she come
from?"

"Sure, they was tipped off," Cassidy 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," Cassidy 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 nobody 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?"

Cassidy, 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. Cassidy struggled with all his pride
against the dominant fury this man hurled on him.

"What?" he demanded, blusteringly. But his tone was weaker