the sweet, loving, trusting mothers!  As I value my honor, Reginald Warren, or Count Rozi, I will see to it that your mother shall know every detail of the whole miserable career of her son.  That is my answer to your alleged confession.  If there is a hereafter, from which you may observe that which follows your death, you will be able to see through eternity the earthly punishment which has been visited upon the one person whom you love and respect.”

The criminal’s ashen face was buried in his hands.

Great sobs emanated from his white lips, as his shoulders heaved in a paroxysm.

Shirley had struck the Achilles tendon—­the hardest wretch in the world had one, as he knew!

“Oh—­oh—­” he moaned, “the poor little mutter.  She has forgiven so much, suffered so much.  You can’t do it.  You won’t do it!” He fell to his knees, clawing at the criminologist’s garments with his trembling hands, the tears streaming down his face.

“What about those who have seen no compassion from you?” cried Shirley in a terrible voice.  “Your vanity, your self-worship!  Do they not comfort you now?  This is only the suffering of another which you contemplate!  Why all these hysterics?”

Warren, groveling on the floor of the reception-room, was a picture of abject, horrid soul-torture.  At last, through the subtlety of this unconventional sleuth, along methods which were never dreamed of in the ordinary police category, he had been broken on the wheel which he had himself so cunningly constructed!

“And if that mother dies, cursing your memory with her last breath, cursing the love of the father, of her husband, of the ancestors, all responsible for your being in the world today, what will you think, when you watch from the other side of that great unseen wall?”

“Oh, Shirley!  I can’t.  See—­I’ll destroy this stuff.  I’ll keep silent about the others.  I mean it.  Here:  I tear it up now and give you the pieces to burn!”

Warren, maddened by his fears, nervously tore the sheets into bits and pressed the remnants into the criminologist’s hands.

“Will you promise to keep my identity a secret?”

“I will not send word to Budapesth.  You have a bad record in Paris, and other parts of the world.  But, if you play fair on the confidential nature of this case, saving the innocent from disgrace and shame, I will see that the story never reaches your mother.  There is no need to ask this on your honor—­that does not count.”

Warren winced at this final thrust.  He turned toward Shirley, eagerly.