"Well?" he demanded. His voice was emotionless.

"Just a little friendly call," Ca.s.sidy announced, in his strident voice.

"Where's the lady of the house?"

"Out." It was Aggie who spoke, very sharply.

"Well, Joe," Ca.s.sidy went on, without paying further heed to the girl for a moment, "when she comes back, just tell her it's up to her to make a get-away, and to make it quick."

But Aggie was not one to be ignored under any circ.u.mstances. Now, she spoke with some acerbity in her voice, which could at will be wondrous soft and low.

"Say!" she retorted viciously, "you can't throw any scare into us. You hadn't got anything on us. See?"

Ca.s.sidy, in response to this outburst, favored the girl with a long stare, and there was hearty amus.e.m.e.nt in his tones as he answered.

"Nothing on you, eh? Well, well, let's see." He regarded Garson with a grin. "You are Joe Garson, forger." As he spoke, the detective took a note-book from a pocket, found a page, and then read: "First arrested in 1891, for forging the name of Edwin Goodsell to a check for ten thousand dollars. Again arrested June 19, 1893, for forgery. Arrested in April, 1898, for forging the signature of Oscar Hemmenway to a series of bonds that were counterfeit. Arrested as the man back of the Reilly gang, in 1903. Arrested in 1908 for forgery."

There was no change in the face or pose of the man who listened to the reading. When it was done, and the officer looked up with a resumption of his triumphant grin, Garson spoke quietly.

"Haven't any records of convictions, have you?"

The grin died, and a snarl sprang in its stead.

"No," he snapped, vindictively. "But we've got the right dope on you, all right, Joe Garson." He turned savagely on the girl, who now had regained her usual expression of demure innocence, but with her rather too heavy brows drawn a little lower than their wont, under the influence of an emotion otherwise concealed.

"And you're little Aggie Lynch," Ca.s.sidy declared, as he thrust the note-book back into his pocket. "Just now, you're posing as Mary Turner's cousin. You served two years in Burnsing for blackmail. You were arrested in Buffalo, convicted, and served your stretch. Nothing on you? Well, well!" Again there was triumph in the officer's chuckle.

Aggie showed no least sign of perturbation in the face of this revelation of her unsavory record. Only an expression of half-incredulous wonder and delight beamed from her widely opened blue eyes and was emphasized in the rounding of the little mouth.

"Why," she cried, and now there was softness enough in the cooing notes, "my Gawd! It looks as though you had actually been workin'!"

The sarcasm was without effect on the dull sensibilities of the officer.

He went on speaking with obvious enjoyment of the extent to which his knowledge reached.

"And the head of the gang is Mary Turner. Arrested four years ago for robbing the Emporium. Did her stretch of three years."

"Is that all you've got about her?" Garson demanded, with such abruptness that Ca.s.sidy forgot his dignity sufficiently to answer with an unqualified yes.

The forger continued speaking rapidly, and now there was an undercurrent of feeling in his voice.

"Nothing in your record of her about her coming out without a friend in the world, and trying to go straight? You ain't got nothing in that pretty little book of your'n about your going to the millinery store where she finally got a job, and tipping them off to where she come from?"

"Sure, they was tipped off," Ca.s.sidy answered, quite unmoved. And he added, swelling visibly with importance: "We got to protect the city."

"Got anything in that record of your'n," Garson went on venomously, "about her getting another job, and your following her up again, and having her thrown out? Got it there about the letter you had old Gilder write, so that his influence would get her canned?"

"Oh, we had her right the first time," Ca.s.sidy admitted, complacently.

Then, the bitterness of Garson's soul was revealed by the fierceness in his voice as he replied.

"You did not! She was railroaded for a job she never done. She went in honest, and she came out honest."

The detective indulged himself in a cackle of sneering merriment.

"And that's why she's here now with a gang of crooks," he retorted.

Garson met the implication fairly.

"Where else should she be?" he demanded, violently. "You ain't got nothing in that record about my jumping into the river after her?" The forger's voice deepened and trembled with the intensity of his emotion, which was now grown so strong that any who listened and looked might guess something of the truth as to his feeling toward this woman of whom he spoke. "That's where I found her--a girl that never done n.o.body any harm, starving because you police wouldn't give her a chance to work. In the river because she wouldn't take the only other way that was left her to make a living, because she was keeping straight!... Have you got any of that in your book?"

Ca.s.sidy, who had been scowling in the face of this arraignment, suddenly gave vent to a croaking laugh of derision.

"Huh!" he said, contemptuously. "I guess you're stuck on her, eh?"

At the words, an instantaneous change swept over Garson. Hitherto, he had been tense, his face set with emotion, a man strong and sullen, with eyes as clear and heartless as those of a beast in the wild.

Now, without warning, a startling transformation was wrought. His form stiffened to rigidity after one lightning-swift step forward, and his face grayed. The eyes glowed with the fires of a man's heart in a spasm of hate. He was the embodiment of rage, as he spoke huskily, his voice a whisper that was yet louder than any shout.

"Cut that!"

The eyes of the two men locked. Ca.s.sidy struggled with all his pride against the dominant fury this man hurled on him.

"What?" he demanded, bl.u.s.teringly. But his tone was weaker than its wont.

"I mean," Garson repeated, and there was finality in his accents, a deadly quality that was appalling, "I mean, cut it out--now, here, and all the time! It don't go!" The voice rose slightly. The effect of it was more penetrant than a scream. "It don't go!... Do you get me?"

There was a short interval of silence, then the officer's eyes at last fell. It was Aggie who relieved the tension of the scene.

"He's got you," she remarked, airily. "Oi, oi! He's got you!"

There were again a few seconds of pause, and then Ca.s.sidy made an observation that revealed in some measure the shock of the experience he had just undergone.

"You would have been a big man, Joe, if it hadn't been for that temper of yours. It's got you into trouble once or twice already. Some time it's likely to prove your finish."

Garson relaxed his immobility, and a little color crept into his cheeks.

"That's my business," he responded, dully.

"Anyway," the officer went on, with a new confidence, now that his eyes were free from the gaze that had burned into his soul, "you've got to clear out, the whole gang of you--and do it quick."

Aggie, who as a matter of fact began to feel that she was not receiving her due share of attention, now interposed, moving forward till her face was close to the detective's.

"We don't scare worth a cent," she snapped, with the virulence of a vixen. "You can't do anything to us. We ain't broke the law." There came a sudden ripple of laughter, and the charming lips curved joyously, as she added: "Though perhaps we have bent it a bit."

Ca.s.sidy sneered, outraged by such impudence on the part of an ex-convict.

"Don't make no difference what you've done," he growled. "Gee!" he went on, with a heavy sneer. "But things are coming to a pretty pa.s.s when a gang of crooks gets to arguing about their rights. That's funny, that is!"

"Then laugh!" Aggie exclaimed, insolently, and made a face at the officer. "Ha, ha, ha!"

"Well, you've got the tip," Ca.s.sidy returned, somewhat disconcerted, after a stolid fashion of his own. "It's up to you to take it, that's all. If you don't, one of you will make a long visit with some people out of town, and it'll probably be Mary. Remember, I'm giving it to you straight."