Fear clouded her lined face. “I’m afraid to,” she confessed. “I don’t know what they might do to Jimmie when they find out he was working in Mexico for five years and didn’t ever even register for the draft like the law says. And now he’s gone and enlisted under a false name and all-” Her voice trembled and there were tears in her eyes, but she lifted her chin proudly. “Not that my Jimmie would do anything wrong, Mr. Shayne. He’s a good boy and he’s been that worried about not getting registered.”

“What sort of work was he doing in Mexico?” Shayne asked idly.

“Driving a truck for a mine, the Plata Azul mine, they call it. But he really didn’t know about the draft until last year.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and suggested, “Why not let things go along as they are? If your son has actually got on to some sort of spy ring in El Paso and if he succeeds in exposing them, I’m certain the government will forgive him for enlisting under a false name.”

“But that isn’t all of it,” she said hastily, fumbling in her purse again. She brought out a clipping torn from a local newspaper and passed it to Shayne.

“Right after getting Jimmie’s letter this morning I happened to see this in the paper. It’s — well — you can read it for yourself.” There was a queer urgency in her old voice, a sort of harsh vibrancy that was at the same time proud and pleading.

It was an AP dispatch, datelined the preceding day from El Paso, Texas. It stated that Private James Brown, a recent recruit at Fort Bliss, had died that afternoon in an auto-pedestrian accident, receiving injuries that were instantly fatal underneath the wheels of a limousine owned and driven by Mr. Jefferson Towne, local smelter magnate and candidate for the mayoralty of El Paso on a Citizen’s Reform ticket.

Details of the accident were vague in the brief account, but it was assumed that the soldier had stumbled or fallen into the path of the oncoming limousine; and Mr.