Page:Flying Death.pdf/81

 then I had seen everyone else in the courtroom cry for joy and cheer when they were freed.

"Still my mother, loyal woman, set herself to educate me to the ordinary, idiotic delusions regarding conduct. You follow me?"

"Perfectly," said Pete, who was dressed now. He sat on the edge of a bed.

I nodded when Bane referred to me.

He remained standing near the door; his hands, I saw, clenched; he quivered. The thing which he told us was overwhelming to him.

"My mother and I were what people call 'left alone' in the world. She took a position to support herself and me. Naturally there grew between us ties of the sort which people call exceptionally close.

"She was a beautiful, gentle woman. One evening, when she was on the street alone, a man seized her; she was saved by a passerby and the man caught.

"He had an outrageous record—a record people pretend to consider outrageous. He had committed habitually the most shocking