"On the level, now," the Inspector demanded, quite unmoved by the final declarations, "when did you see Mary Turner last?"

Aggie resorted anew to her practices of deception. Her voice held the accents of unimpeachable truth, and her eyes looked unflinchingly into those of her questioner as she answered.

"Early this morning," she declared. "We slept together last night, because I had the w.i.l.l.i.e.s. She blew the joint about half-past ten."

Burke shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger.

"What's the use of your lying to me?" he remonstrated.

"What, me?" Aggie clamored, with every evidence of being deeply wounded by the charge against her veracity. "Oh, I wouldn't do anything like that--on the level! What would be the use? I couldn't fool you, Commissioner."

Burke stroked his chin sheepishly, under the influence of memories of Miss Helen Travers West.

"So help me," Aggie continued with the utmost solemnity, "Mary never left the house all night. I'd swear that's the truth on a pile of Bibles a mile high!"

"Have to be higher than that," the Inspector commented, grimly. "You see, Aggie Lynch, Mary Turner was arrested just after midnight." His voice deepened and came bl.u.s.tering. "Young woman, you'd better tell all you know."

"I don't know a thing!" Aggie retorted, sharply. She faced the Inspector fiercely, quite unabashed by the fact that her vigorous offer to commit perjury had been of no avail.

Burke, with a quick movement, drew the pistol from his pocket and extended it toward the girl.

"How long has she owned this gun?" he said, threateningly.

Aggie showed no trace of emotion as her glance ran over the weapon.

"She didn't own it," was her firm answer.

"Oh, then it's Garson's!" Burke exclaimed.

"I don't know whose it is," Aggie replied, with an air of boredom well calculated to deceive. "I never laid eyes on it till now."

The Inspector's tone abruptly took on a somber coloring, with an underlying menace.

"English Eddie was killed with this gun last night," he said. "Now, who did it?" His broad face was sinister. "Come on, now! Who did it?"

Aggie became flippant, seemingly unimpressed by the Inspector's savageness.

"How should I know?" she drawled. "What do you think I am--a fortune-teller?"

"You'd better come through," Burke reiterated. Then his manner changed to wheedling. "If you're the wise kid I think you are, you will."

Aggie waxed very petulant over this insistence.

"I tell you, I don't know anything! Say, what are you trying to hand me, anyway?"

Burke scowled on the girl portentously, and shook his head.

"Now, it won't do, I tell you, Aggie Lynch. I'm wise. You listen to me."

Once more his manner turned to the cajoling. "You tell me what you know, and I'll see you make a clean get-away, and I'll slip you a nice little piece of money, too."

The girl's face changed with startling swiftness. She regarded the Inspector shrewdly, a crafty glint in her eyes.

"Let me get this straight," she said. "If I tell you what I know about Mary Turner and Joe Garson, I get away?"

"Clean!" Burke e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, eagerly.

"And you'll slip me some coin, too?"

"That's it!" came the hasty a.s.surance. "Now, what do you say?"

The small figure grew tense. The delicate, childish face was suddenly distorted with rage, a rage black and venomous. The blue eyes were blazing. The voice came thin and piercing.

"I say, you're a great big stiff! What do you think I am?" she stormed at the discomfited Inspector, while Ca.s.sidy looked on in some enjoyment at beholding his superior being worsted. Aggie wheeled on the detective.

"Say, take me out of here," she cried in a voice surcharged with disgust. "I'd rather be in the cooler than here with him!"

Now Burke's tone was dangerous.

"You'll tell," he growled, "or you'll go up the river for a stretch."

"I don't know anything," the girl retorted, spiritedly. "And, if I did, I wouldn't tell--not in a million years!" She thrust her head forward challengingly as she faced the Inspector, and her expression was resolute. "Now, then," she ended, "send me up--if you can!"

"Take her away," Burke snapped to the detective.

Aggie went toward Ca.s.sidy without any sign of reluctance.

"Yes, do, please!" she exclaimed with a sneer. "And do it in a hurry.

Being in the room with him makes me sick! She turned to stare at the Inspector with eyes that were very clear and very hard. In this moment, there was nothing childish in their gaze.

"Thought I'd squeal, did you?" she said, evenly. "Yes, I will"--the red lips bent to a smile of supreme scorn--"like h.e.l.l!"

CHAPTER XXII. THE TRAP THAT FAILED.

Burke, despite his quality of heaviness, was blest with a keen sense of humor, against which at times his professional labors strove mutinously.

In the present instance, he had failed utterly to obtain any information of value from the girl whom he had just been examining. On the contrary, he had been befooled outrageously by a female criminal, in a manner to wound deeply his professional pride. Nevertheless, he bore no grudge against the adventuress. His sense of the absurd served him well, and he took a lively enjoyment in recalling the method by which her plausible wiles had beguiled him. He gave her a real respect for the adroitness with which she had deceived him--and he was not one to be readily deceived. So, now, as the scornful maiden went out of the door under the escort of Ca.s.sidy, Burke bowed gallantly to her lithe back, and blew a kiss from his thick fingertips, in mocking reverence for her as an artist in her way. Then, he seated himself, pressed the desk call-b.u.t.ton, and, when he had learned that Edward Gilder was arrived, ordered that the magnate and the District Attorney be admitted, and that the son, also, be sent up from his cell.

"It's a bad business, sir," Burke said, with hearty sympathy, to the shaken father, after the formal greetings that followed the entrance of the two men. "It's a very bad business."

"What does he say?" Gilder questioned. There was something pitiful in the distress of this man, usually so strong and so certain of his course. Now, he was hesitant in his movements, and his mellow voice came more weakly than its wont. There was a pathetic pleading in the dulled eyes with which he regarded the Inspector.

"Nothing!" Burke answered. "That's why I sent for you. I suppose Mr.

Demarest has made the situation plain to you."

Gilder nodded, his face miserable.

"Yes," he has explained it to me, he said in a lifeless voice. "It's a terrible position for my boy. But you'll release him at once, won't you?" Though he strove to put confidence into his words, his painful doubt was manifest.

"I can't," Burke replied, reluctantly, but bluntly. "You ought not to expect it, Mr. Gilder."