The officer's quick ear caught the woman's despairing murmur, "Emil!
My boy, my poor son! They will kill him!"
"Not if you are sensible, Mrs. Leah Einstein," growled the policeman.
"But your boy's life depends now only on you."
"Where are you taking me to?" pleaded the woman, her storm of tears choking her voice. "That you will soon find out," menacingly said McNerney. "Where you ought to have been long ago!"
In the long ride across the great city, McNerney grew complacent over his bold stroke in borrowing an unused store-room from the armorer of the Twenty-ninth Regiment.
It was after eleven o'clock when the three entered the gloomy basement under the granite buttresses of the armory.
In the lonely arched room only a table and a few chairs relieved the prison-like emptiness. A man with papers spread out before him scarcely raised his head as the three entered.
While McNerney drew the terrified woman into a corner, Witherspoon anxiously paced the floor. Fifteen minutes after their arrival, a messenger lad dashed into the room with a telegram.
"All right, now, McNerney!" said the lawyer, as he read the dispatch telling him: "Party on board the 'Rambler.' Set sail at once. Will telegraph from Tompkinsville."
And then, with a smile of triumph, Dennis McNerney locked the door. He placed the half-fainting woman in a chair before the notary and began his inquisition.
The look of utter despair in Leah Einstein's face softened under the velvety, wooing voice of the man who had boldly abducted her. In the whispered conference in the corner, he had skilfully played upon that inexhaustible mother's love which is the one undiminished treasure of a worn-out world.