Consuello was the first to speak as they passed through the studio gateway to the sidewalk overhung by the drooping branches of tall pepper trees.

"It's not far," she said.

The words awoke John from his enthrallment and she saw by his glance toward her that he did not comprehend their meaning.

"It's not far to the house," she explained. Not far! He wished it were miles away, that they might walk on together for hours.

"I could not bear being cramped up in an apartment," she added. "When it became necessary for me to find some place to live in Los Angeles, a dear friend—you must meet her—and I hunted up this little place for our home. It wasn't much to look at when we found it, but we have made it over to suit us and we have both grown to love it."

"Your friend—is she in pictures, too?" he asked.

"Betty is an artist," she replied. "She designs sets and costumes for pictures and she is wonderful. She knows everything about her work, more than anyone else in Hollywood, they say. She deserves all the credit for turning our little home into a dream place."

"You will miss her when——" he found himself unable to finish the sentence, "you are married."

"Yes," she said. "I'll miss her and our little home. Really, I don't believe I will know how to act if I become the wife of the mayor of Los Angeles. I have grown to detest formality, dances and dinners and receptions and things. If there is one thing Reggie and I will quarrel about that will be it. He has always been invited everywhere and he enjoys the niceness of conventionality."

He was glad that there was not complete compatibility between her and Gibson. It was selfish and wrong for him to rejoice that she and Gibson were not perfectly suited in their likes and dislikes and he knew it, but nevertheless it gladdened him.

"I nearly died of fright that day at the lawn fete, when I met you," he said. "I believe I would have done something disgraceful to that servant who was asking me to leave if you hadn't appeared."

"You told me you thought Reggie to be a villain," she reminded him, laughing. "You don't think him one now, do you?"

How close he came to telling her then what he had reason to believe Gibson actually was, a villain beyond all understanding, she never knew.

"No," he lied.

She stopped at a gateway formed by a gap in a hedge of spicy scented boxwood that paralleled the sidewalk.

"Here we are," she said, turning in.

He saw a rose-shaded light in the window of a small house set far back from the street.

"Betty is waiting for me," she explained. "I want you to meet her."

On each side of the pathway leading back to the house was a rose garden with the bushes set at precise intervals. The rose garden ended half way back from the sidewalk. Before the house, for the entire width of the lot and a dozen paces deep, was closely cropped grass. Flat stones, set into the lawn like the footprints of an elephant, provided an artistic path to the door, which was massive in size and of unfinished stained oak. The flanges of the hinges were of beaten iron held in place by studded bolts. A quaint knocker was above the handle to the latch.

"You'll pardon me for a moment?" Consuello asked, opening the door and stepping inside, returning a moment later to hold it open for him to enter.

The room was exceptionally large, with rafters across the ceiling. At one end was a huge fireplace and rugs were scattered over a smooth but unpolished floor. Betty rose from an easy chair as he entered. She had been reading. John saw that she was slender, dark-eyed, rather pretty.

"Betty, this is Mr. Gallant," said Consuello by way of an introduction.

"Consuello has spoken of you, often," said Betty, advancing with a friendly smile and an outstretched hand. Mentally John thanked her for the words. He knew instinctively that he would like her and that she would be a friend to him.

"Miss Carrillo has been more than kind to me," he said. "I often wonder why she is," he added, returning Betty's smile.

"She likes you," said Betty, with a frankness that startled him a little. He glanced toward Consuello and saw that she was regarding Betty with an amused look.

Betty moved toward a door at the side of the room.

"Will you care if I leave you?" she said. "Please do not think it rudeness. I have been doing a little studying which I must finish tonight and——"

"I'm intruding, I know," interrupted John.

"You're not," she remonstrated with the candidness that John found later was so engaging. Her smile overcame his temporary embarrassment. "I'll see you again, I'm sure," she added, nodding slightly before she stepped into the other room, closing the door behind her.

"What do you think of our little home?" Consuello asked as he turned toward her. She was seated in the chair Betty had left.

"It's like you," he said, feeling free to take the chair near her. "It is so genuinely—beautiful." This time he felt no hesitancy in saying it.

"And what of it do you like best of all?" she asked quickly.

He looked around the room slowly until his eyes rested on a wide casement window opening out over a deep sill on which blood-red geraniums nestling in the rich green foliage of the plant, grew in a box. Faintly, against the skyline as he looked through this window he saw the curving outline of a hill. The window panes, swung inward, were divided into small squares by the crosspieces.

"That," he said, without turning his eyes from the window.

"I knew——." She hesitated. He glanced toward her inquiringly. "I knew you would," she said. "That is my window. The hill you see from it is my hill. Did you ever read the verse by Martha Haskell Clark that inspired the designing of that window?"

He shook his head. She rose and crossed to the window and stood framed to her waistline in the outer casement. She looked out into the night, toward "her" hill, the fingers of one hand touching the petals of one of the crimson blossoms. Softly she recited:

He gazed into the empty fireplace as the words of the verse sang through his mind.

"But still my heart has wings," "Gypsy wind-clouds," "And if my dreamings ne'er come true ... I'll set my heart at rest."

He mused over them. His heart had wings to soar high with his soul in the ecstasy of his new-found love. And if his dreaming never came true, could he set his heart at rest?

Or, her dreams, her expectation of happiness with Gibson—when they were shattered, could she set her heart at rest and thank her God for "home-sweet things," her "green and friendly hill, and red geraniums aflame upon her window-sill"?

He looked up from the ashes of the fireplace, where flames had sparkled to cheer and comfort her. She was still looking out toward her "green and friendly" hill and the listlessness of her outline told him that she, too, was musing. He longed to know her thoughts.

Very slowly she turned her face toward him. There was a suggestion of somberness in her eyes as she looked down at him.

"I arranged this window just for that," she said.

"Why did you know I would choose it as the part of the room I liked best?" he asked.

"Because I've found we both love the simple things, the 'home-sweet' things, the enduring things of life," she answered.

"Is that why you have been so kind to me?"

"Please don't think of it as kindness," she said. She was back in the chair she had left to stand beside the window. "That is why I have arranged to see you as often as I have, if that is what you mean."

An impulse overwhelmed his self-imposed restraint.

"If anything ever happens to cause you to have doubt in me," he said, earnestly, "will you try to believe that I did what I thought was right?"

The nature of his question, its suddenness, astonished her. She moved her lips to speak.

"Don't ask me why I asked you that," he said, "but promise me, promise me, that you'll do your best to think of me as doing what I believed was right."

"I'm bewildered, but you have my promise," she answered.

The clock on the mantel above the fireplace chimed midnight. He rose.

"I have been thoughtless," he said. "I had forgotten the time."

She walked with him to the door.

"Good-night," he said, "and thank you."

"Good-night," she said, dropping the hand she had given him to her side.

He strode out into the night. Subconsciously he waited for the door to close behind him. Each step took him farther toward the street and yet he did not hear the click of the latch.

At the sidewalk he turned to look back.

She was standing, framed in the soft light shining through the doorway, looking out at him. He waved his hand. He saw her hand flutter and then the door closed.

"'Still my heart has wings,'" he repeated to himself as he turned away.

* * * * *

The primary election was only two weeks away. Gibson, with the powerful combination of organizations behind him, was swinging into the final lap of his campaign with unabated success. That he would snow the mayor under at the primary was conceded everywhere. Facing humiliation in the most decisive defeat in the history of the city the mayor's organization dwindled down to a few never-say-die supporters whose activities were almost laughable in the prospect of Gibson's overwhelming victory at the polls. To the list of organizations indorsing the police commissioner was added the Anti-Saloon league.

Seeking corroboration of the story told them by "Big Jim" Hatch, which they had in affidavit form from "Big Jim" and Mrs. Hatch, John and Brennan visited the downtown apartment house where "Gink" Cummings resided and where Hatch claimed to have seen Gibson. Cautiously they questioned the janitor, the clerk at the desk, the elevator boy and even the proprietor without success. None of them had ever seen a man answering Gibson's description enter the building.

"Probably the time Hatch saw Gibson at Cummings' apartment was the only time Gibson ever visited the 'Gink' there, and, because it was late at night, no one happened to see him," said Brennan. "It is beginning to look as though we'll have to tap either Gibson's or Cummings' telephone if the 'chief' wants to go that far."

Then, late one afternoon, John received a telephone call from Murphy.

"Meet me tonight at Second and Spring," said Murphy. "I got somethin' for ya, see?"

"Is it worth while?" asked John.

"I'm not sayin' nothin' now, see?" said Murphy. "Just be there at ten bells, see?"

"We'll be there," John told him.

"I wonder what he's stumbled across?" said Brennan when John informed him of their appointment to meet Murphy.

"I asked him and he wasn't sayin' nothin', see?" said John.

"Don't," pleaded Brennan, "you'll have me doing it."

That night at a few minutes of ten they were standing on the steps of the entrance to the Bryson block when Murphy, his peaked cap pulled down far over his eyes and his coat collar turned up close around his throat, sidled up to them.

"What's the big idea of covering up your face, Murphy?" asked Brennan.

"I'm takin' no chances of gettin' 'made,' see?" Murphy answered. "Made," John remembered, was the slang of detectives for identification. When a person was "made" he was identified.

"Well, then, what's the program?" asked Brennan.

"I think I got them," Murphy replied.

"Got who?"

"De 'Gink' and dis bird Gibson."

"How?"

"Meetin' each other."

"The hell you say!" Brennan ejaculated. "Have you seen them together?"

"Well if de bird I figure is Gibson is him, I got 'em, see?"

"Where?" demanded Brennan.

"De Gallant kid here knows de place," said Murphy. "Remember da room where ya got paid off when ya got pinched in de handbook raid?"

John nodded.

"Dat's da joint."

John recalled the windowless cubby-hole in the rear of the Spring street saloon where "Slim" Gray, Cummings' lieutenant, had returned to him the $10 he had put up in bail and $10 as compensation for having been on hand when Gibson made the sensational raid.

"Murphy," said Brennan, "just start in at the beginning and tell us about this and please don't put any more 'sees' into it than you absolutely have to."

"Well, here's da stuff. Da other night I'm comin' in late from da fights at Vernon, see? I'm between Main and Spring, see? when I make a bird standin' all by his lonesome at da entrance to da alley. Dis bird is kinda nervous and jumpy-like, see? and I figure he might be a stick-up. I ain't got no jack with me, so I keeps on walkin' right at him, see?

"Well, I'm about twenty feet from him, see? when I make another bird crossin' tha street toward him. When I get up to them, see? they're just about to meet, see?"

"Murphy," interrupted Brennan, "for heaven's sake forget those 'sees.'"

Murphy grinned and went on.

"Well, just as dese two birds meet I get a flash of da mug of da guy dat crosses da street, se——"

"Go ahead, say 'see' all you want to," said Brennan impatiently.

"I get a flash of da bird's mug, see? and I make him, see? It was da 'Gink,' see? I try to make da other bird, but he turns into the alley quick, see? Well, I keep right on my way and then come back, see? I stick my nut around da corner of da building and watches them. They hurry down da alley, see? and ducks in a door.

"Well, I'm not takin' no chances of gettin' plugged, see? so I don't follow them. I just hang around for an hour and waits for them to come out again, see? When they come out da door I spot it and duck back into a shadow. They pass me so close I could a touched 'em, see? but it was dark and I don't get no chance to make da bird with da 'Gink.' Well, they go up toward Spring street and I trail them far enough to see them get in a bus, see?"

"What did this fellow with the 'Gink' look like?" asked John, quickly.

"I'm tellin' ya I didn't get no chance to make him," said Murphy. "All I'm able to get is that he's tall and black-haired, see?"

"What kind of a hat did he wear?"

"Straw."

"It's Gibson, all right," snapped Brennan. John's nerves tingled throughout his body. A picture of Gibson as he was when he first saw him flashed into his mind. He saw the commissioner's perfectly moulded hair, black and shiny; he saw his neat straw hat in his lap.

"Dat's what I figured," said Murphy. "So last night I find a place near da door I seen them go in and waits for them, see? I wait all night, but nobody shows up. I figures dat if it's Gibson meetin' da 'Gink' you boys will want to be in on it, see? I know dat joint like it's my own, see?"

"We see, Murphy, perfectly," interposed Brennan.

"So, I know there's a basement, see? While I'm waitin' I take a chance and work da lock on da basement door, see? It's a padlock and I cop it, see? This mornin' I get a friend to make a key for it, see? and this afternoon I slip it back where it belongs."

"Murphy," said Brennan, "you're a wonder. Where's the key?"

Murphy reached into his pocket and produced it. Brennan glanced at his watch.

"What time was it when you saw Cummings and this other fellow?" he asked.

"I figure it was between twelve and one," replied Murphy.

"Good!" Brennan exclaimed. "It's half past ten now. We'll get down there and get the lay of the land in that basement. They may go there again, tonight."

They walked rapidly toward the alley-way where Murphy had recognized "Gink" Cummings when he met the man they suspected was Gibson. Spring street was beginning to become deserted for the night. Little groups of men and women from the theaters waited at the corners for street cars. A peanut and candy peddler pushed his cart wearily along the street, close to the curb, plodding his way home. The proprietor of an open front fruit stand struggled with the folding iron fence pulled across the entrance to his store for protection of his wares until morning.

They turned into the alley-way in single file, Murphy leading, Brennan next and John acting as a voluntary rear guard. The narrow alley, like the bottom of a canyon with walls of brick, was darker than the streets. In the middle of the block Murphy seemed to disappear into the earth. Then Brennan dropped from sight. John was startled momentarily until he found that they had descended a steep stairway, covered with trash and old papers. Murphy unlocked the padlock and the door creaked inward on rusty hinges. They sidled through it, fearful that the squeaking might betray them.

Inside it was pitch dark. John was unable to see the faces of Brennan and Murphy, although their elbows touched.

"I'll wait here and keep a lookout," said Murphy. "Here's a torch and go easy with it." He handed Brennan an electric pocket torch.

"Murphy, you're a wonder, see?" said Brennan as he flashed on the light, pointing it to his feet as he moved slowly forward.

A pungent odor of stale beer from empty kegs piled against the walls mingled with that damp smell peculiar to underground places. Cobwebs tickled their faces as they walked through the seldom used path between the kegs and packing boxes. The small arc of light from the electric torch danced ahead of them as John and Brennan inspected their surroundings. At the end of the basement for a length of twenty-five yards back from the wall under the street, they found a space cleared of the boxes and kegs. On one side was a broad, steep stairway leading up to a trapdoor in the floor above.

They could hear the voices of men in the room over their heads and a scuffling of feet that told them the soft drink and lunch establishment, into which the old saloon had been converted, had not been closed down for the night. Their inspection completed, they returned to Murphy, standing guard at the doorway on the alley. After Murphy had snapped the padlock shut they crawled up to the alley again and he led them to a space between two buildings less than four feet in width, into which they crowded themselves.

"We can spot them from here when they go by, see?" Murphy explained.