The blue eyes were
blazing. The voice came thin and piercing.

"I say, you're a great big stiff! What do you think I am?" she stormed
at the discomfited Inspector, while Cassidy looked on in some enjoyment
at beholding his superior being worsted. Aggie wheeled on the detective.
"Say, take me out of here," she cried in a voice surcharged with
disgust. "I'd rather be in the cooler than here with him!"

Now Burke's tone was dangerous.

"You'll tell," he growled, "or you'll go up the river for a stretch."

"I don't know anything," the girl retorted, spiritedly. "And, if I did,
I wouldn't tell--not in a million years!" She thrust her head forward
challengingly as she faced the Inspector, and her expression was
resolute. "Now, then," she ended, "send me up--if you can!"

"Take her away," Burke snapped to the detective.

Aggie went toward Cassidy without any sign of reluctance.

"Yes, do, please!" she exclaimed with a sneer. "And do it in a hurry.
Being in the room with him makes me sick! She turned to stare at the
Inspector with eyes that were very clear and very hard. In this moment,
there was nothing childish in their gaze.

"Thought I'd squeal, did you?" she said, evenly. "Yes, I will"--the red
lips bent to a smile of supreme scorn--"like hell!"

CHAPTER XXII. THE TRAP THAT FAILED.

Burke, despite his quality of heaviness, was blest with a keen sense of
humor, against which at times his professional labors strove mutinously.
In the present instance, he had failed utterly to obtain any information
of value from the girl whom he had just been examining. On the contrary,
he had been befooled outrageously by a female criminal, in a manner to
wound deeply his professional pride. Nevertheless, he bore no grudge
against the adventuress. His sense of the absurd served him well, and he
took a lively enjoyment in recalling the method by which her plausible
wiles had beguiled him. He gave her a real respect for the adroitness
with which she had deceived him--and he was not one to be readily
deceived. So, now, as the scornful maiden went out of the door under the
escort of Cassidy, Burke bowed gallantly to her lithe back, and blew
a kiss from his thick fingertips, in mocking reverence for her as
an artist in her way. Then, he seated himself, pressed the desk
call-button, and, when he had learned that Edward Gilder was arrived,
ordered that the magnate and the District Attorney be admitted, and that
the son, also, be sen