," she
concluded, "what are you going to do about it?"

Burke explained.

"This is what I'm going to do about it. One way or another, I'm going to
get you."

The District Attorney, however, judged it advisable to use more
persuasive methods.

"Miss Turner," he said, with an appearance of sincerity, "I'm going to
appeal to your sense of fair play."

Mary's shining eyes met his for a long moment, and before the challenge
in hers, his fell. He remembered then those doubts that had assailed him
when this girl had been sentenced to prison, remembered the half-hearted
plea he had made in her behalf to Richard Gilder.

"That was killed," Mary said, "killed four years ago."

But Demarest persisted. Influence had been brought to bear on him. It
was for her own sake now that he urged her.

"Let young Gilder alone."

Mary laughed again. But there was no hint of joyousness in the musical
tones. Her answer was frank--brutally frank. She had nothing to conceal.

"His father sent me away for three years--three years for something I
didn't do. Well, he's got to pay for it."

By this time, Burke, a man of superior intelligence, as one must be to
reach such a position of authority, had come to realize that here was
a case not to be carried through by blustering, by intimidation, by the
rough ruses familiar to the force. Here was a woman of extraordinary
intelligence, as well as of peculiar personal charm, who merely made
sport of his fulminations, and showed herself essentially armed against
anything he might do, by a court injunction, a thing unheard of until
this moment in the case of a common crook. It dawned upon him that this
was, indeed, not a common crook. Moreover, there had grown in him a
certain admiration for the ingenuity and resource of this woman, though
he retained all his rancor against one who dared thus to resist the duly
constituted authority. So, in the end, he spoke to her frankly, without
a trace of his former virulence, with a very real, if rugged, sincerity.

"Don't fool yourself, my girl," he said in his huge voice, which was now
modulated to a degree that made it almost unfamiliar to himself. "You
can't go through with this. There's always a weak link in the chain
somewhere. It's up to me to find it, and I will."

His candor moved her to a like honesty.

"Now," she said, and there was respect in the glance she gave the
stalwart man, "now you really sound dangerous."

There came an interruption