Garth's voice was anxious.
"How are you working, Nora? I don't like it. I wish you were out of it."
But Nora would tell him nothing, and he realized instinctively that in her crusade she had taken desperate chances and would face more, probably the worst, to-night.
"You must tell us," she said, "how you found the Chinaman. I've no doubt he was one of them. In itself his death was a confession—a pitifully silent one."
Garth told his story of the man in the limousine, of the trailing Oriental, of what he had learned at the Bureau of Licenses. Nora offered no interpretation, but she smiled sympathetically at the inspector's rage. He saw in the affair more than Garth. To him it meant an underhanded attempt on the part of the society to trap a material witness.
"They put it up to me," he grumbled, "then they want to put it over me. Manford gets a line of his own and keeps it to himself. Out for a little glory and advertising! What happens every time I work with these silk-stockinged, fur-coated societies that think they know more about vice than the police. And to think, Garth, you snitched him away from them, then let him croak!"
Nora arose.
"No use crying over spilt milk, father."
She prepared to leave. Garth followed her to the hallway. He urged her to let him share her plans, to give him a more pronounced part in the risks. She shook her head.
"It's best to let me work this alone until the last minute, Jim."