“Good stuff!” cried Thome enthusiastically. “And if you succeed—and I know you will—it will be a big thing for the Department, a big thing for me, and we’ll try to make it a big thing for you!”

This new interest so promptly and exactly fitted the sudden emptiness in Clifford’s life that almost without thinking he was impelled to ask, “Has anything happened, Chief, to cause you to make me this offer just now?”

Thorne regarded Clifford with a curious, thoughtful air. “I wonder if I should tell you,” he said slowly; and then: “Well, the fact is, Clifford, I have been holding a little something back from you.”

“Something about what, Chief?”

“About you—and a woman.”

“Yes—go on!”

“Six months ago a young woman called on me at my hotel, and asked me if I had offered you the position of Chief of the Detective Bureau. I said that I had, and that you had declined. She then asked me if I still wanted you. I said yes, if I could[51] get you. That was all that passed between us. She thanked me and went away.”

[51]

“She was Mary Regan,” said Clifford.

“She was.”

“And is that all that has happened?”

“To-day I had a note from her, without date or address, advising me to offer you the position again, and to keep on offering it to you until you accepted.”

Something was happening within Clifford, though he did not know what it was—something that set brain whirling and heart beating at a swifter tempo. “I just left her,” he said with mechanical calm. “She’s going to marry a man named Jack Morton.”

“So I have just learned.”

“How?”

“Some of my men have been covering Bradley and Loveman. Loveman’s house telephone is tapped, and a few threads have been picked up. Miss Regan believes she is doing what she is doing because she wants to, and from her own motives. But Bradley and Loveman are behind it.”

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