“You—­did—­such a thing?” breathed Joe Ellison, almost incredulous.

“That’s exactly what I did!” Old Jimmie went on, gloatingly.  “It was easy.  No one knew you had a daughter, so I passed her off as my own baby by a marriage I’d not told any one about.  I saw that she always lived among crooks, looked at things the way crooks do, and grew up with no other thought than to be a crook.  I never had an idea of using her myself, till she began to look like such a good performer this last year; and then my idea, no matter what Barney Palmer may have planned, was to use her only in a couple of stunts.  My main idea always was, when you came out with your grand idea of what your girl had grown up to be, for you suddenly to see your girl, and know her as your girl, and know her to be a crook.  That smash to you was the big thing to me—­what I’d planned for, and waited for.  I didn’t expect the blow-off to come like this; I didn’t expect to be caught in it when it did happen.  But since it has happened, well—­There’s your daughter, Joe Ellison!  Look at her!  Look at what I’ve made her!  I guess I’m even all right!”

“My God!” breathed Joe Ellison, staring at the lean face twisting with triumphant malignancy.  “I didn’t think there could be such a man!”

He slowly turned upon Maggie.  This was the first direct recognition he had taken of her since his entrance.

“I don’t suppose you can guess what your being what you are has meant to me,” he began in a numbed tone which grew accusingly harsh as he continued.  “But I’d think that a daughter of mine, with such a mother, would have had more instinctive sense than to have gone into such a game with such a pair of crooks!”

“It’s true—­I have been what you think me—­I did go into this thing against Dick Sherwood,” Maggie responded in a voice that at first was faltering, then that stumbled rapidly on in her eagerness to pour out all the facts.  “But—­but Larry Brainard had kept after me—­and finally he made me see how wrong I was headed.  And then, this afternoon, before I spoke to you, Larry told me that you were my real father.  When I learned the truth—­how I had been cheated out of being something else—­how I was the exact opposite of what you had wanted me to be and believed me to be—­I felt about it almost exactly as you feel about it.  I—­I made up my mind to clear up at once all the wrong I was responsible for—­and then disappear in such a way that you’d never have your dream of me spoiled.  And so—­and so this afternoon, after I left Cedar Crest, I confessed the whole truth to Dick Sherwood—­about our plan to cheat him.  And like the really splendid fellow he is, Dick Sherwood offered to help me set straight the things I wanted to set straight.  Particularly to clear Larry Brainard.  And so my being here as you find me is part of a plan between Dick Sherwood and myself.  It’s really a frame-up.  A frame-up to catch Barney Palmer and Jimmie Carlisle.”