tion you chaps pursue are apt to lead almost anywhere. In proof of which assertion I point triumphantly to the unfortunate young lady whose liberty you are now plotting to take away."
Markham, who had been hiding his resentment behind a smile of tolerant contempt, now turned on Vance and fairly glowered.
"It so happens—and I'm speaking ex cathedra—" he proclaimed defiantly, "that I come pretty near having the goods on your 'unfortunate young lady'."
Vance was unmoved.
"And yet, y' know," he observed drily, "no woman could possibly have done it."
I could see that Markham was furious. When he spoke he almost spluttered.
"A woman couldn't have done it, eh—no matter what the evidence?"
"Quite so," Vance rejoined placidly: "not if she herself swore to it and produced a tome of what you scions of the law term, rather pompously, incontrovertible evidence."
"Ah!" There was no mistaking the sarcasm of Markham's tone. "I am to understand then that you even regard confessions as valueless?"
"Yes, my dear Justinian," the other responded, with an air of complacency; "I would have you understand precisely that. Indeed, they are worse than valueless—they're downright misleading. The fact that occasionally they may prove to be correct—like woman's prepost'rously overrated intuition—renders them just so much more unreliable."
Markham grunted disdainfully.
"Why should any person confess something to his
