This ingenuous method of diversion was put to an end by the entrance of Mary, who stopped short on seeing the limp figure huddled in the chair.

"A visitor, Agnes?" she inquired.

At the sound of her voice, and before Aggie could hit on a fittingly elegant form of reply, the girl looked up. And now, for the first time, she spoke with some degree of energy, albeit there was a sinister undertone in the husky voice.

"You're Miss Turner?" she questioned.

"Yes," Mary said, simply. Her words rang kindly; and she smiled encouragement.

A gasp burst from the white lips of the girl, and she cowered as one stricken physically.

"Mary Turner! Oh, my God! I——" She hid her face within her arms and sat bent until her head rested on her knees in an abasement of misery.

Vaguely startled by the hysterical outburst from the girl, Mary's immediate thought was that here was a pitiful instance of one suffering from starvation.

"Joe," she directed rapidly, "have Fannie bring a glass of milk with an egg and a little brandy in it, right away."

The girl in the chair was shaking soundlessly under the stress of her emotions. A few disjointed phrases fell from her quivering lips.

"I didn't know—oh, I couldn't!"

"Don't try to talk just now," Mary warned, reassuringly. "Wait until you've had something to eat."

Aggie, who had observed developments closely, now lifted her voice in tardy lamentations over her own stupidity. There was no affectation of the fine lady in her self-reproach.

"Why, the poor gawk's hungry!" she exclaimed! "And I never got the dope on her. Ain't I the simp!"

The girl regained a degree of self-control, and showed something of forlorn dignity.

"Yes," she said dully, "I'm starving."

Mary regarded the afflicted creature with that sympathy born only of experience.

"Yes," she said softly, "I understand." Then she spoke to Aggie. "Take her to my room, and let her rest there for a while. Have her drink the egg and milk slowly, and then lie down for a few minutes anyhow."

Aggie obeyed with an air of bustling activity.

"Sure, I will!" she declared. She went to the girl and helped her to stand up. "We'll fix you out all right," she said, comfortingly. "Come along with me.... Hungry! Gee, but that's tough!"

Half an hour afterward, while Mary was at her desk, giving part of her attention to Joe Garson, who sat near, and part to a rather formidable pile of neatly arranged papers, Aggie reported with her charge, who, though still shambling of gait, and stooping, showed by some faint color in her face and an increased steadiness of bearing that the food had already strengthened her much.

"She would come," Aggie explained. "I thought she ought to rest for a while longer anyhow." She half-shoved the girl into a chair opposite the desk, in an absurd travesty on the maternal manner.

"I'm all right, I tell you," came the querulous protest.

Whereupon, Aggie gave over the uncongenial task of mothering, and settled herself comfortably in a chair, with her legs merely crossed as a compromise between ease and propriety.

"Are you quite sure?" Mary said to the girl. And then, as the other nodded in assent, she spoke with a compelling kindliness. "Then you must tell us all about it—this trouble of yours, you know. What is your name?"

Once again the girl had recourse to the swift, searching, furtive glance, but her voice was colorless as she replied, listlessly:

"Helen Morris."

Mary regarded the girl with an expression that was inscrutable when she spoke again.

"I don't have to ask if you have been in prison," she said gravely. "Your face shows it."

"I—I came out—three months ago," was the halting admission.

Mary watched the shrinking figure reflectively for a long minute before she spoke again. Then there was a deeper resonance in her voice.

"And you'd made up your mind to go straight?"

"Yes." The word was a whisper.

"You were going to do what the chaplain had told you," Mary went on in a voice vibrant with varied emotions. "You were going to start all over again, weren't you? You were going to begin a new life, weren't you?" The bent head of the girl bent still lower in assent. There came a cynical note into Mary's utterance now.

"It doesn't work very well, does it?" she asked, bitterly.

The girl gave sullen agreement.

"No," she said dully; "I'm whipped."

Mary's manner changed on the instant. She spoke cheerfully for the first time.

"Well, then," she questioned, "how would you like to work with us?"

The girl looked up for a second with another of her fleeting, stealthy glances.

"You—you mean that——?"

Mary explained her intention in the matter very explicitly. Her voice grew boastful.

"Our kind of work pays well when you know how. Look at us."

Aggie welcomed the opportunity for speech, too long delayed.

"Hats from Joseph's, gowns from Lucile's, and cracked ice from Tiffany's. But it ain't ladylike to wear it," she concluded with a reproachful glance at her mentor.

Mary disregarded the frivolous interruption, and went on speaking to the girl, and now there was something pleasantly cajoling in her manner.

"Suppose I should stake you for the present, and put you in with a good crowd. All you would have to do would be to answer advertisements for servant girls. I will see that you have the best of references. Then, when you get in with the right people, you will open the front door some night and let in the gang. Of course, you will make a get-away when they do, and get your bit as well."

There flashed still another of the swift, sly glances, and the lips of the girl parted as if she would speak. But she did not; only, her head sagged even lower on her breast, and the shrunken form grew yet more shrunken. Mary, watching closely, saw these signs, and in the same instant a change came over her. Where before there had been an underlying suggestion of hardness, there was now a womanly warmth of genuine sympathy.

"It doesn't suit you?" she said, very softly. "Good! I was in hopes it wouldn't. So, here's another plan." Her voice had become very winning. "Suppose you could go West—some place where you would have a fair chance, with money enough so you could live like a human being till you got a start?"

There came a tensing of the relaxed form, and the head lifted a little so that the girl could look at her questioner. And, this time, the glance, though of the briefest, was less furtive.

"I will give you that chance," Mary said simply, "if you really want it."

That speech was like a current of strength to the wretched girl. She sat suddenly erect, and her words came eagerly.

"Oh, I do!" And now her hungry gaze remained fast on the face of the woman who offered her salvation.

Mary sprang up and moved a step toward the girl who continued to stare at her, fascinated. She was now all wholesome. The memory of her own wrongs surged in her during this moment only to make her more appreciative of the blessedness of seemly life. She was moved to a divine compassion over this waif for whom she might prove a beneficent providence. There was profound conviction in the emphasis with which she spoke her warning.

"Then I have just one thing to say to you first. If you are going to live straight, start straight, and then go through with it. Do you know what that means?"

"You mean, keep straight all the time?" The girl spoke with a force drawn from the other's strength.

"I mean more than that," Mary went on earnestly. "I mean, forget that you were ever in prison. I don't know what you have done—I don't think I care. But whatever it was, you have paid for it—a pretty big price, too." Into these last words there crept the pathos of one who knew. The sympathy of it stirred the listener to fearful memories.

"I have, I have!" The thin voice broke, wailing.

"Well, then," Mary went on, "just begin all over again, and be sure you stand up for your rights. Don't let them make you pay a second time. Go where no one knows you, and don't tell the first people who are kind to you that you have been crooked. If they think you are straight, why, be it. Then nobody will have any right to complain." Her tone grew suddenly pleading. "Will you promise me this?"

"Yes, I promise," came the answer, very gravely, quickened with hope.

"Good!" Mary exclaimed, with a smile of approval. "Wait a minute," she added, and left the room.

"Huh! Pretty soft for some people," Aggie remarked to Garson, with a sniff. She felt no alarm lest she wound the sensibilities of the girl. She herself had never let delicacy interfere between herself and money. It was really stranger that the forger, who possessed a more sympathetic nature, did not scruple to speak an assent openly. Somehow, he felt an inexplicable prejudice against this abject recipient of Mary's bounty, though not for the world would he have checked the generous impulse on the part of the woman he so revered. It was his instinct on her behalf that made him now vaguely uneasy, as if he sensed some malign influence against her there present with them.

Mary returned soon. In her hand she carried a roll of bills. She went to the girl and held out the money. Her voice was business-like now, but very kind.

"Take this. It will pay your fare West, and keep you quite a while if you are careful."

But, without warning, a revulsion seized on the girl. Of a sudden, she shrank again, and turned her head away, and her body trembled.

"I can't take it," she stammered. "I can't! I can't!"

Mary stood silent for a moment from sheer amazement over the change. When she spoke, her voice had hardened a little. It is not agreeable to have one's beneficence flouted.

"Didn't you come here for help?" she demanded.

"Yes," was the faltering reply, "but—but—I didn't know—it was you!" The words came with a rush of desperation.

"Then, you have met me before?" Mary said, quietly.

"No, no!" The girl's voice rose shrill.

Aggie spoke her mind with commendable frankness.

"She's lying."

And, once again, Garson agreed. His yes was spoken in a tone of complete certainty. That Mary, too, was of their opinion was shown in her next words.

"So, you have met me before? Where?"

The girl unwittingly made confession in her halting words.

"I—I can't tell you." There was despair in her voice.

"You must." Mary spoke with severity. She felt that this mystery held in it something sinister to herself. "You must," she repeated imperiously.

The girl only crouched lower.

"I can't!" she cried again. She was panting as if in exhaustion.

"Why can't you?" Mary insisted. She had no sympathy now for the girl's distress, merely a great suspicious curiosity.

"Because—because——" The girl could not go on.

Mary's usual shrewdness came to her aid, and she put her next question in a different direction.

"What were you sent up for?" she asked briskly. "Tell me."

It was Garson who broke the silence that followed.

"Come on, now!" he ordered. There was a savage note in his voice under which the girl visibly winced. Mary made a gesture toward him that he should not interfere. Nevertheless, the man's command had in it a threat which the girl could not resist and she answered, though with a reluctance that made the words seem dragged from her by some outside force—as indeed they were.

"For stealing."

"Stealing what?" Mary said.

"Goods."

"Where from?"

A reply came in a breath so low that it was barely audible.

"The Emporium."

In a flash of intuition, the whole truth was revealed to the woman who stood looking down at the cowering creature before her.

"The Emporium!" she repeated. There was a tragedy in the single word. Her voice grew cold with hate, the hate born of innocence long tortured. "Then you are the one who——"

The accusation was cut short by the girl's shriek.

"I am not! I am not, I tell you."

For a moment, Mary lost her poise. Her voice rose in a flare of rage.

"You are! You are!"

The craven spirit of the girl could struggle no more. She could only sit in a huddled, shaking heap of dread. The woman before her had been disciplined by sorrow to sternest self-control. Though racked by emotions most intolerable, Mary soon mastered their expression to such an extent that when she spoke again, as if in self-communion, her words came quietly, yet with overtones of a supreme wo.

"She did it!" Then, after a little, she addressed the girl with a certain wondering before this mystery of horror. "Why did you throw the blame on me?"

The girl made several efforts before her mumbling became intelligible, and then her speech was gasping, broken with fear.

"I found out they were watching me, and I was afraid they would catch me. So, I took them and ran into the cloak-room, and put them in a locker that wasn't close to mine, and some in the pocket of a coat that was hanging there. God knows I didn't know whose it was. I just put them there—I was frightened——"

"And you let me go to prison for three years!" There was a menace in Mary's voice under which the girl cringed again.

"I was scared," she whined. "I didn't dare to tell."

"But they caught you later," Mary went on inexorably. "Why didn't you tell then?"

"I was afraid," came the answer from the shuddering girl. "I told them it was the first time I had taken anything and they let me off with a year."

Once more, the wrath of the victim flamed high.

"You!" Mary cried. "You cried and lied, and they let you off with a year. I wouldn't cry. I told the truth—and——" Her voice broke in a tearless sob. The color had gone out of her face, and she stood rigid, looking down at the girl whose crime had ruined her life with an expression of infinite loathing in her eyes. Garson rose from his chair as if to go to her, and his face passed swiftly from compassion to ferocity as his gaze went from the woman he had saved from the river to the girl who had been the first cause of her seeking a grave in the waters. Yet, though he longed with every fiber of him to comfort the stricken woman, he did not dare intrude upon her in this time of her anguish, but quietly dropped back into his seat and sat watching with eyes now tender, now baleful, as they shifted their direction.

Aggie took advantage of the pause. Her voice was acid.

"Some people are sneaks—just sneaks!"

Somehow, the speech was welcome to the girl, gave her a touch of courage sufficient for cowardly protestations. It seemed to relieve the tension drawn by the other woman's torment. It was more like the abuse that was familiar to her. A gush of tears came.

"I'll never forgive myself, never!" she moaned.

Contempt mounted in Mary's breast.

"Oh, yes, you will," she said, malevolently. "People forgive themselves pretty easily." The contempt checked for a little the ravages of her grief. "Stop crying," she commanded harshly. "Nobody is going to hurt you." She thrust the money again toward the girl, and crowded it into the half-reluctant, half-greedy hand.

"Take it, and get out." The contempt in her voice rang still sharper, mordant.

Even the puling creature writhed under the lash of Mary's tones. She sprang up, slinking back a step.

"I can't take it!" she cried, whimpering. But she did not drop the money.

"Take the chance while you have it," Mary counseled, still with the contempt that pierced even the hardened girl's sense of selfishness. She pointed toward the door. "Go!—before I change my mind."

The girl needed, indeed, no second bidding. With the money still clutched in her hand, she went forth swiftly, stumbling a little in her haste, fearful lest, at the last moment, the woman she had so wronged should in fact change in mood, take back the money—ay, even give her over to that terrible man with the eyes of hate, to put her to death as she deserved.

Freed from the miasma of that presence, Mary remained motionless for a long minute, then sighed from her tortured heart. She turned and went slowly to her chair at the desk, and seated herself languidly, weakened by the ordeal through which she had passed.

"A girl I didn't know!" she said, bewilderedly; "perhaps had never spoken to—who smashed my life like that! Oh, if it wasn't so awful, it would be—funny! It would be funny!" A gust of hysterical laughter burst from her. "Why, it is funny!" she cried, wildly. "It is funny!"

"Mary!" Garson exclaimed sharply. He leaped across the room to face her. "That's no good!" he said severely.

Aggie, too, rushed forward.

"No good at all!" she declared loudly.

The interference recalled the distressed woman to herself. She made a desperate effort for self-command. Little by little, the unmeaning look died down, and presently she sat silent and moveless, staring at the two with stormy eyes out of a wan face.

"You were right," she said at last, in a lifeless voice. "It's done, and can't be undone. I was a fool to let it affect me like that. I really thought I had lost all feeling about it, but the sight of that girl—the knowledge that she had done it—brought it all back to me. Well, you understand, don't you?"

"We understand," Garson said, grimly. But there was more than grimness, infinitely more, in the expression of his clear, glowing eyes.

Aggie thought that it was her turn to voice herself, which she did without undue restraint.

"Perhaps, we do, but I dunno! I'll tell you one thing, though. If any dame sent me up for three years and then wanted money from me, do you think she'd get it? Wake me up any time in the night and ask me. Not much—not a little bit much! I'd hang on to it like an old woman to her last tooth." And that was Aggie's final summing up of her impressions concerning the scene she had just witnessed.



CHAPTER XII. A BRIDEGROOM SPURNED.

After Aggie's vigorous comment there followed a long silence. That volatile young person, little troubled as she was by sensitiveness, guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette and the illustrations of a popular magazine devoted to the stage. As for the man, his reticence was really from a fear lest in speaking at all he might speak too freely, might betray the pervasive violence of his feeling. So, he sat motionless and wordless, his eyes carefully avoiding Mary in order that she might not be disturbed by the invisible vibrations thus sent from one to another. Mary herself was shaken to the depths. A great weariness, a weariness that cried the worthlessness of all things, had fallen upon her. It rested leaden on her soul. It weighed down her body as well, though that mattered little indeed. Yet, since she could minister to that readily, she rose and went to a settee on the opposite side of the room where she arranged herself among the cushions in a posture more luxurious than her rather precise early training usually permitted her to assume in the presence of others. There she rested, and soon felt the tides of energy again flowing in her blood, and that same vitality, too, wrought healing even for her agonized soul, though more slowly. The perfect health of her gave her strength to recover speedily from the shock she had sustained. It was this health that made the glory of the flawless skin, white with a living white that revealed the coursing blood beneath, and the crimson lips that bent in smiles so tender, or so wistful, and the limpid eyes in which always lurked fires that sometimes burst into flame, the lustrous mass of undulating hair that sparkled in the sunlight like an aureole to her face or framed it in heavy splendors with its shadows, and the supple erectness of her graceful carriage, the lithe dignity of her every movement.

But, at last, she stirred uneasily and sat up. Garson accepted this as a sufficient warrant for speech.

"You know—Aggie told you—that Cassidy was up here from Headquarters. He didn't put a name to it, but I'm on." Mary regarded him inquiringly, and he continued, putting the fact with a certain brutal bluntness after the habit of his class. "I guess you'll have to quit seeing young Gilder. The bulls are wise. His father has made a holler.

"Don't let that worry you, Joe," she said tranquilly. She allowed a few seconds go by, then added as if quite indifferent: "I was married to Dick Gilder this morning." There came a squeal of amazement from Aggie, a start of incredulity from Garson.

"Yes," Mary repeated evenly, "I was married to him this morning. That was my important engagement," she added with a smile toward Aggie. For some intuitive reason, mysterious to herself, she did not care to meet the man's eyes at that moment.

Aggie sat erect, her baby face alive with worldly glee.

"My Gawd, what luck!" she exclaimed noisily. "Why, he's a king fish, he is. Gee! But I'm glad you landed him!"

"Thank you," Mary said with a smile that was the result of her sense of humor rather than from any tenderness.

It was then that Garson spoke. He was a delicate man in his sensibilities at times, in spite of the fact that he followed devious methods in his manner of gaining a livelihood. So, now, he put a question of vital significance.

"Do you love him?"

The question caught Mary all unprepared, but she retained her self-control sufficiently to make her answer in a voice that to the ordinary ear would have revealed no least tremor.

"No," she said. She offered no explanation, no excuse, merely stated the fact in all its finality.

Aggie was really shocked, though for a reason altogether sordid, not one whit romantic.

"Ain't he young?" she demanded aggressively. "Ain't he good-looking, and loose with his money something scandalous? If I met up with a fellow as liberal as him, if he was three times his age, I could simply adore him!"

It was Garson who pressed the topic with an inexorable curiosity born of his unselfish interest in the woman concerned.

"Then, why did you marry him?" he asked. The sincerity of him was excuse enough for the seeming indelicacy of the question. Besides, he felt himself somehow responsible. He had given back to her the gift of life, which she had rejected. Surely, he had the right to know the truth.

It seemed that Mary believed her confidence his due, for she told him the fact.

"I have been working and scheming for nearly a year to do it," she said, with a hardening of her face that spoke of indomitable resolve. "Now, it's done." A vindictive gleam shot from her violet eyes as she added: "It's only the beginning, too."

Garson, with the keen perspicacity that had made him a successful criminal without a single conviction to mar his record, had seized the implication in her statement, and now put it in words.

"Then, you won't leave us? We're going on as we were before?" The hint of dejection in his manner had vanished. "And you won't live with him?"

"Live with him?" Mary exclaimed emphatically. "Certainly not!"

Aggie's neatly rounded jaw dropped in a gape of surprise that was most unladylike.

"You are going to live on in this joint with us?" she questioned, aghast.

"Of course." The reply was given with the utmost of certainty.

Aggie presented the crux of the matter.

"Where will hubby live?"

There was no lessening of the bride's composure as she replied, with a little shrug.

"Anywhere but here."

Aggie suddenly giggled. To her sense of humor there was something vastly diverting in this new scheme of giving bliss to a fond husband.

"Anywhere but here," she repeated gaily. "Oh, won't that be nice—for him? Oh, yes! Oh, quite so! Oh, yes, indeed—quite so—so!"

Garson, however, was still patient in his determination to apprehend just what had come to pass.

"Does he understand the arrangement?" was his question.

"No, not yet," Mary admitted, without sign of embarrassment.

"Well," Aggie said, with another giggle, "when you do get around to tell him, break it to him gently."

Garson was intently considering another phase of the situation, one suggested perhaps out of his own deeper sentiments.

"He must think a lot of you!" he said, gravely. "Don't he?"

For the first time, Mary was moved to the display of a slight confusion. She hesitated a little before her answer, and when she spoke it was in a lower key, a little more slowly.

"I—I suppose so."

Aggie presented the truth more subtly than could have been expected from her.

"Think a lot of you? Of course he does! Thinks enough to marry you! And believe me, kid, when a man thinks enough of you to marry you, well, that's some thinking!"

Somehow, the crude expression of this professional adventuress penetrated to Mary's conscience, though it held in it the truth to which her conscience bore witness, to which she had tried to shut her ears.... And now from the man came something like a draught of elixir to her conscience—like the trump of doom to her scheme of vengeance.

Garson spoke very softly, but with an intensity that left no doubt as to the honesty of his purpose.

"I'd say, throw up the whole game and go to him, if you really care."

There fell a tense silence. It was broken by Mary herself. She spoke with a touch of haste, as if battling against some hindrance within.

"I married him to get even with his father," she said. "That's all there is to it.... By the way, I expect Dick will be here in a minute or two. When he comes, just remember not to—enlighten him."

Aggie sniffed indignantly.

"Don't worry about me, not a mite. Whenever it's really wanted, I'm always there with a full line of that lady stuff." Thereupon, she sprang up, and proceeded to give her conception of the proper welcoming of the happy bridegroom. The performance was amusing enough in itself, but for some reason it moved neither of the two for whom it was rendered to more than perfunctory approval. The fact had no depressing effect on the performer, however, and it was only the coming of the maid that put her lively sallies to an end.

"Mr. Gilder," Fannie announced.

Mary put a question with so much of energy that Garson began finally to understand the depth of her vindictive feeling.

"Any one with him?"

"No, Miss Turner," the maid answered.

"Have him come in," Mary ordered.

Garson felt that he would be better away for the sake of the newly married pair at least, if not for his own. He made hasty excuses and went out on the heels of the maid. Aggie, however, consulting only her own wishes in the matter, had no thought of flight, and, if the truth be told, Mary was glad of the sustaining presence of another woman.

She got up slowly, and stood silent, while Aggie regarded her curiously. Even to the insensitive observer, there was something strange in the atmosphere.... A moment later the bridegroom entered.

He was still clean-cut and wholesome. Some sons of wealthy fathers are not, after four years experience of the white lights of town. And the lines of his face were firmer, better in every way. It seemed, indeed, that here was some one of a resolute character, not to be wasted on the trivial and gross things. In an instant, he had gone to her, had caught her in his arms with, "Hello, dear!" smothered in the kiss he implanted on her lips.

Mary strove vainly to free herself.

"Don't, oh, don't!" she gasped.

Dick Gilder released his wife from his arms and smiled the beatific smile of the newly-wed.

"Why not?" he demanded, with a smile, a smile calm, triumphant, masterful.

"Agnes!"... It was the sole pretext to which Mary could turn for a momentary relief.

The bridegroom faced about, and perceived Agnes, who stood closely watching the meeting between husband and wife. He made an excellent formal bow of the sort that one learns only abroad, and spoke quietly.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Lynch, but"—a smile of perfect happiness shone on his face—"you could hardly expect me to see any one but Mary under the circumstances. Could you?"

Aggie strove to rise to this emergency, and again took on her best manner, speaking rather coldly.

"Under what circumstances?" she inquired.

The young man exclaimed joyously.

"Why, we were married this morning."

Aggie accepted the news with fitting excitement.

"Goodness gracious! How perfectly lovely!"

The bridegroom regarded her with a face that was luminous of delight.

"You bet, it's lovely!" he declared with entire conviction. He turned to Mary, his face glowing with satisfaction.

"Mary," he said, "I have the honeymoon trip all fixed. The Mauretania sails at five in the morning, so we will——"

A cold voice struck suddenly through this rhapsodizing. It was that of the bride.

"Where is your father?" she asked, without any trace of emotion.

The bridegroom stopped short, and a deep blush spread itself over his boyish face. His tone was filled full to overflowing with compunction as he answered.

"Oh, Lord! I had forgotten all about Dad." He beamed on Mary with a smile half-ashamed, half-happy. "I'm awfully sorry," he said earnestly. "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll send Dad a wireless from the ship, then write him from Paris."

But the confident tone brought no response of agreement from Mary. On the contrary, her voice was, if anything, even colder as she replied to his suggestion. She spoke with an emphasis that brooked no evasion.

"What was your promise? I told you that I wouldn't go with you until you had brought your father to me, and he had wished us happiness." Dick placed his hands gently on his wife's shoulders and regarded her with a touch of indignation in his gaze.

"Mary," he said reproachfully, "you are not going to hold me to that promise?"

The answer was given with a decisiveness that admitted of no question, and there was a hardness in her face that emphasized the words.

"I am going to hold you to that promise, Dick."

For a few seconds, the young man stared at her with troubled eyes. Then he moved impatiently, and dropped his hands from her shoulders. But his usual cheery smile came again, and he shrugged resignedly.

"All right, Mrs. Gilder," he said, gaily. The sound of the name provoked him to new pleasure. "Sounds fine, doesn't it?" he demanded, with an uxorious air.

"Yes," Mary said, but there was no enthusiasm in her tone.

The husband went on speaking with no apparent heed of his wife's indifference.

"You pack up what things you need, girlie," he directed. "Just a few—because they sell clothes in Paris. And they are some class, believe me! And meantime, I'll run down to Dad's office, and have him back here in half an hour. You will be all ready, won't you?"

Mary answered quickly, with a little catching of her breath, but still coldly.

"Yes, yes, I'll be ready. Go and bring your father."

"You bet I will," Dick cried heartily. He would have taken her in his arms again, but she evaded the caress. "What's the matter?" he demanded, plainly at a loss to understand this repulse.

"Nothing!" was the ambiguous answer.

"Just one!" Dick pleaded.

"No," the bride replied, and there was determination in the monosyllable.

It was evident that Dick perceived the futility of argument.

"For a married woman you certainly are shy," he replied, with a sly glance toward Aggie, who beamed back sympathy. "You'll excuse me, won't you, Miss Lynch,... Good-by, Mrs. Gilder." He made a formal bow to his wife. As he hurried to the door, he expressed again his admiration for the name. "Mrs. Gilder! Doesn't that sound immense?" And with that he was gone.

There was silence in the drawing-room until the two women heard the closing of the outer door of the apartment. Then, at last, Aggie relieved her pent-up emotions in a huge sigh that was near a groan.

"Oh Gawd!" she gasped. "The poor simp!"



CHAPTER XIII. THE ADVENT OF GRIGGS.

Later on, Garson, learning from the maid that Dick Gilder had left, returned, just as Mary was glancing over the release, with which General Hastings was to be compensated, along with the return of his letters, for his payment of ten thousand dollars to Miss Agnes Lynch.

"Hello, Joe," Mary said graciously as the forger entered. Then she spoke crisply to Agnes. "And now you must get ready. You are to be at Harris's office with this document at four o'clock, and remember that you are to let the lawyer manage everything."

Aggie twisted her doll-like face into a grimace.

"It gets my angora that I'll have to miss Pa Gilder's being led like a lamb to the slaughter-house." And that was the nearest the little adventuress ever came to making a Biblical quotation.

"Anyhow," she protested, "I don't see the use of all this monkey business here. All I want is the coin." But she hurried obediently, nevertheless, to get ready for the start.

Garson regarded Mary quizzically.

"It's lucky for her that she met you," he said. "She's got no more brains than a gnat."

"And brains are mighty useful things, even in our business," Mary replied seriously; "particularly in our business."

"I should say they were," Garson agreed. "You have proved that."

Aggie came back, putting on her gloves, and cocking her small head very primly under the enormous hat that was garnished with costliest plumes. It was thus that she consoled herself in a measure for the business of the occasion—in lieu of cracked ice from Tiffany's at one hundred and fifty a carat. Mary gave over the release, and Aggie, still grumbling, deposited it in her handbag.

"It seems to me we're going through a lot of red tape," she said spitefully.

Mary, from her chair at the desk, regarded the malcontent with a smile, but her tone was crisp as she answered.

"Listen, Agnes. The last time you tried to make a man give up part of his money it resulted in your going to prison for two years."

Aggie sniffed, as if such an outcome were the merest bagatelle.

"But that way was so exciting," she urged, not at all convinced.

"And this way is so safe," Mary rejoined, sharply. "Besides, my dear, you would not get the money. My way will. Your way was blackmail; mine is not. Understand?"

"Oh, sure," Aggie replied, grimly, on her way to the door. "It's clear as Pittsburgh." With that sarcasm directed against legal subtleties, she tripped daintily out, an entirely ravishing vision, if somewhat garish as to raiment, and soon in the glances of admiration that every man cast on her guileless-seeming beauty, she forgot that she had ever been annoyed.

Garson's comment as she departed was uttered with his accustomed bluntness.

"Solid ivory!"

"She's a darling, anyway!" Mary declared, smiling. "You really don't half-appreciate her, Joe!"

"Anyhow, I appreciate that hat," was the reply, with a dry chuckle.

"Mr. Griggs," Fannie announced. There was a smile on the face of the maid, which was explained a minute later when, in accordance with her mistress's order, the visitor was shown into the drawing-room, for his presence was of an elegance so extraordinary as to attract attention anywhere—and mirth as well from ribald observers.

Meantime, Garson had explained to Mary.

"It's English Eddie—you met him once. I wonder what he wants? Probably got a trick for me. We often used to work together."

"Nothing without my consent," Mary warned.

"Oh, no, no, sure not!" Garson agreed.

Further discussion was cut short by the appearance of English Eddie himself, a tall, handsome man in the early thirties, who paused just within the doorway, and delivered to Mary a bow that was the perfection of elegance. Mary made no effort to restrain the smile caused by the costume of Mr. Griggs. Yet, there was no violation of the canons of good taste, except in the aggregate. From spats to hat, from walking coat to gloves, everything was perfect of its kind. Only, there was an over-elaboration, so that the ensemble was flamboyant. And the man's manners precisely harmonized with his clothes, whereby the whole effect was emphasized and rendered bizarre. Garson took one amazed look, and then rocked with laughter.

Griggs regarded his former associate reproachfully for a moment, and then grinned in frank sympathy.

"Really, Mr. Griggs, you quite overcome me," Mary said, half-apologetically.

The visitor cast a self-satisfied glance over his garb.

"I think it's rather neat, myself." He had some reputation in the under-world for his manner of dressing, and he regarded this latest achievement as his masterpiece.

"Sure some duds!" Garson admitted, checking his merriment.

"From your costume," Mary suggested, "one might judge that this is purely a social call. Is it?"

"Well, not exactly," Griggs answered with a smile.

"So I fancied," his hostess replied. "So, sit down, please, and tell us all about it."

While she was speaking, Garson went to the various doors, and made sure that all were shut, then he took a seat in a chair near that which Griggs occupied by the desk, so that the three were close together, and could speak softly.

English Eddie wasted no time in getting to the point.

"Now, look here," he said, rapidly. "I've got the greatest game in the world.... Two years ago, a set of Gothic tapestries, worth three hundred thousand dollars and a set of Fragonard panels, worth nearly as much more, were plucked from a chateau in France and smuggled into this country."

"I have never heard of that," Mary said, with some interest.

"No," Griggs replied. "You naturally wouldn't, for the simple reason that it's been kept on the dead quiet."

"Are them things really worth that much?" Garson exclaimed.

"Sometimes more," Mary answered. "Morgan has a set of Gothic tapestries worth half a million dollars."

Garson uttered an ejaculation of disgust.

"He pays half a million dollars for a set of rugs!" There was a note of fiercest bitterness come into his voice as he sarcastically concluded: "And they wonder at crime!"

Griggs went on with his account.

"About a month ago, the things I was telling you of were hung in the library of a millionaire in this city." He hitched his chair a little closer to the desk, and leaned forward, lowering his voice almost to a whisper as he stated his plan.

"Let's go after them. They were smuggled, mind you, and no matter what happens, he can't squeal. What do you say?"

Garson shot a piercing glance at Mary.

"It's up to her," he said. Griggs regarded Mary eagerly, as she sat with eyes downcast. Then, after a little interval had elapsed in silence, he spoke interrogatively:

"Well?"

Mary shook her head decisively. "It's out of our line," she declared.

Griggs would have argued the matter. "I don't see any easier way to get half a million," he said aggressively.

Mary, however, was unimpressed.

"If it were fifty millions, it would make no difference. It's against the law."

"Oh, I know all that, of course," Griggs returned impatiently. "But if you can——"

Mary interrupted him in a tone of finality.

"My friends and I never do anything that's illegal! Thank you for coming to us, Mr. Griggs, but we can't go in, and there's an end of the matter."

"But wait a minute," English Eddie expostulated, "you see this chap, Gilder, is——"

Mary's manner changed from indifference to sudden keen interest.

"Gilder?" she exclaimed, questioningly.

"Yes. You know who he is," Griggs answered; "the drygoods man."

Garson in his turn showed a new excitement as he bent toward Mary.

"Why, it's old Gilder, the man you——"

Mary, however, had regained her self-control, for a moment rudely shaken, and now her voice was tranquil again as she replied:

"I know. But, just the same, it's illegal, and I won't touch it. That's all there is to it."

Griggs was dismayed.

"But half a million!" he exclaimed, disconsolately. "There's a stake worth playing for. Think of it!" He turned pleadingly to Garson. "Half a million, Joe!"

The forger repeated the words with an inflection that was gloating.

"Half a million!"

"And it's the softest thing you ever saw."

The telephone at the desk rang, and Mary spoke into it for a moment, then rose and excused herself to resume the conversation over the wire more privately in the booth. The instant she was out of the room, Griggs turned to Garson anxiously.

"It's a cinch, Joe," he pleaded. "I've got a plan of the house." He drew a paper from his breast-pocket, and handed it to the forger, who seized it avidly and studied it with intent, avaricious eyes.

"It looks easy," Garson agreed, as he gave back the paper.

"It is easy," Griggs reiterated. "What do you say?"

Garson shook his head in refusal, but there was no conviction in the act.

"I promised Mary never to——"

Griggs broke in on him.

"But a chance like this! Anyhow, come around to the back room at Blinkey's to-night, and we'll have a talk. Will you?"

"What time?" Garson asked hesitatingly, tempted.

"Make it early, say nine," was the answer. "Will you?"

"I'll come," Garson replied, half-guiltily. And in the same moment Mary reentered.

Griggs rose and spoke with an air of regret.

"It's 'follow the leader,'" he said, "and since you are against it, that settles it."

"Yes, I'm against it," Mary said, firmly.

"I'm sorry," English Eddie rejoined. "But we must all play the game as we see it.... Well, that was the business I was after, and, as it's finished, why, good-afternoon, Miss Turner." He nodded toward Joe, and took his departure.

Something of what was in his mind was revealed in Garson's first speech after Griggs's going.

"That's a mighty big stake he's playing for."

"And a big chance he's taking!" Mary retorted. "No, Joe, we don't want any of that. We'll play a game that's safe and sure."

The words recalled to the forger weird forebodings that had been troubling him throughout the day.

"It's sure enough," he stated, "but is it safe?"

Mary looked up quickly.

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

Garson walked to and fro nervously as he answered.

"S'pose the bulls get tired of you putting it over on 'em and try some rough work?"

Mary smiled carelessly.

"Don't worry, Joe," she advised. "I know a way to stop it."

"Well, so far as that goes, so do I," the forger said, with significant emphasis.

"Just what do you mean by that?" Mary demanded, suspiciously.

"For rough work," he said, "I have this." He took a magazine pistol from his pocket. It was of an odd shape, with a barrel longer than is usual and a bell-shaped contrivance attached to the muzzle.

"No, no, Joe," Mary cried, greatly discomposed. "None of that—ever!"

The forger smiled, and there was malignant triumph in his expression.

"Pooh!" he exclaimed. "Even if I used it, they would never get on to me. See this?" He pointed at the strange contrivance on the muzzle.

Mary's curiosity made her forget for a moment her distaste.

"What is it?" she asked, interestedly. "I have never seen anything like that before."

"Of course you haven't," Garson answered with much pride. "I'm the first man in the business to get one, and I'll bet on it. I keep up with the times." For once, he was revealing that fundamental egotism which is the characteristic of all his kind. "That's one of the new Maxim silencers," he continued. "With smokeless powder in the cartridges, and the silencer on, I can make a shot from my coat-pocket, and you wouldn't even know it had been done.... And I'm some shot, believe me."

"Impossible!" Mary ejaculated.

"No, it ain't," the man asserted. "Here, wait, I'll show you."

"Good gracious, not here!" Mary exclaimed in alarm. "We would have the whole place down on us."

Garson chuckled.

"You just watch that dinky little vase on the table across the room there. 'Tain't very valuable, is it?"

"No," Mary answered.

In the same instant, while still her eyes were on the vase, it fell in a cascade of shivered glass to the table and floor. She had heard no sound, she saw no smoke. Perhaps, there had been a faintest clicking noise. She was not sure. She stared dumfounded for a few seconds, then turned her bewildered face toward Garson, who was grinning in high enjoyment.

"I would'nt have believed it possible," she declared, vastly impressed.

"Neat little thing, ain't it?" the man asked, exultantly.

"Where did you get it?" Mary asked.

"In Boston, last week. And between you and me, Mary, it's the only model, and it sure is a corker for crime."

The sinister association of ideas made Mary shudder, but she said no more. She would have shuddered again, if she could have guessed the vital part that pistol was destined to play. But she had no thought of any actual peril to come from it. She might have thought otherwise, could she have known of the meeting that night in the back room of Blinkey's, where English Eddie and Garson sat with their heads close together over a table.

"A chance like this," Griggs was saying, "a chance that will make a fortune for all of us."

"It sounds good," Garson admitted, wistfully.

"It is good," the other declared with an oath. "Why, if this goes through, we're set up for life. We can quit, all of us."

"Yes," Garson agreed, "we can quit, all of us." There was avarice in his voice.

The tempter was sure that the battle was won, and smiled contentedly.

"Well," he urged, "what do you say?"

"How would we split it?" It was plain that Garson had given over the struggle against greed. After all, Mary was only a woman, despite her cleverness, and with all a woman's timidity. Here was sport for men.

"Three ways would be right," Griggs answered. "One to me, one to you and one to be divided up among the others."

Garson brought his fist down on the table with a force that made the glasses jingle.

"You're on," he said, strongly.

"Fine!" Griggs declared, and the two men shook hands. "Now, I'll get——"

"Get nothing!" Garson interrupted. "I'll get my own men. Chicago Red is in town. So is Dacey, with perhaps a couple of others of the right sort. I'll get them to meet you at Blinkey's at two to-morrow afternoon, and, if it looks right, we'll turn the trick to-morrow night."

"That's the stuff," Griggs agreed, greatly pleased.

But a sudden shadow fell on the face of Garson. He bent closer to his companion, and spoke with a fierce intensity that brooked no denial.

"She must never know."

Griggs nodded understandingly.

"Of course," he answered. "I give you my word that I'll never tell her. And you know you can trust me, Joe."

"Yes," the forger replied somberly, "I know I can trust you." But the shadow did not lift from his face.



CHAPTER XIV. A WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENT.

Mary dismissed Garson presently, and betook herself to her bedroom for a nap. The day had been a trying one, and, though her superb health could endure much, she felt that both prudence and comfort required that she should recruit her energies while there was opportunity. She was not in the least surprised that Dick had not yet returned, though he had mentioned half an hour. At the best, there were many things that might detain him, his father's absence from the office, difficulties in making arrangements for his projected honeymoon trip abroad—which would never occur—or the like. At the worst, there was a chance of finding his father promptly, and of that father as promptly taking steps to prevent the son from ever again seeing the woman who had so indiscreetly married him. Yet, somehow, Mary could not believe that her husband would yield to such paternal coercion. Rather, she was sure that he would prove loyal to her whom he loved, through every trouble. At the thought a certain wistfulness pervaded her, and a poignant regret that this particular man should have been the one chosen of fate to be entangled within her mesh of revenge. There throbbed in her a heart-tormenting realization that there were in life possibilities infinitely more splendid than the joy of vengeance. She would not confess the truth even to her inmost soul, but the truth was there, and set her a-tremble with vague fears. Nevertheless, because she was in perfect health, and was much fatigued, her introspection did not avail to keep her awake, and within three minutes from the time she lay down she was blissfully unconscious of all things, both the evil and the good, revenge and love.

She had slept, perhaps, a half-hour, when Fannie awakened her.

"It's a man named Burke," she explained, as her mistress lay blinking. "And there's another man with him. They said they must see you."

By this time, Mary was wide-awake, for the name of Burke, the Police Inspector, was enough to startle her out of drowsiness.

"Bring them in, in five minutes," she directed.

She got up, slipped into a tea-gown, bathed her eyes in cologne, dressed her hair a little, and went into the drawing-room, where the two men had been waiting for something more than a quarter of an hour—to the violent indignation of both.

"Oh, here you are, at last!" the big, burly man cried as she entered. The whole air of him, though he was in civilian's clothes, proclaimed the policeman.

"Yes, Inspector," Mary replied pleasantly, as she advanced into the room. She gave a glance toward the other visitor, who was of a slenderer form, with a thin, keen face, and recognized him instantly as Demarest, who had taken part against her as the lawyer for the store at the time of her trial, and who was now holding the office of District Attorney. She went to the chair at the desk, and seated herself in a leisurely fashion that increased the indignation of the fuming Inspector. She did not trouble to ask her self-invited guests to sit.

"To whom do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Inspector?" she remarked coolly. It was noticeable that she said whom and not what, as if she understood perfectly that the influence of some person brought him on this errand.

"I have come to have a few quiet words with you," the Inspector declared, in a mighty voice that set the globes of the chandeliers a-quiver. Mary disregarded him, and turned to the other man.

"How do you do, Mr. Demarest?" she said, evenly. "It's four years since we met, and they've made you District Attorney since then. Allow me to congratulate you."

Demarest's keen face took on an expression of perplexity.

"I'm puzzled," he confessed. "There is something familiar, somehow, about you, and yet——" He scrutinized appreciatively the loveliness of the girl with her classically beautiful face, that was still individual in its charm, the slim graces of the tall, lissome form. "I should have remembered you. I don't understand it."

"Can't you guess?" Mary questioned, somberly. "Search your memory, Mr. Demarest."

Of a sudden, the face of the District Attorney lightened.

"Why," he exclaimed, "you are—it can't be—yes—you are the girl, you're the Mary Turner whom I—oh, I know you now."

There was an enigmatic smile bending the scarlet lips as she answered.

"I'm the girl you mean, Mr. Demarest, but, for the rest, you don't know me—not at all!"

The burly figure of the Inspector of Police, which had loomed motionless during this colloquy, now advanced a step, and the big voice boomed threatening. It was very rough and weighted with authority.

"Young woman," Burke said, peremptorily, "the Twentieth Century Limited leaves Grand Central Station at four o'clock. It arrives in Chicago at eight-fifty-five to-morrow morning." He pulled a massive gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, glanced at it, thrust it back, and concluded ponderously: "You will just about have time to catch that train."

Mary regarded the stockily built officer with a half-amused contempt, which she was at no pains to conceal.

"Working for the New York Central now?" she asked blandly.

The gibe made the Inspector furious.

"I'm working for the good of New York City," he answered venomously.

Mary let a ripple of cadenced laughter escape her.

"Since when?" she questioned.

A little smile twisted the lips of the District Attorney, but he caught himself quickly, and spoke with stern gravity.

"Miss Turner, I think you will find that a different tone will serve you better."

"Oh, let her talk," Burke interjected angrily. "She's only got a few minutes anyway."

Mary remained unperturbed.

"Very well, then," she said genially, "let us be comfortable during that little period." She made a gesture of invitation toward chairs, which Burke disdained to accept; but Demarest seated himself.

"You'd better be packing your trunk," the Inspector rumbled.

"But why?" Mary inquired, with a tantalizing assumption of innocence. "I'm not going away."

"On the Twentieth Century Limited, this afternoon," the Inspector declared, in a voice of growing wrath.

"Oh, dear, no!" Mary's assertion was made very quietly, but with an underlying firmness that irritated the official beyond endurance.

"I say yes!" The answer was a bellow.

Mary appeared distressed, not frightened. Her words were an ironic protest against the man's obstreperous noisiness, no more.

"I thought you wanted quiet words with me."

Burke went toward her, in a rage.

"Now, look here, Mollie——" he began harshly.

On the instant, Mary was on her feet, facing him, and there was a gleam in her eyes as they met his that bade him pause.

"Miss Turner, if you don't mind." She laughed slightly. "For the present, anyway." She reseated herself tranquilly.

Burke was checked, but he retained his severity of bearing.

"I'm giving you your orders. You will either go to Chicago, or you'll go up the river."

Mary answered in a voice charged with cynicism.

"If you can convict me. Pray, notice that little word 'if'."

The District Attorney interposed very suavely.

"I did once, remember."

"But you can't do it again," Mary declared, with an assurance that excited the astonishment of the police official.

"How do you know he can't?" he blustered.

Mary laughed in a cadence of genial merriment.

"Because," she replied gaily, "if he could, he would have had me in prison some time ago."

Burke winced, but he made shift to conceal his realization of the truth she had stated to him.

"Huh!" he exclaimed gruffly. "I've seen them go up pretty easy."

Mary met the assertion with a serenity that was baffling.

"The poor ones," she vouchsafed; "not those that have money. I have money, plenty of money—now."

"Money you stole!" the Inspector returned, brutally.

"Oh, dear, no!" Mary cried, with a fine show of virtuous indignation.

"What about the thirty thousand dollars you got on that partnership swindle?" Burke asked, sneering. "I s'pose you didn't steal that!"

"Certainly not," was the ready reply. "The man advertised for a partner in a business sure to bring big and safe returns. I answered. The business proposed was to buy a tract of land, and subdivide it. The deeds to the land were all forged, and the supposed seller was his confederate, with whom he was to divide the money. We formed a partnership, with a capital of sixty thousand dollars. We paid the money into the bank, and then at once I drew it out. You see, he wanted to get my money illegally, but instead I managed to get his legally. For it was legal for me to draw that money—wasn't it, Mr. Demarest?"

The District Attorney by an effort retained his severe expression of righteous disapprobation, but he admitted the truth of her contention.

"Unfortunately, yes," he said gravely. "A partner has the right to draw out any, or all, of the partnership funds."

"And I was a partner," Mary said contentedly. "You, see, Inspector, you wrong me—you do, really! I'm not a swindler; I'm a financier."

Burke sneered scornfully.

"Well," he roared, "you'll never pull another one on me. You can gamble on that!"

Mary permitted herself to laugh mockingly in the face of the badgered official.

"Thank you for telling me," she said, graciously. "And let me say, incidentally, that Miss Lynch at the present moment is painlessly extracting ten thousand dollars from General Hastings in a perfectly legal manner, Inspector Burke."

"Well, anyhow," Burke shouted, "you may stay inside the law, but you've got to get outside the city." He tried to employ an elephantine bantering tone. "On the level, now, do you think you could get away with that young Gilder scheme you've been planning?"

Mary appeared puzzled.

"What young Gilder scheme?" she asked, her brows drawn in bewilderment.

"Oh, I'm wise—I'm wise!" the Inspector cried roughly. "The answer is, once for all, leave town this afternoon, or you'll be in the Tombs in the morning."

Abruptly, a change came over the woman. Hitherto, she had been cynical, sarcastic, laughing, careless, impudent. Now, of a sudden, she was all seriousness, and she spoke with a gravity that, despite their volition, impressed both the men before her.

"It can't be done, Inspector," she said, sedately.

The declaration, simple as it was, aroused the official to new indignation.

"Who says it can't?" he vociferated, overflowing with anger at this flouting of the authority he represented.

Mary opened a drawer of the desk, and took out the document obtained that morning from Harris, and held it forth.

"This," she replied, succinctly.

"What's this?" Burke stormed. But he took the paper.

Demarest looked over the Inspector's shoulder, and his eyes grew larger as he read. When he was at an end of the reading, he regarded the passive woman at the desk with a new respect.

"What's this?" Burke repeated helplessly. It was not easy for him to interpret the legal phraseology. Mary was kind enough to make the document clear to him.

"It's a temporary restraining order from the Supreme Court, instructing you to let me alone until you have legal proof that I have broken the law.... Do you get that, Mr. Inspector Burke?"

The plethoric official stared hard at the injunction.

"Another new one," he stuttered finally. Then his anger sought vent in violent assertion. "But it can't be done!" he shouted.

"You might ask Mr. Demarest," Mary suggested, pleasantly, "as to whether or not it can be done. The gambling houses can do it, and so keep on breaking the law. The race track men can do it, and laugh at the law. The railroad can do it, to restrain its employees from striking. So, why shouldn't I get one, too? You see, I have money. I can buy all the law I want. And there's nothing you can't do with the law, if you have money enough.... Ask Mr. Demarest. He knows."

Burke was fairly gasping over this outrage against his authority.

"Can you beat that!" he rumbled with a raucously sonorous vehemence. He regarded Mary with a stare of almost reverential wonder. "A crook appealing to the law!"

There came a new note into the woman's voice as she answered the gibe.

"No, simply getting justice," she said simply. "That's the remarkable part of it." She threw off her serious air. "Well, gentlemen," she concluded, "what are you going to do about it?"

Burke explained.

"This is what I'm going to do about it. One way or another, I'm going to get you."

The District Attorney, however, judged it advisable to use more persuasive methods.

"Miss Turner," he said, with an appearance of sincerity, "I'm going to appeal to your sense of fair play."

Mary's shining eyes met his for a long moment, and before the challenge in hers, his fell. He remembered then those doubts that had assailed him when this girl had been sentenced to prison, remembered the half-hearted plea he had made in her behalf to Richard Gilder.

"That was killed," Mary said, "killed four years ago."

But Demarest persisted. Influence had been brought to bear on him. It was for her own sake now that he urged her.

"Let young Gilder alone."

Mary laughed again. But there was no hint of joyousness in the musical tones. Her answer was frank—brutally frank. She had nothing to conceal.

"His father sent me away for three years—three years for something I didn't do. Well, he's got to pay for it."

By this time, Burke, a man of superior intelligence, as one must be to reach such a position of authority, had come to realize that here was a case not to be carried through by blustering, by intimidation, by the rough ruses familiar to the force. Here was a woman of extraordinary intelligence, as well as of peculiar personal charm, who merely made sport of his fulminations, and showed herself essentially armed against anything he might do, by a court injunction, a thing unheard of until this moment in the case of a common crook. It dawned upon him that this was, indeed, not a common crook. Moreover, there had grown in him a certain admiration for the ingenuity and resource of this woman, though he retained all his rancor against one who dared thus to resist the duly constituted authority. So, in the end, he spoke to her frankly, without a trace of his former virulence, with a very real, if rugged, sincerity.

"Don't fool yourself, my girl," he said in his huge voice, which was now modulated to a degree that made it almost unfamiliar to himself. "You can't go through with this. There's always a weak link in the chain somewhere. It's up to me to find it, and I will."

His candor moved her to a like honesty.

"Now," she said, and there was respect in the glance she gave the stalwart man, "now you really sound dangerous."

There came an interruption, alike unexpected by all. Fannie appeared at the door.

"Mr. Edward Gilder wishes to see you, Miss Turner," she said, with no appreciation of anything dynamic in the announcement. "Shall I show him in?"

"Oh, certainly," Mary answered, with an admirable pretense of indifference, while Burke glared at Demarest, and the District Attorney appeared ill at ease.

"He shouldn't have come," Demarest muttered, getting to his feet, in reply to the puzzled glance of the Inspector.

Then, while Mary sat quietly in her chair at the desk, and the two men stood watching doubtfully the door, the maid appeared, stood aside, and said simply, "Mr. Gilder."

There entered the erect, heavy figure of the man whom Mary had hated through the years. He stopped abruptly just within the room, gave a glance at the two men, then his eyes went to Mary, sitting at her desk, with her face lifted inquiringly. He did not pause to take in the beauty of that face, only its strength. He stared at her silently for a moment. Then he spoke in his oritund voice, a little tremulous from anxiety.

"Are you the woman?" he said. There was something simple and primitive, something of dignity beyond the usual conventions, in his direct address.

And there was the same primitive simplicity in the answer. Between the two strong natures there was no subterfuge, no suggestion of polite evasions, of tergiversation, only the plea of truth to truth. Mary's acknowledgment was as plain as his own question.

"I am the woman. What do you want?"... Thus two honest folk had met face to face.

"My son." The man's answer was complete.

But Mary touched a tragic note in her question. It was asked in no frivolous spirit, but, of a sudden, she guessed that his coming was altogether of his own volition, and not the result of his son's information, as at first she had supposed.

"Have you seen him recently?" she asked.

"No," Gilder answered.

"Then, why did you come?"

Thereat, the man was seized with a fatherly fury. His heavy face was congested, and his sonorous voice was harsh with virtuous rebuke.

"Because I intend to save my boy from a great folly. I am informed that he is infatuated with you, and Inspector Burke tells me why—he tells me—why—he tells me——" He paused, unable for a moment to continue from an excess of emotion. But his gray eyes burned fiercely in accusation against her.

Inspector Burke himself filled the void in the halting sentence.

"I told you she had been an ex-convict."

"Yes," Gilder said, after he had regained his self-control. He stared at her pleadingly. "Tell me," he said with a certain dignity, "is this true?"

Here, then, was the moment for which she had longed through weary days, through weary years. Here was the man whom she hated, suppliant before her to know the truth. Her heart quickened. Truly, vengeance is sweet to one who has suffered unjustly.

"Is this true?" the man repeated, with something of horror in his voice.

"It is," Mary said quietly.

For a little, there was silence in the room. Once, Inspector Burke started to speak, but the magnate made an imperative gesture, and the officer held his peace. Always, Mary rested motionless. Within her, a fierce joy surged. Here was the time of her victory. Opposite her was the man who had caused her anguish, the man whose unjust action had ruined her life. Now, he was her humble petitioner, but this servility could be of no avail to save him from shame. He must drink of the dregs of humiliation—and then again. No price were too great to pay for a wrong such as that which he had put upon her.

At last, Gilder was restored in a measure to his self-possession. He spoke with the sureness of a man of wealth, confident that money will salve any wound.

"How much?" he asked, baldly.

Mary smiled an inscrutable smile.

"Oh, I don't need money," she said, carelessly. "Inspector Burke will tell you how easy it is for me to get it."

Gilder looked at her with a newly dawning respect; then his shrewdness suggested a retort.

"Do you want my son to learn what you are?" he said.

Mary laughed. There was something dreadful in that burst of spurious amusement.

"Why not?" she answered. "I'm ready to tell him myself."

Then Gilder showed the true heart of him, in which love for his boy was before all else. He found himself wholly at a loss before the woman's unexpected reply.

"But I don't want him to know," he stammered. "Why, I've spared the boy all his life. If he really loves you—it will——"

At that moment, the son himself entered hurriedly from the hallway. In his eagerness, he saw no one save the woman whom he loved. At his entrance, Mary rose and moved backward a step involuntarily, in sheer surprise over his coming, even though she had known he must come—perhaps from some other emotion, deeper, hidden as yet even from herself.

The young man, with his wholesome face alight with tenderness, went swiftly to her, while the other three men stood silent, motionless, abashed by the event. And Dick took Mary's hand in a warm clasp, pressed it tenderly.

"I didn't see father," he said happily, "but I left him a note on his desk at the office."

Then, somehow, the surcharged atmosphere penetrated his consciousness, and he looked around, to see his father standing grimly opposite him. But there was no change in his expression beyond a more radiant smile.

"Hello, Dad!" he cried, joyously. "Then you got my note?"

The voice of the older man came with a sinister force and saturnine.

"No, Dick, I haven't had any note."

"Then, why?" The young man broke off suddenly. He was become aware that here was something malignant, with a meaning beyond his present understanding, for he saw the Inspector and Demarest, and he knew the two of them for what they were officially.

"What are they doing here?" he demanded suspiciously, staring at the two.

"Oh, never mind them," Mary said. There was a malevolent gleam in her violet eyes. This was the recompense of which she had dreamed through soul-tearing ages. "Just tell your father your news, Dick."

The young man had no comprehension of the fact that he was only a pawn in the game. He spoke with simple pride.

"Dad, we're married. Mary and I were married this morning."

Always, Mary stared with her eyes steadfast on the father. There was triumph in her gaze. This was the vengeance for which she had longed, for which she had plotted, the vengeance she had at last achieved. Here was her fruition, the period of her supremacy.

Gilder himself seemed dazed by the brief sentence.

"Say that again," he commanded.

Mary rejoiced to make the knowledge sure.

"I married your son this morning," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I married him. Do you quite understand, Mr. Gilder? I married him." In that insistence lay her ultimate compensation for untold misery. The father stood there wordless, unable to find speech against this calamity that had befallen him.

It was Burke who offered a diversion, a crude interruption after his own fashion.

"It's a frame-up," he roared. He glared at the young man. "Tell your father it ain't true. Why, do you know what she is? She's done time." He paused for an instant, then spoke in a voice that was brutally menacing. "And, by God, she'll do it again!"

The young man turned toward his bride. There was disbelief, hope, despair, in his face, which had grown older by years with the passing of the seconds.

"It's a lie, Mary," he said. "Say it's a lie!" He seized her hand passionately.

There was no quiver in her voice as she answered. She drew her hand from his clasp, and spoke evenly.

"It's the truth."

"It's the truth!" the young man repeated, incredulously.

"It is the truth," Mary said, firmly. "I have served three years in prison."

There was a silence of a minute that was like years. It was the father who broke it, and now his voice was become tremulous.

"I wanted to save you, Dick. That's why I came."

The son interrupted him violently.

"There's a mistake—there must be."

It was Demarest who gave an official touch to the tragedy of the moment.

"There's no mistake," he said. There was authority in his statement.

"There is, I tell you!" Dick cried, horrified by this conspiracy of defamation. He turned his tortured face to his bride of a day.

"Mary," he said huskily, "there is a mistake."

Something in her face appalled him. He was voiceless for a few terrible instants. Then he spoke again, more beseechingly.

"Say there's a mistake."

Mary preserved her poise. Yes—she must not forget! This was the hour of her triumph. What mattered it that the honey of it was as ashes in her mouth? She spoke with a simplicity that admitted no denial.

"It's all quite true."

The man who had so loved her, so trusted her, was overwhelmed by the revelation. He stood trembling for a moment, tottered, almost it seemed would have fallen, but presently steadied himself and sank supinely into a chair, where he sat in impotent suffering.

The father looked at Mary with a reproach that was pathetic.

"See," he said, and his heavy voice was for once thin with passion, "see what you've done to my boy!"

Mary had held her eyes on Dick. There had been in her gaze a conflict of emotions, strong and baffling. Now, however, when the father spoke, her face grew more composed, and her eyes met his coldly. Her voice was level and vaguely dangerous as she answered his accusation.

"What is that compared to what you have done to me?"

Gilder stared at her in honest amazement. He had no suspicion as to the tragedy that lay between him and her.

"What have I done to you?" he questioned, uncomprehending.

Mary moved forward, passing beyond the desk, and continued her advance toward him until the two stood close together, face to face. She spoke softly, but with an intensity of supreme feeling in her voice.

"Do you remember what I said to you the day you had me sent away?"

The merchant regarded her with stark lack of understanding.

"I don't remember you at all," he said.

The woman looked at him intently for a moment, then spoke in a colorless voice.

"Perhaps you remember Mary Turner, who was arrested four years ago for robbing your store. And perhaps you remember that she asked to speak to you before they took her to prison."

The heavy-jowled man gave a start.

"Oh, you begin to remember. Yes! There was a girl who swore she was innocent—yes, she swore that she was innocent. And she would have got off—only, you asked the judge to make an example of her."

The man to whom she spoke had gone gray a little. He began to understand, for he was not lacking in intelligence. Somehow, it was borne in on him that this woman had a grievance beyond the usual run of injuries.

"You are that girl?" he said. It was not a question, rather an affirmation.

Mary spoke with the dignity of long suffering—more than that, with the confident dignity of a vengeance long delayed, now at last achieved. Her words were simple enough, but they touched to the heart of the man accused by them.

"I am that girl."

There was a little interval of silence. Then, Mary spoke again, remorselessly.

"You took away my good name. You smashed my life. You put me behind the bars. You owe for all that.... Well' I've begun to collect."

The man opposite her, the man of vigorous form, of strong face and keen eyes, stood gazing intently for long moments. In that time, he was learning many things. Finally, he spoke.

"And that is why you married my boy."

"It is." Mary gave the answer coldly, convincingly.

Convincingly, save to one—her husband. Dick suddenly aroused, and spoke with the violence of one sure.

"It is not!"

Burke shouted a warning. Demarest, more diplomatic, made a restraining gesture toward the police official, then started to address the young man soothingly.

But Dick would have none of their interference.

"This is my affair," he said, and the others fell silent. He stood up and went to Mary, and took her two hands in his, very gently, yet very firmly.

"Mary," he said softly, yet with a strength of conviction, "you married me because you love me."

The wife shuddered, but she strove to deny.

"No," she said gravely, "no, I did not!"

"And you love me now!" he went on insistingly.

"No, no!" Mary's denial came like a cry for escape.

"You love me now!" There was a masterful quality in his declaration, which seemed to ignore her negation.

"I don't," she repeated bitterly.

But he was inexorable.

"Look me in the face, and say that."

He took her face in his hands, lifted it, and his eyes met hers searchingly.

"Look me in the face, and say that," he repeated.

There was a silence that seemed long, though it was measured in the passing of seconds. The three watchers dared not interrupt this drama of emotions, but, at last, Mary, who had planned so long for this hour, gathered her forces and spoke valiantly. Her voice was low, but without any weakness of doubt.

"I do not love you."

In the instant of reply, Dick Gilder, by some inspiration of love, changed his attitude. "Just the same," he said cheerfully, "you are my wife, and I'm going to keep you and make you love me."

Mary felt a thrill of fear through her very soul.

"You can't!" she cried harshly. "You are his son!"

"She's a crook!" Burke said.

"I don't care a damn what you've been!" Dick exclaimed. "From now on you'll go straight. You'll walk the straightest line a woman ever walked. You'll put all thoughts of vengeance out of your heart, because I'll fill it with something bigger—I'm going to make you love me."

Burke, with his rousing voice, spoke again:

"I tell you, she's a crook!"

Mary moved a little, and then turned her face toward Gilder.

"And, if I am, who made me one? You can't send a girl to prison, and have her come out anything else."

Burke swung himself around in a movement of complete disgust.

"She didn't get her time for good behavior."

Mary raised her head, haughtily, with a gesture of high disdain.

"And I'm proud of it!" came her instant retort. "Do you know what goes on there behind those stone walls? Do you, Mr. District Attorney, whose business it is to send girls there? Do you know what a girl is expected to do, to get time off for good behavior? If you don't, ask the keepers."

Gilder moved fussily.

"And you——"

Mary swayed a little, standing there before her questioner.

"I served every minute of my time—every minute of it, three full, whole years. Do you wonder that I want to get even, that some one has got to pay? Four years ago, you took away my name—and gave me a number.... Now, I've given up the number—and I've got your name."



CHAPTER XV. AFTERMATH OF TRAGEDY.

The Gilders, both father and son, endured much suffering throughout the night and day that followed the scene in Mary Turner's apartment, when she had made known the accomplishment of her revenge on the older man by her ensnaring of the younger. Dick had followed the others out of her presence at her command, emphasized by her leaving him alone when he would have pleaded further with her. Since then, he had striven to obtain another interview with his bride, but she had refused him. He was denied admission to the apartment. Only the maid answered the ringing of the telephone, and his notes were seemingly unheeded. Distraught by this violent interjection of torment into a life that hitherto had known no important suffering, Dick Gilder showed what mettle of man lay beneath his debonair appearance. And that mettle was of a kind worth while. In these hours of grief, the soul of him put out its strength. He learned beyond peradventure of doubt that the woman whom he had married was in truth an ex-convict, even as Burke and Demarest had declared. Nevertheless, he did not for an instant believe that she was guilty of the crime with which she had been originally charged and for which she had served a sentence in prison. For the rest, he could understand in some degree how the venom of the wrong inflicted on her had poisoned her nature through the years, till she had worked out its evil through the scheme of which he was the innocent victim. He cared little for the fact that recently she had devoted herself to devious devices for making money, to ingenious schemes for legal plunder. In his summing of her, he set as more than an offset to her unrighteousness in this regard the desperate struggle she had made after leaving prison to keep straight, which, as he learned, had ended in her attempt at suicide. He knew the intelligence of this woman whom he loved, and in his heart was no thought of her faults as vital flaws. It seemed to him rather that circumstances had compelled her, and that through all the suffering of her life she had retained the more beautiful qualities of her womanliness, for which he reverenced her. In the closeness of their association, short as it had been, he had learned to know something of the tenderer depths within her, the kindliness of her, the wholesomeness. Swayed as he was by the loveliness of her, he was yet more enthralled by those inner qualities of which the outer beauty was only the fitting symbol.

So, in the face of this catastrophe, where a less love must have been destroyed utterly, Dick remained loyal. His passionate regard did not falter for a moment. It never even occurred to him that he might cast her off, might yield to his father's prayers, and abandon her. On the contrary, his only purpose was to gain her for himself, to cherish and guard her against every ill, to protect with his love from every attack of shame or injury. He would not believe that the girl did not care for him. Whatever had been her first purpose of using him only as an instrument through which to strike against his father, whatever might be her present plan of eliminating him from her life in the future, he still was sure that she had grown to know a real and lasting affection for himself. He remembered startled glances from the violet eyes, caught unawares, and the music of her voice in rare instants, and these told him that love for him stirred, even though it might as yet be but faintly, in her heart.

Out of that fact, he drew an immediate comfort in this period of his misery. Nevertheless, his anguish was a racking one. He grew older visibly in the night and the day. There crept suddenly lines of new feeling into his face, and, too, lines of new strength. The boy died in that time; the man was born, came forth in the full of his steadfastness and his courage, and his love.

The father suffered with the son. He was a proud man, intensely gratified over the commanding position to which he had achieved in the commercial world, proud of his business integrity, of his standing in the community as a leader, proud of his social position, proud most of all of the son whom he so loved. Now, this hideous disaster threatened his pride at every turn—worse, it threatened the one person in the world whom he really loved. Most fathers would have stormed at the boy when pleading failed, would have given commands with harshness, would have menaced the recalcitrant with disinheritance. Edward Gilder did none of these things, though his heart was sorely wounded. He loved his son too much to contemplate making more evil for the lad by any estrangement between them. Yet he felt that the matter could not safely be left in the hands of Dick himself. He realized that his son loved the woman—nor could he wonder much at that. His keen eyes had perceived Mary Turner's graces of form, her loveliness of face. He had apprehended, too, in some measure at least, the fineness of her mental fiber and the capacities of her heart. Deep within him, denied any outlet, he knew there lurked a curious, subtle sympathy for the girl in her scheme of revenge against himself. Her persistent striving toward the object of her ambition was something he could understand, since the like thing in different guise had been back of his own business success. He would not let the idea rise to the surface of consciousness, for he still refused to believe that Mary Turner had suffered at his hand unjustly. He would think of her as nothing else than a vile creature, who had caught his son in the toils of her beauty and charm, for the purpose of eventually making money out of the intrigue.

Gilder, in his library this night, was pacing impatiently to and fro, eagerly listening for the sound of his son's return to the house. He had been the guest of honor that night at an important meeting of the Civic Committee, and he had spoken with his usual clarity and earnestness in spite of the trouble that beset him. Now, however, the regeneration of the city was far from his thought, and his sole concern was with the regeneration of a life, that of his son, which bade fair to be ruined by the wiles of a wicked woman. He was anxious for the coming of Dick, to whom he would make one more appeal. If that should fail—well, he must use the influences at his command to secure the forcible parting of the adventuress from his son.

The room in which he paced to and fro was of a solid dignity, well fitted to serve as an environment for its owner. It was very large, and lofty. There was massiveness in the desk that stood opposite the hall door, near a window. This particular window itself was huge, high, jutting in octagonal, with leaded panes. In addition, there was a great fireplace set with tiles, around which was woodwork elaborately carved, the fruit of patient questing abroad. On the walls were hung some pieces of tapestry, where there were not bookcases. Over the octagonal window, too, such draperies fell in stately lines. Now, as the magnate paced back and forth, there was only a gentle light in the room, from a reading-lamp on his desk. The huge chandelier was unlighted.... It was even as Gilder, in an increasing irritation over the delay, had thrown himself down on a couch which stood just a little way within an alcove, that he heard the outer door open and shut. He sprang up with an ejaculation of satisfaction.

"Dick, at last!" he muttered.

It was, in truth, the son. A moment later, he entered the room, and went at once to his father, who was standing waiting, facing the door.

"I'm awfully sorry I'm so late, Dad," he said simply.

"Where have you been?" the father demanded gravely. But there was great affection in the flash of his gray eyes as he scanned the young man's face, and the touch of the hand that he put on Dick's shoulder was very tender. "With that woman again?"

The boy's voice was disconsolate as he replied:

"No, father, not with her. She won't see me."

The older man snorted a wrathful appreciation.

"Naturally!" he exclaimed with exceeding bitterness in the heavy voice. "She's got all she wanted from you—my name!" He repeated the words with a grimace of exasperation: "My name!"

There was a novel dignity in the son's tone as he spoke.

"It's mine, too, you know, sir," he said quietly.

The father was impressed of a sudden with the fact that, while this affair was of supreme import to himself, it was, after all, of still greater significance to his son. To himself, the chief concerns were of the worldly kind. To this boy, the vital thing was something deeper, something of the heart: for, however absurd his feeling, the truth remained that he loved the woman. Yes, it was the son's name that Mary Turner had taken, as well as that of his father. In the case of the son, she had taken not only his name, but his very life. Yes, it was, indeed, Dick's tragedy. Whatever he, the father, might feel, the son was, after all, more affected. He must suffer more, must lose more, must pay more with happiness for his folly.

Gilder looked at his son with a strange, new respect, but he could not let the situation go without protest, protest of the most vehement.

"Dick," he cried, and his big voice was shaken a little by the force of his emotion; "boy, you are all I have in the world. You will have to free yourself from this woman somehow." He stood very erect, staring steadfastly out of his clear gray eyes into those of his son. His heavy face was rigid with feeling; the coarse mouth bent slightly in a smile of troubled fondness, as he added more softly: "You owe me that much."

The son's eyes met his father's freely. There was respect in them, and affection, but there was something else, too, something the older man recognized as beyond his control. He spoke gravely, with a deliberate conviction.

"I owe something to her, too, Dad."

But Gilder would not let the statement go unchallenged. His heavy voice rang out rebukingly, overtoned with protest.

"What can you owe her?" he demanded indignantly. "She tricked you into the marriage. Why, legally, it's not even that. There's been nothing more than a wedding ceremony. The courts hold that that is only a part of the marriage actually. The fact that she doesn't receive you makes it simpler, too. It can be arranged. We must get you out of the scrape."

He turned and went to the desk, as if to sit, but he was halted by his son's answer, given very gently, yet with a note of finality that to the father's ear rang like the crack of doom.

"I'm not sure that I want to get out of it, father."

That was all, but those plain words summed the situation, made the issue a matter not of advice, but of the heart.

Gilder persisted, however, in trying to evade the integral fact of his son's feeling. Still he tried to fix the issue on the known unsavory reputation of the woman.

"You want to stay married to this jail-bird!" he stormed.

A gust of fury swept the boy. He loved the woman, in spite of all; he respected her, even reverenced her. To hear her thus named moved him to a rage almost beyond his control. But he mastered himself. He remembered that the man who spoke loved him; he remembered, too, that the word of opprobrium was no more than the truth, however offensive it might be to his sensitiveness. He waited a moment until he could hold his voice even. Then his words were the sternest protest that could have been uttered, though they came from no exercise of thought, only out of the deeps of his heart.

"I'm very fond of her."

That was all. But the simple sincerity of the saying griped the father's mood, as no argument could have done. There was a little silence. After all, what could meet such loving loyalty?

When at last he spoke, Gilder's voice was subdued, a little husky.

"Now, that you know?" he questioned.

There was no faltering in the answer.

"Now, that I know," Dick said distinctly. Then abruptly, the young man spoke with the energy of perfect faith in the woman. "Don't you see, father? Why, she is justified in a way, in her own mind anyhow, I mean. She was innocent when she was sent to prison. She feels that the world owes her——"

But the older man would not permit the assertion to go uncontradicted. That reference to the woman's innocence was an arraignment of himself, for it had been he who sent her to the term of imprisonment.

"Don't talk to me about her innocence!" he said, and his voice was ominous. "I suppose next you will argue that, because she's been clever enough to keep within the law, since she's got out of State Prison, she's not a criminal. But let me tell you—crime is crime, whether the law touches it in the particular case, or whether it doesn't."

Gilder faced his son sternly for a moment, and then presently spoke again with deeper earnestness.

"There's only one course open to you, my boy. You must give this girl up."

The son met his father's gaze with a level look in which there was no weakness.

"I've told you, Dad——" he began.

"You must, I tell you," the father insisted. Then he went on quickly, with a tone of utmost positiveness. "If you don't, what are you going to do the day your wife is thrown into a patrol wagon and carried to Police Headquarters—for it's sure to happen? The cleverest of people make mistakes, and some day she'll make one."

Dick threw out his hands in a gesture of supreme denial. He was furious at this supposition that she would continue in her irregular practices.

But the father went on remorselessly.

"They will stand her up where the detectives will walk past her with masks on their faces. Her picture, of course, is already in the Rogues' Gallery, but they will take another. Yes, and the imprints of her fingers, and the measurements of her body."

The son was writhing under the words. The woman of whom these things were said was the woman whom he loved. It was blasphemy to think of her in such case, subjected to the degradation of these processes. Yet, every word had in it the piercing, horrible sting of truth. His face whitened. He raised a supplicating hand.

"Father!"

"That's what they will do to your wife," Gilder went on harshly; "to the woman who bears your name and mine." There was a little pause, and the father stood rigid, menacing. The final question came rasping. "What are you going to do about it?"

Dick went forward until he was close to his father. Then he spoke with profound conviction.

"It will never happen. She will go straight, Dad. That I know. You would know it if you only knew her as I do."

Gilder once again put his hand tenderly on his son's shoulder. His voice was modulated to an unaccustomed mildness as he spoke.

"Be sensible, boy," he pleaded softly. "Be sensible!"

Dick dropped down on the couch, and made his answer very gently, his eyes unseeing as he dwelt on the things he knew of the woman he loved.

"Why, Dad," he said, "she is young. She's just like a child in a hundred ways. She loves the trees and the grass and the flowers—and everything that's simple and real! And as for her heart—" His voice was low and very tender: "Why, her heart is the biggest I've ever known. It's just overflowing with sweetness and kindness. I've seen her pick up a baby that had fallen in the street, and mother it in a way that—well, no one could do it as she did it, unless her soul was clean."

The father was silent, a little awed. He made an effort to shake off the feeling, and spoke with a sneer.

"You heard what she said yesterday, and you still are such a fool as to think that."

The answer of the son came with an immutable finality, the sublime faith of love.

"I don't think—I know!"

Gilder was in despair. What argument could avail him? He cried out sharply in desperation.

"Do you realize what you're doing? Don't go to smash, Dick, just at the beginning of your life. Oh, I beg you, boy, stop! Put this girl out of your thoughts and start fresh."

The reply was of the simplest, and it was the end of argument.

"Father," Dick said, very gently, "I can't."

There followed a little period of quiet between the two. The father, from his desk, stood facing his son, who thus denied him in all honesty because the heart so commanded. The son rested motionless and looked with unflinching eyes into his father's face. In the gaze of each was a great affection.

"You're all I have, my boy," the older man said at last. And now the big voice was a mildest whisper of love.

"Yes, Dad," came the answer—another whisper, since it is hard to voice the truth of feeling such as this. "If I could avoid it, I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world. I'm sorry, Dad, awfully sorry——" He hesitated, then his voice rang out clearly. There was in his tone, when he spoke again, a recognition of that loneliness which is the curse and the crown of being:

"But," he ended, "I must fight this out by myself—fight it out in my own way.... And I'm going to do it!"



CHAPTER XVI. BURKE PLOTS.

The butler entered.

"A man to see you, sir," he said.

Gilder made a gesture of irritation, as he sank into the chair at his desk.

"I can't see any one to-night, Thomas," he exclaimed, sharply.

"But he said it was most important, sir," the servant went on. He held out the tray insistently.

The master took the card grudgingly. As his eyes caught the name, his expression changed slightly.

"Very well," he said, "show him up." His glance met the wondering gaze of his son.

"It's Burke," he explained.

"What on earth can he want—at this time of night?" Dick exclaimed.

The father smiled grimly.

"You may as well get used to visits from the police." There was something ghastly in the effort toward playfulness.

A moment later, Inspector Burke entered the room.

"Oh, you're here, too," he said, as his eyes fell on Dick. "That's good. I wanted to see you, too."

Inspector Burke was, in fact, much concerned over the situation that had developed. He was a man of undoubted ability, and he took a keen professional pride in his work. He possessed the faults of his class, was not too scrupulous where he saw a safe opportunity to make a snug sum of money through the employment of his official authority, was ready to buckle to those whose influence could help or hinder his ambition. But, in spite of these ordinary defects, he was fond of his work and wishful to excel in it. Thus, Mary Turner had come to be a thorn in his side. She flouted his authority and sustained her incredible effrontery by a restraining order from the court. The thing was outrageous to him, and he set himself to match her cunning. The fact that she had involved Dick Gilder within her toils made him the more anxious to overcome her in the strife of resources between them. After much studying, he had at last planned something that, while it would not directly touch Mary herself, would at least serve to intimidate her, and as well make further action easier against her. It was in pursuit of this scheme that he now came to Gilder's house, and the presence of the young man abruptly gave him another idea that might benefit him well. So, he disregarded Gilder's greeting, and went on speaking to the son.

"She's skipped!" he said, triumphantly.

Dick made a step forward. His eyes flashed, and there was anger in his voice as he replied:

"I don't believe it."

The Inspector smiled, unperturbed.

"She left this morning for Chicago," he said, lying with a manner that long habit rendered altogether convincing. "I told you she'd go." He turned to the father, and spoke with an air of boastful good nature. "Now, all you have to do is to get this boy out of the scrape and you'll be all right."

"If we only could!" The cry came with deepest earnestness from the lips of Gilder, but there was little hope in his voice.

The Inspector, however, was confident of success, and his tones rang cheerfully as he answered:

"I guess we can find a way to have the marriage annulled, or whatever they do to marriages that don't take."

The brutal assurance of the man in thus referring to things that were sacred, moved Dick to wrath.

"Don't you interfere," he said. His words were spoken softly, but tensely.

Nevertheless, Burke held to the topic, but an indefinable change in his manner rendered it less offensive to the young man.

"Interfere! Huh!" he ejaculated, grinning broadly. "Why, that's what I'm paid to do. Listen to me, son. The minute you begin mixing up with crooks, you ain't in a position to give orders to any one. The crooks have got no rights in the eyes of the police. Just remember that."

The Inspector spoke the simple truth as he knew it from years of experience. The theory of the law is that a presumption of innocence exists until the accused is proven guilty. But the police are out of sympathy with such finical methods. With them, the crook is presumed guilty at the outset of whatever may be charged against him. If need be, there will be proof a-plenty against him—of the sort that the underworld knows to its sorrow.

But Dick was not listening. His thoughts were again wholly with the woman he loved, who, as the Inspector declared, had fled from him.

"Where's she gone in Chicago?"

Burke answered in his usual gruff fashion, but with a note of kindliness that was not without its effect on Dick.

"I'm no mind-reader," he said. "But she's a swell little girl, all right. I've got to hand it to her for that. So, she'll probably stop at the Blackstone—that is, until the Chicago police are tipped off that she is in town."