ent to triumph even over his own
discomfiture in this encounter. "And she had me winging, too!" he
confessed. "Yes, I admit it." He turned to the girl admiringly. "You
sure are immense, little one--immense!" He smiled somewhat more in his
official manner of mastery. "And now, may I have the honor of asking you
to accept the escort of Mr. Cassidy to our gallery."

Aggie sprang to her feet and regarded the Inspector with eyes in which
was now no innocence, such as had beguiled him so recently from those
ingenuous orbs.

"Oh, can that stuff!" she cried, crossly. "Let's get down to business on
the dot--and no frills on it! Keep to cases!"

"Now you're talking," Burke declared, with a new appreciation of the
versatility of this woman--who had not been wasting her time hitherto,
and had no wish to lose it now.

"You can't do anything to us," Aggie declared, strongly. There remained
no trace of the shrinking violet that had been Miss Helen Travers West.
Now, she revealed merely the business woman engaged in a fight against
the law, which was opposed definitely to her peculiar form of business.

"You can't do anything to me, and you know you can't!" she went on, with
an almost convincing tranquillity of assertion. "Why, I'll be sprung
inside an hour." There came a ripple of laughter that reminded the
Inspector of the fashion in which he had been overcome by this woman's
wiles. And she spoke with a certitude of conviction that was rather
terrifying to one who had just fallen under the stress of her spells.

"Why, habeas corpus is my lawyer's middle name!"

"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 willies. 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