dred dollars?"

"Yes. She put the amount higher, but I told her she'd better not go for
too big a slice or she might get nothing--that there was such a thing
as setting the police after her. She laughed at this in such a wicked,
sneering way that I felt my flesh creep, and said she knew the police,
and some of their masters, too, and wasn't afraid of them. She's a
dreadful woman;" and Mrs. Bray shivered in a very natural manner.

"If I thought this would be the last of it!" said Mrs. Dinneford as she
moved about the room in a disturbed way, and with an anxious look on her
face.

"Perhaps," suggested her companion, "it would be best for you to grapple
with this thing at the outset--to take our vampire by the throat and
strangle her at once. The knife is the only remedy for some forms of
disease. If left to grow and prey upon the body, they gradually suck
away its life and destroy it in the end."

"If I only knew how to do it," replied Mrs. Dinneford. "If I could only
get her in my power, I'd make short works of her." Her eyes flashed with
a cruel light.

"It might be done."

"How?"

"Mr. Dinneford knows the chief of police."

The light went out of Mrs. Dinneford's eyes:

"It can't be done in that way, and you know it as well as I do."

Mrs. Dinneford turned upon Mrs. Bray sharply, and with a gleam of
suspicion in her face.

"I don't know any other way, unless you go to the chief yourself,"
replied Mrs. Bray, coolly. "There is no protection in cases like this
except through the law. Without police interference, you are wholly in
this woman's power."

Mrs. Dinneford grew very pale.

"It is always dangerous," went on Mrs. Bray, "to have anything to do
with people of this class. A woman who for hire will take a new-born
baby and sell it to a beggar-woman will not stop at anything. It is very
unfortunate that you are mixed up with her."

"I'm indebted to you for the trouble," replied. Mrs. Dinneford, with
considerable asperity of manner. "You ought to have known something
about the woman before employing her in a delicate affair of this kind."

"Saints don't hire themselves to put away new-born babies," retorted
Mrs. Bray, with an ugly gurgle in her throat. "I told you at the time
that she was a bad woman, and have not forgotten your answer."

"What did I answer?"

"That she might be the devil for all you cared!"

"You are mistaken."

"No; I repeat your very words. They surprised and shocked me at the