It's all such a tangle! I can't understand." Brice tried to ignore the pitiful pleading--the childlike tremor in her sweet voice.

But it cut to the soul of him.
And he replied, brusquely: "I let you think I was a dead-broke work-hunter.

I did that, because I needed to get into your brother's house, to make certain of things which we suspected but couldn't quite prove.
I am the ninth man, in the past two months, to try to get in there.

And I'm the second to succeed.

The first couldn't find out anything of use.