?" cried the girl. "Mrs. Dana came rushing to the house one day crying out that her husband was caught, but they quieted her and sent her away as quickly as they could, to avert suspicion from themselves, I suppose. She fled the city, but I don't know where she went—"
"To Bermuda," the detective interrupted grimly. "She's coming back, though, under escort. She fought the extradition like a wild-cat, but I think she will be in a communicative mood when she reaches here, and if she tells us a few things I want to know, I'll see that she gets off comparatively easy. She wasn't in it as deep as the rest."
"There is one person I would help if I only could." The girl hesitated. "I don't know what she has done, or how closely she is allied to the gang, but she did as much as she dared for me. I mean poor little Miss Pope. She is in trouble enough about her brother as it is, and she is so timid and long-suffering!"
"Don't you worry on her account, Miss Westcote." McCormick smiled beneath his short-clipped mustache. "If I can get you off scot free I ought to be able to handle her case. She went to Mrs. Atterbury, innocently enough, as a visiting seamstress and they roped her in, just as they thought they were doing with you, to collect money from their victims. When she found out the truth she was in too deep herself to go to the police, but she was too broken-spirited to be of any further use to them. They didn't let her out of sight, though, you may depend on that. She's free from them at last."
"Suppose—suppose they try to drag me in after all, if any of them makes a confession." The girl's pallid face whitened still more, but the detective laid a reassuring hand on her arm.
"If the police find Betty Shaw, the girl with the scar, they'll find her in British Columbia, with a husband and an alibi, won't they? If the Atterbury gang try to bring Ruth Westcote into the case, there's no shred of evidence left to connect her with it or prove that she or any of her people ever had dealings with them. That birthmark was your salvation, for not one of those from whom you accepted the blackmail would dare swear under oath that you were the same girl. Wolvert's wife has already confessed but made no mention of you."
"Wolvert's wife!" The girl repeated aghast, yet a light was breaking over her and it scarcely needed his reply to confirm it.