"I'll tell you who can give you all the information, Colonel Joe. Hardin was lawyer for this lady. He paid for their passages with a check. We note these payments for our cash references. Here is a pencil note: 'CK Hardin.' I remember Hardin coming himself."
"Oh, that's all right!" says the Argonaut.
An adjournment of "all hands," to "renew those pleasing assurances," is in order.
"Ah, my old fox!" thinks Woods. "I am going to find out who gave Marie Berard that other child. But I won't ask YOU. YOUR TIME IS TOO VALUABLE, Judge Philip Hardin."
He gives his driver an extra dollar at the old City Hall.
Joe Woods thinks he is alone on the quest. He knows not that the Archbishop's secretary is reading some long Latin letters, not three blocks away, which are dated in Paris and signed Fran‡ois Ribaut. They refer to the records of the Mission Dolores parish. They invoke the aid of the all-seeing eye of the Church as to the history and rights of Isabel Valois.
PŠre Ribaut humbly begs the protection of his Grace for his protege, Armand Valois, in case he visits California.
Philip Hardin, in his office, weaving his golden webs, darkened here and there with black threads of crime, is deaf to the cry of conscience. What is the orphaned girl to him? A mere human puppet. He hears not the panther feet of the avengers of wrong on his trail. Blind insecurity, Judge Hardin.
Woods has seized Captain Lee, and taken him out of his sanctum to the shades of the "Bank Exchange."
The great detective captain, an encyclopedia of the unwritten history of San Francisco, regards Woods with a twinkle in his gray eye. The hunted, despairing criminal knows how steady that eye can be. It has made hundreds quail.