This was for the gambler, but her real feeling was far deeper than he, suspicious as he was, could possibly know.
"Why do you 'poor Jack' him to me ?" said Gilmore sullenly.
Evelyn opened her fine eyes in apparent astonishment.
"He is one of my oldest friends.

I have known him all my life!" she said.
"Well, one's friends should keep out of the sort of trouble he's made for himself," observed Gilmore in surly tones.
"Yes,--perhaps--" answered Evelyn absently.
"Look here, I don't want to talk to you about North anyhow; can't we hit on some other topic ?" asked Gilmore.
It maddened him even to think of the part the accused man had played in her life.
"Why have you and Marsh turned against him ?" she asked.
The gambler considered for an instant.
"Do you really want to know?
Well, you see he wasn't square; that does a man up quicker than anything else." "I don't believe it!" she cried.
"It's so,--ask Marsh; we found him to be an all-right crook; then's when we quit him," he said, nodding and smiling grimly.
There was something in his manner which warned her that his real meaning was intentionally obscured.

She remembered that Marsh had once boasted of having proof that she was in North's rooms the afternoon of the murder and it flashed across her mind that if any one really knew of her presence there it was Gilmore himself.

She studied him furtively, and she observed that his black waxed mustache shaded a pair of lips that wore a mirthless smile, and what had at first been no more than an undefined suspicion grew into a certainty.

Gilmore shifted uneasily in his chair.