evening not hers by arrangement, and how she had given orders that the house should be closed the same as usual at ten o'clock for the night. If the girl couldn't abide by the rules of the Beekman ménage she could sleep somewhere else. What of it? Supposing she had done so? She could not be held responsible for remote, unreasonable and discreditable consequences!
And then by chance Shane O'Connell made use of a phrase that indirectly saved his life, a phrase curiously like the one used on a former occasion by Dawkins to Miss Althea:
"Katie was a member of your household; ye might have had a bit of thought for her!" he asserted bitterly.
Dawkins had said: "You'd think a girl would have some consideration for her employer, if nothing else. In a sense she is a guest in the house and should behave herself as such."
There was no sense in it! There was no parallel, no analogy. There was no obligation to treat the girl as a guest, even though the girl should have acted like one. Miss Beekman knew it. And yet there was—something! Didn't she owe some sort of duty at any rate toward those in her employment—those who slept under her roof?
"'Twould have been better to have been kind to her then than to be kind to me now!" said he with sad conviction.
The proud Miss Althea Beekman, the dignified descendant of a long line of ancestors, turned red. Heretofore serenely confident of her own personal virtue and her own artificial standards of democracy, she now found herself humiliated and chagrined before this rough young criminal.
"You—are—quite right!" she confessed, her eyes smarting with sudden tears. "My position is quite—quite illogical. But of course I had no idea! Please, please let me try to help you—if I can—and Katie, too—if it isn't too late."
Shane O'Connell experienced contrition. After all it was not seemly that the likes of him should be dictating to the likes of her. And he could never abide seeing a woman—particularly a pretty woman—cry.
"Forgive me, madam!" he begged, lowering his head.
"You were quite justified in all you said!" she assured him. "Please tell me everything that has happened. I have influence with the district attorney and—in other places. No doubt I can be of assistance to you. Of course, you can absolutely trust me!"
Shane O'Connell, looking into her honest gray eyes, knew that he could trust her. Slowly—brokenly—tensely, he told her how he had killed Red McGurk, and why.
The corridors were full of shadows when Althea Beekman put her hands on Shane O'Connell's shoulders and bade him good night. Though she abominated his crime and loathed him for having committed it she felt in some way partially responsible, and she also perceived that, by the code of the O'Connells, Shane had done what he believed to be right. He had taken the law into his own hands and he was ready to pay the necessary penalty. He would have done the same thing all over again. To this extent at least he had her respect.
She found Mr. Tutt waiting for her on the bench by the warden's office.
"Well?" he asked with a smile, rising to greet her and tossing away his stogy.
"I haven't very good news for you," she answered regretfully. "He's confessed to me—told me everything—why he shot him and where he bought the pistol. He's a brave boy, though! It's a sad case! But what can you do with people who believe themselves justified in doing things like that?"
She did not notice Detective Eddie Conroy, of the D.A.'s office, standing behind an adjacent pillar, ostentatiously lighting a cigar; nor see him smile as he slowly walked away.
"Talk about luck!" exulted O'Brien, the yellow dog of the district attorney's office, an hour later to his chief. "What do you think, boss? Eddie Conroy heard Miss Beekman telling old man Tutt over in the Tombs that O'Connell had confessed to her! Say, how's that? Some evidence—what?"
"What good will that do us?" asked Peckham, glancing up with a scowl from his desk. "She won't testify for us."
"But she'll have to testify if we call her, won't she?" demanded his assistant.
The district attorney drummed on the polished surface before him.
"We—ell, I suppose so," he admitted hesitatingly. "But you can't just subpoena a woman like that without any warning and put her on the stand and make her testify. It would be too rough!"
"It's the only way to do it!" retorted O'Brien with a sly grin. "If she knew in advance that we were thinking of calling her she'd beat it out of town."
"That's true," agreed his chief. "That's as far as she'd go, too, in defying the law. But I don't much like it. Those Beekmans have a lot of influence, and if she got sore she could make us a heap of trouble! Besides it's sort of a scaly trick making her give up on him like that."
O'Brien raised his brows.
"Scaly trick! He's a murderer, isn't he? And he'll get off if we don't call her. It's a matter of duty, as I see it."
"All the same, my son, your suggestion has a rotten smell to it. We may have to do it—I don't say we won't—but it's risky business!" replied Peckham dubiously.
"It's a good deal less risky than not doing it, so far as your candidacy next autumn is concerned!" retorted his assistant. "We won't let her suspect what we're goin' to do; and the last minute I'll call her to the stand and cinch the case! She won't even know who called her! Perhaps I can arrange with Judge Babson to call her on some other point and then pretend to sort of stumble onto the fact of the confession and examine her himself. That would let us out. I can smear it over somehow."
"You'd better," commented Peckham, "unless you want a howl from the papers! It would make quite a story if Miss Althea Beekman got on the rampage. She could have your scalp, my boy, if she wanted it!"
"And McGurk could have yours!" retorted O'Brien with the impudence born of knowledge.
The prosecution of Shane O'Connell, which otherwise might have slowly languished and languishing died, took on new life owing to the evidence thus innocently delivered into the hands of the district attorney; in fact it became a cause célèbre. The essential elements to convict were now all there—the corpus delicti, evidence of threats on the part of the defendant, of motive, of opportunity, and—his confession. The law which provides that the statement of an accused "is not sufficient to warrant his conviction without additional proof that the crime charged has been committed" would be abundantly satisfied—though without his confession there would have been no proof whatever that the crime charged had been committed by him.
Thus, without her knowing it, Miss Beekman was an essential witness and, in fact, the pivot upon which the entire case turned.
The day of the great sporting event came. With it arrived in full panoply the McGurks, their relatives and followers. All Cherry Hill seemed to have packed itself into Part I of the Supreme Court. There was an atmosphere somehow suggestive of the races or a prize fight. But it was a sporting event which savored of a sure thing—really more like a hanging. They were there to make holiday over the law's revenge for the killing of the darling of the Pearl Button Kids. Peckham personally assured McGurk that everything was copper-fastened.
"He's halfway up the river already!" he said jocularly.
And McGurk, swelling with importance and emotion, pulled a couple of cigars from his pocket and the two smoked the pipe of peace.
But
