"When I was talking to Sid that night on the Avenue, his coat was open and I saw the pen. Something seemed to tell me to take it, that it might be used against him some time. As I clutched his lapel, begging him to leave town, I took the pen from his pocket."
"Nothing but a plain dip, after all!" Farland sneered.
"I dropped it beside the body after I had killed Shepley. It was a part of my plan. And—and I guess that is all!"
"I guess it is!" Sidney Prale said. "Mr. Griffin and I, and some other men, made a little investigation last night and continued it this morning. We found that you were the traitor who caused that financial smash ten years ago. It may please you to know that Mr. Griffin is my friend again, and that others are being informed of my innocence. Even Coadley has come to me and asked to take my case again. But I was clearing myself of the charge of business treason, and nothing more. I did not connect you with the murder of Shepley."
"Well, I did connect him with it," Farland put in. "But when I sprung it on him here this afternoon, I was running a bluff. I had some evidence, but not enough to convict. You might have got away with it, Lerton, if you had had any nerve. But you happen to be a rank coward—and a guilty man!"
"You—you——" George Lerton gasped.
He had been holding two fingers in a pocket of his waistcoat. Now he withdrew them and, before Farland could reach him, he had swallowed something.
"You'll never——" he began, and then his head fell forward to the desk. "Get the ladies outside, Murk!" Farland commanded suddenly. "And tell that secretary out there to send in a call for a physician and the police. Lerton was right—he'll never go to the electric chair!"
Ten minutes later, Sidney Prale and Murk were waiting for the elevator with Kate Gilbert and Marie, but each couple was standing at some distance from the other.