This is a specially made gun," he went on admiringly, as he took it back and slipped it into a pocket of his coat. "That thing is absolutely noiseless. I've tried it. Well, you see, it'll be an easy thing--easiest thing in the world!--to trace that silencer attachment. Ca.s.sidy's working on that end of the thing now."

For a few minutes longer, the two men discussed the details of the crime, theorizing over the baffling event. Then, presently, Ca.s.sidy entered the office, and made report of his investigations concerning the pistol with the silencer attachment.

"I got the factory at Hartford on the wire," he explained, "and they gave me Mr. Maxim himself, the inventor of the silencer. He said this was surely a special gun, which was made for the use of Henry Sylvester, one of the professors at Yale. He wanted it for demonstration purposes.

Mr. Maxim said the things have never been put on the market, and that they never will be."

"For humane reasons," Demarest commented, nodding approbation.

"Good thing, too!" Burke conceded. "They'd make murder too devilish easy, and it's easy enough now.... Well, Ca.s.sidy?"

"I got hold of this man, Sylvester," Ca.s.sidy went on. "I had him on the 'phone, too. He says that his house was robbed about eight weeks ago, and among other things the silencer was stolen." Ca.s.sidy paused, and chuckled drily. "He adds the startling information that the New Haven police have not been able to recover any of the stolen property. Them rube cops are immense!"

Demarest smiled slyly, as the detective, at a nod from his superior, went toward the door.

"No," he said, maliciously; "only the New York police recover stolen goods."

"Good-night!" quoth Ca.s.sidy, turning at the door, in admission of his discomfiture over the thrust, while Burke himself grinned wryly in appreciation of the gibe.

Demarest grew grave again, as he put the question that was troubling him most.

"Is there any chance that young Gilder did shoot Griggs?"

"You can search me!" the Inspector answered, disconsolately. "My men were just outside the door of the room where Eddie Griggs was shot to death, and none of 'em heard a sound. It's that infernal silencer thing.

Of course, I know that all the gang was in the house."

"But tell me just how you know that fact," Demarest objected very crisply. "Did you see them go in?"

"No, I didn't," the Inspector admitted, tartly. "But Griggs----"

Demarest permitted himself a sneer born of legal knowledge.

"Griggs is dead, Burke. You're up against it. You can't prove that Garson, or Chicago Red, or Dacey, ever entered that house."

The Inspector scowled over this positive statement.

"But Griggs said they were going to," he argued.

"I know," Demarest agreed, with an exasperating air of shrewdness; "but Griggs is dead. You see, Burke, you couldn't in a trial even repeat what he told you. It's not permissible evidence."

"Oh, the law!" the Inspector snorted, with much choler. "Well, then," he went on belligerently, "I'll charge young Gilder with murder, and call the Turner woman as a witness."

The District Attorney laughed aloud over this project.

"You can't question her on the witness-stand," he explained patronizingly to the badgered police official. "The law doesn't allow you to make a wife testify against her husband. And, what's more, you can't arrest her, and then force her to go into the witness-stand, either. No, Burke," he concluded emphatically, "your only chance of getting the murderer of Griggs is by a confession."

"Then, I'll charge them both with the murder," the Inspector growled vindictively. "And, by G.o.d, they'll both go to trial unless somebody comes through." He brought his huge fist down on the desk with violence, and his voice was forbidding. "If it's my last act on earth," he declared, "I'm going to get the man who shot Eddie Griggs."

Demarest was seriously disturbed by the situation that had developed. He was under great personal obligations to Edward Gilder, whose influence in fact had been the prime cause of his success in attaining to the important official position he now held, and he would have gone far to serve the magnate in any difficulty that might arise. He had been perfectly willing to employ all the resources of his office to relieve the son from the entanglement with a woman of unsavory notoriety. Now, thanks to the miscarried plotting of Burke to the like end, what before had been merely a vicious state of affairs was become one of the utmost dreadfulness. The worst of crimes had been committed in the house of Edward Gilder himself, and his son acknowledged himself as the murderer.

The District Attorney felt a genuine sorrow in thinking of the anguish this event must have brought on the father. He had, as well, sympathy enough for the son. His acquaintance with the young man convinced him that the boy had not done the deed of b.l.o.o.d.y violence. In that fact was a mingling of comfort and of anxiety. It had been better, doubtless, if indeed d.i.c.k had shot Griggs, had indicted a just penalty on a housebreaker. But the District Attorney was not inclined to credit the confession. Burke's account of the plot in which the stool-pigeon had been the agent offered too many complications. Altogether, the aspect of the case served to indicate that d.i.c.k could not have been the slayer....

Demarest shook his head dejectedly.

"Burke," he said, "I want the boy to go free. I don't believe for a minute that d.i.c.k Gilder ever killed this pet stool-pigeon of yours. And, so, you must understand this: I want him to go free, of course."

Burke frowned refusal at this suggestion. Here was a matter in which his rights must not be invaded. He, too, would have gone far to serve a man of Edward Gilder's standing, but in this instance his professional pride was in revolt. He had been defied, trapped, made a victim of the gang who had killed his most valued informer.

"The youngster'll go free when he tells what he knows," he said angrily, "and not a minute before." His expression lightened a little. "Perhaps the old gentleman can make him talk. I can't. He's under that woman's thumb, of course, and she's told him he mustn't say a word. So, he don't." A grin of half-embarra.s.sed appreciation moved the heavy jaws as he glanced at the District Attorney. "You see," he explained, "I can't make him talk, but I might if circ.u.mstances were different. On account of his being the old man's son, I'm a little cramped in my style."

It was, in truth, one thing to browbeat and a.s.sault a convict like Dacey or Chicago Red, but quite another to employ the like violence against a youth of d.i.c.k Gilder's position in the world. Demarest understood perfectly, but he was inclined to be sceptical over the Inspector's theory that d.i.c.k possessed actual cognizance as to the killing of Griggs.

"You think that young Gilder really knows?" he questioned, doubtfully.

"I don't think anything--yet!" Burke retorted. "All I know is this: Eddie Griggs, the most valuable crook that ever worked for me, has been murdered." The official's voice was charged with threatening as he went on. "And some one, man or woman, is going to pay for it!"

"Woman?" Demarest repeated, in some astonishment.

Burke's voice came merciless.

"I mean, Mary Turner," he said slowly.

Demarest was shocked.

"But, Burke," he expostulated, "she's not that sort." The Inspector sneered openly.

"How do you know she ain't?" he demanded. "Well, anyhow, she's made a monkey out of the Police Department, and, first, last, and all the time, I'm a copper... And that reminds me," he went on with a resumption of his usual curt bluntness, "I want you to wait for Mr. Gilder outside, while I get busy with the girl they've brought down from Mary Turner's flat."

CHAPTER XXI. AGGIE AT BAY.

Burke, after the lawyer had left him, watched the door expectantly for the coming of the girl, whom he had ordered brought before him. But, when at last Dan appeared, and stood aside to permit her pa.s.sing into the office, the Inspector gasped at the unexpectedness of the vision.

He had antic.i.p.ated the coming of a woman of that world with which he was most familiar in the exercise of his professional duties--the underworld of criminals, some one beautiful perhaps, but with the brand of viciousness marked subtly, yet visibly for the trained eye to see. Then, even in that first moment, he told himself that he should have been prepared for the unusual in this instance, since the girl had to do with Mary Turner, and that disturbing person herself showed in face and form and manner nothing to suggest aught but a gentlewoman. And, in the next instant, the Inspector forgot his surprise in a sincere, almost ardent admiration.

The girl was rather short, but of a slender elegance of form that was ravishing. She was gowned, too, with a chic nicety to arouse the envy of all less-fortunate women. Her costume had about it an indubitable air, a finality of perfection in its kind. On another, it might have appeared perhaps the merest trifle garish. But that fault, if in fact it ever existed, was made into a virtue by the correcting innocence of the girl's face. It was a childish face, childish in the exquisite smoothness of the soft, pink skin, childish in the wondering stare of the blue eyes, now so widely opened in dismay, childish in the wistful drooping of the rosebud mouth.

The girl advanced slowly, with a laggard hesitation in her movements obviously from fear. She approached the desk, from behind which the Inspector watched, fascinated by the fresh and wholesome beauty of this young creature. He failed to observe the underlying anger beneath the girl's outward display of alarm. He shook off his first impression by means of a resort to his customary bl.u.s.ter in such cases.

"Now, then, my girl," he said roughly, "I want to know----"

There came a change, wrought in the twinkling of an eye. The tiny, trimly shod foot of the girl rose and fell in a wrathful stamp.

"How dare you!" The clear blue eyes were become darkened with anger.

There was a deepened leaf of red in either cheek. The drooping lips drooped no longer, but were bent to a haughtiness that was finely impressive.

Before the offended indignation of the young woman, Burke sat bewildered by embarra.s.sment for once in his life, and quite at a loss.

"What's that?" he said, dubiously.

The girl explained the matter explicitly enough.