“Oh, no, they can't!” came the rejoinder. And now, once again, there was a hint of the quizzical creeping in the smile. “No, they can't!” she repeated firmly, and there was profound relief in her tones since at last her ingenuity had found a way out of this outrageous situation thrust on her and on her husband.
Burke glared at the speaker in a rage that was abruptly grown suspicious in some vague way.
“What's the reason we can't?” he stormed.
Mary sprang to her feet. She was radiant with a new serenity, now that her quick-wittedness had discovered a method for baffling the mesh of evidence that had been woven about her and Dick through no fault of their own. Her eyes were glowing with even more than their usual lusters. Her voice came softly modulated, almost mocking.
“Because you couldn't convict him,” she said succinctly. A contented smile bent the red graces of her lips.
Burke sneered an indignation that was, nevertheless, somewhat fearful of what might lie behind the woman's assurance.
“What's the reason?” he demanded, scornfully. “There's the body.” He pointed to the rigid form of the dead man, lying there so very near them. “And the gun was found on him. And then, you're willing to swear that he killed him.... Well, I guess we'll convict him, all right. Why not?”
Mary's answer was given quietly, but, none the less, with an assurance that could not be gainsaid.
“Because,” she said, “my husband merely killed a burglar.” In her turn, she pointed toward the body of the dead man. “That man,” she continued evenly, “was the burglar. You know that! My husband shot him in defense of his home!” There was a brief silence. Then, she added, with a wonderful mildness in the music of her voice. “And so, Inspector, as you know of course, he was within the law!”
In his office next morning, Inspector Burke was fuming over the failure of his conspiracy. He had hoped through this plot to vindicate his authority, so sadly flaunted by Garson and Mary Turner. Instead of this much-to-be-desired result from his scheming, the outcome had been nothing less than disastrous. The one certain fact was that his most valuable ally in his warfare against the criminals of the city had been done to death. Some one had murdered Griggs, the stool-pigeon. Where Burke had meant to serve a man of high influence, Edward Gilder, by railroading the bride of the magnate's son to prison, he had succeeded only in making the trouble of that merchant prince vastly worse in the ending of the affair by arresting the son for the capital crime of murder. The situation was, in very truth, intolerable. More than ever, Burke grew hot with intent to overcome the woman who had so persistently outraged his authority by her ingenious devices against the law. Anyhow, the murder of Griggs could not go unpunished. The slayer's identity must be determined, and thereafter the due penalty of the law inflicted, whoever the guilty person might prove to be. To the discovery of this identity, the Inspector was at the present moment devoting himself by adroit questioning of Dacey and Chicago Red, who had been arrested in one of their accustomed haunts by his men a short time before.