n
using the interim in a succession of heated rushes from the St. Nicholas
Hotel to the Agency, where he had given my superintendents and clerks
voluminous instructions as to how the investigation should be conducted,
and, in explaining his idea of how detectives should work up any case,
permeated the entire establishment with his fragrant pomposity. He was
also quite impatient that nothing had been done in "our case," as he
termed it, and I could only pacify him by assuring him that it should be
given my immediate attention.

As soon as I could dispose of Harcout I held another consultation with
my General Superintendent, during which the information I had secured at
Rochester was analyzed and recorded, and which, with some other facts
already in possession of the Agency bearing on the case, we decided to
be sufficient to warrant a conclusion that Mrs. Winslow was not Mrs.
Winslow at all, but somebody else altogether, and had had as many
_aliases_ as a cat is supposed to have lives. It was also quite evident,
the more we looked into the matter and searched the records, that
certain other cities of the country had suffered from the much-named
Mrs. Winslow, and in many instances in a quite similar manner to that of
the Rochester infliction.

Running through all the strange chain of evidence that the records of
our almost numberless operations gave, there were also found items which
told of a female not altogether unlike Mrs. Winslow, and there were in
them all traces of a woman absolutely heartless, cold, calculating,
cruel; now here under one name and in one guise, now there under another
name and in another guise, but forever upon that unrelenting search for
power and with that remorseless greed for gold, and also showing as
truly a trace of spiritualism, of lust, and of licentiousness.

Of course the result of it all was only a question of time; only a
question of duration in villainy and shrewd human deviltry; a mere
question of how long supreme depravity would wear in a constant war upon
fairness, purity, and the conscience of society. It never wins--it
always loses, and, as certain as life or death, good or evil, reaches
its sure punishment here, whatever may be the result in that
undiscovered territory of the future which the preachers find happiness
and good incomes in quarrelling over. But as my long experience with
crime and criminals had proven to me the fact that one desperately bad
woman brings upon socie