your name to such a charge
against me?"

He didn't answer. He had pulled the Sergeant down and was whispering
in his ear. I knew what that meant. It meant a special pull and a
special way of doing things and--

"You'll do well, my girl, to give up Mr. Tausig's property to him," the
Sergeant said stiffly.

"But what have I got that belongs to him?" I demanded.

He grinned and shrugged his big shoulders.

"We've a way of finding out, you know, here. Give it up or--"

"But what does he say I've taken? What charge is there against me?
Have you the right to search any woman who walks in here? And what in
the world would I want a paper of Tausig's for?"

"You won't give it up then?" He tapped a bell.

A woman came in. I had a bad minute there, but it didn't last; it
wasn't the matron I'd brought the baby to.

"You'll take this girl into the other room and search her thoroughly.
The thing we're looking for--" The Sergeant turned to Tausig.

"A small paper," he said eagerly. "A--a contract--just a single sheet
of legal cap paper it was type-written and signed by myself and some
other gentlemen, and folded twice."

The woman looked at me. She was a bit hard-mouthed, with iron-gray
hair, but her eyes looked as though they'd seen a lot and learned not
to flinch, though they still felt like it. I knew that kind of
look--I'd seen it at the Cruelty.

"What an unpleasant job this of yours is," I said to her, smiling up at
her for all the world as that tike of a baby had smiled at me, and
watching her melt just as I had. "I'll not make it a bit harder. This
thing's all a mistake. Which way? ... I'll come back, Mr. Tausig, to
receive your apology, but you can hardly expect me to go to lunch after
this."

He growled a wrathful, resenting mouthful. But he looked a bit puzzled
just the same.

He looked more puzzled yet, even bewildered, when we came back into the
main office a quarter of an hour later, the woman and I, and she
reported that no paper of any kind had she found.

Me? Oh, I was sweet amiability personified with the woman and with the
Sergeant, who began to back-water furiously. But with Tausig--

What? You don't mean to say you're not on, Mag? Oh, dear, dear, it's
well you had that beautiful wig of red hair that puts even Carter's in
the shade; for you'd never have been a success in--in other businesses
I might name.

Bamboozled the woman? Not a bit of it; you can't deceive women wit