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Within the Law: From the Play of Bayard Veiller

by Marvin Dana · English · Gutenberg #905 · 475,748 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Within the Law: From the Play of Bayard Veiller

Author: Marvin Dana
        Bayard Veiller


        
Release date: May 1, 1997 [eBook #905]
                Most recently updated: March 15, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/905

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITHIN THE LAW: FROM THE PLAY OF BAYARD VEILLER ***




Produced by Charles Keller





WITHIN THE LAW

From The Play Of Bayard Veiller

By Marvin Dana





CONTENTS.

     CHAPTER

     I.     The Panel of Light
     II.    A Cheerful Prodigal
     III.   Only Three Years
     IV.    Kisses and Kleptomania
     V.     The Victim of the Law
     VI.    Inferno
     VII.   Within the Law
     VIII.  A Tip from Headquarters
     X.     A Legal Document
     X.     Marked Money
     XI.    The Thief
     XII.   A Bridegroom Spurned
     XIII.  The Advent of Griggs
     XIV.   A Wedding Announcement
     XV.    Aftermath of Tragedy
     XVI.   Burke Plots
     XVII.  Outside the Law
     XVIII. The Noiseless Death
     XIX.   Within the Toils
     XX.    Who Shot Griggs?
     XXI.   Aggie at Bay
     XXII.  The Trap That Failed
     XXIII. The Confession
     XXIV.  Anguish and Bliss



CHAPTER I. THE PANEL OF LIGHT

The lids of the girl's eyes lifted slowly, and she stared at the panel
of light in the wall. Just at the outset, the act of seeing made not the
least impression on her numbed brain. For a long time she continued to
regard the dim illumination in the wall with the same passive fixity
of gaze. Apathy still lay upon her crushed spirit. In a vague way, she
realized her own inertness, and rested in it gratefully, subtly fearful
lest she again arouse to the full horror of her plight. In a curious
subconscious fashion, she was striving to hold on to this deadness
of sensation, thus to win a little respite from the torture that had
exhausted her soul.

Of a sudden, her eyes noted the black lines that lay across the panel
of light. And, in that instant, her spirit was quickened once again. The
clouds lifted from her brain. Vision was clear now. Understanding seized
the full import of this hideous thing on which she looked.... For the
panel of light was a window, set high within a wall of stone. The rigid
lines of black that crossed it were bars--prison bars. It was still
true, then: She was in a cell of the Tombs.

The girl, crouching miserably on the narrow bed, maintained her fixed
watching of the window--that window which was a symbol of her utter
despair. Again, agony wrenched within her. She did not weep: long ago
she had exhausted the relief of tears. She did not pace to and fro in
the comfort of physical movement with which the caged beast finds a
mocking imitation of liberty: long ago, her physical vigors had been
drained under stress of anguish. Now, she was well-nigh incapable of any
bodily activity. There came not even so much as the feeblest moan from
her lips. The torment was far too racking for such futile fashion of
lamentation. She merely sat there in a posture of collapse. To all
outward seeming, nerveless, emotionless, an abject creature. Even
the eyes, which held so fixedly their gaze on the window, were quite
expressionless. Over them lay a film, like that which veils the eyes of
some dead thing. Only an occasional languid motion of the lids revealed
the life that remained.

So still the body. Within the soul, fury raged uncontrolled. For all the
desolate calm of outer seeming, the tragedy of her fate was being acted
with frightful vividness there in memory. In that dreadful remembrance,
her spirit was rent asunder anew by realization of that which had become
her portion.... It was then, as once again the horrible injustice of her
fate racked consciousness with its tortures, that the seeds of revolt
were implanted in her heart. The thought of revenge gave to her the
first meager gleam of comfort that had lightened her moods through many
miserable days and nights. Those seeds of revolt were to be nourished
well, were to grow into their flower--a poison flower, developed through
the three years of convict life to which the judge had sentenced her.

The girl was appalled by the mercilessness of a destiny that had so
outraged right. She was wholly innocent of having done any wrong. She
had struggled through years of privation to keep herself clean and
wholesome, worthy of those gentlefolk from whom she drew her blood.
And earnest effort had ended at last under an overwhelming
accusation--false, yet none the less fatal to her. This accusation,
after soul-wearying delays, had culminated to-day in conviction. The
sentence of the court had been imposed upon her: that for three years
she should be imprisoned.... This, despite her innocence. She had
endured much--miserably much!--for honesty's sake. There wrought the
irony of fate. She had endured bravely for honesty's sake. And the end
of it all was shame unutterable. There was nought left her save a wild
dream of revenge against the world that had martyrized her. “Vengeance
is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord.”... The admonition could not
touch her now. Why should she care for the decrees of a God who had
abandoned her!

There had been nothing in the life of Mary Turner, before the
catastrophe came, to distinguish it from many another. Its most
significant details were of a sordid kind, familiar to poverty. Her
father had been an unsuccessful man, as success is esteemed by this
generation of Mammon-worshipers. He was a gentleman, but the trivial
fact is of small avail to-day. He was of good birth, and he was the
possessor of an inherited competence. He had, as well, intelligence, but
it was not of a financial sort.

So, little by little, his fortune became shrunken toward nothingness,
by reason of injudicious investments. He married a charming woman, who,
after a brief period of wedded happiness, gave her life to the birth
of the single child of the union, Mary. Afterward, in his distress over
this loss, Ray Turner seemed even more incompetent for the management of
business affairs. As the years passed, the daughter grew toward maturity
in an experience of ever-increasing penury. Nevertheless, there was no
actual want of the necessities of life, though always a woful lack of
its elegancies. The girl was in the high-school, when her father finally
gave over his rather feeble effort of living. Between parent and child,
the intimacy had been unusually close. At his death, the father left her
a character well instructed in the excellent principles that had been
his own. That was his sole legacy to her. Of worldly goods, not the
value of a pin.

Yet, measured according to the stern standards of adversity, Mary was
fortunate. Almost at once, she procured a humble employment in the
Emporium, the great department store owned by Edward Gilder. To be
sure, the wage was infinitesimal, while the toil was body-breaking
soul-breaking. Still, the pittance could be made to sustain life, and
Mary was blessed with both soul and body to sustain much. So she merged
herself in the army of workers--in the vast battalion of those that give
their entire selves to a labor most stern and unremitting, and most ill
rewarded.

Mary, nevertheless, avoided the worst perils of her lot. She did not
flinch under privation, but went her way through it, if not serenely, at
least without ever a thought of yielding to those temptations that beset
a girl who is at once poor and charming. Fortunately for her, those
in closest authority over her were not so deeply smitten as to make
obligatory on her a choice between complaisance and loss of position.
She knew of situations like that, the cul-de-sac of chastity, worse
than any devised by a Javert. In the store, such things were matters of
course. There is little innocence for the girl in the modern city.
There can be none for the worker thrown into the storm-center of a great
commercial activity, humming with vicious gossip, all alive with
quips from the worldly wise. At the very outset of her employment, the
sixteen-year-old girl learned that she might eke out the six dollars
weekly by trading on her personal attractiveness to those of the
opposite sex. The idea was repugnant to her; not only from the maidenly
instinct of purity, but also from the moral principles woven into her
character by the teachings of a father wise in most things, though a
fool in finance. Thus, she remained unsmirched, though well informed as
to the verities of life. She preferred purity and penury, rather than a
slight pampering of the body to be bought by its degradation. Among her
fellows were some like herself; others, unlike. Of her own sort, in this
single particular, were the two girls with whom she shared a cheap room.
Their common decency in attitude toward the other sex was the unique
bond of union. In their association, she found no real companionship.
Nevertheless, they were wholesome enough. Otherwise they were
illiterate, altogether uncongenial.

In such wise, through five dreary years, Mary Turner lived. Nine hours
daily, she stood behind a counter. She spent her other waking hours
in obligatory menial labors: cooking her own scant meals over the gas;
washing and ironing, for the sake of that neat appearance which was
required of her by those in authority at the Emporium--yet, more
especially, necessary for her own self-respect. With a mind keen and
earnest, she contrived some solace from reading and studying, since
the free library gave her this opportunity. So, though engaged in
stultifying occupation through most of her hours, she was able to find
food for mental growth. Even, in the last year, she had reached a point
of development whereat she began to study seriously her own position in
the world's economy, to meditate on a method of bettering it. Under this
impulse, hope mounted high in her heart. Ambition was born. By candid
comparison of herself with others about her, she realized the fact that
she possessed an intelligence beyond the average. The training by her
father, too, had been of a superior kind. There was as well, at the back
vaguely, the feeling of particular self-respect that belongs inevitably
to the possessor of good blood. Finally, she demurely enjoyed a modest
appreciation of her own physical advantages. In short, she had
beauty, brains and breeding. Three things of chief importance to any
woman--though there be many minds as to which may be chief among the
three.

I have said nothing specific thus far as to the outer being of Mary
Turner--except as to filmed eyes and a huddled form. But, in a happier
situation, the girl were winning enough. Indeed, more! She was one of
those that possess an harmonious beauty, with, too, the penetrant charm
that springs from the mind, with the added graces born of the spirit.
Just now, as she sat, a figure of desolation, there on the bed in
the Tombs cell, it would have required a most analytical observer to
determine the actualities of her loveliness. Her form was disguised by
the droop of exhaustion. Her complexion showed the pallor of sorrowful
vigils. Her face was no more than a mask of misery. Yet, the shrewd
observer, if a lover of beauty, might have found much for delight, even
despite the concealment imposed by her present condition. Thus, the
stormy glory of her dark hair, great masses that ran a riot of shining
ripples and waves. And the straight line of the nose, not too thin, yet
fine enough for the rapture of a Praxiteles. And the pink daintiness of
the ear-tips, which peered warmly from beneath the pall of tresses. One
could know nothing accurately of the complexion now. But it were easy to
guess that in happier places it would show of a purity to entice, with a
gentle blooming of roses in the cheeks. Even in this hour of unmitigated
evil, the lips revealed a curving beauty of red--not quite crimson,
though near enough for the word; not quite scarlet either; only, a red
gently enchanting, which turned one's thoughts toward tenderness--with
a hint of desire. It was, too, a generous mouth, not too large; still,
happily, not so small as those modeled by Watteau. It was
altogether winsome--more, it was generous and true, desirable for
kisses--yes!--more desirable for strength and for faith.

Like every intelligent woman, Mary had taken the trouble to reinforce
the worth of her physical attractiveness. The instinct of sex was
strong in her, as it must be in every normal woman, since that appeal is
nature's law. She kept herself supple and svelte by many exercises, at
which her companions in the chamber scoffed, with the prudent warning
that more work must mean more appetite. With arms still aching from
the lifting of heavy bolts of cloth to and fro from the shelves, she
nevertheless was at pains nightly to brush with the appointed two
hundred strokes the thick masses of her hair. Even here, in the sordid
desolation of the cell, the lustrous sheen witnessed the fidelity of
her care. So, in each detail of her, the keen observer might have found
adequate reason for admiration. There was the delicacy of the hands,
with fingers tapering, with nails perfectly shaped, neither too dull
nor too shining. And there were, too, finally, the trimly shod feet, set
rather primly on the floor, small, and arched like those of a Spanish
Infanta. In truth, Mary Turner showed the possibilities at least, if not
just now the realities, of a very beautiful woman.

Naturally, in this period of grief, the girl's mind had no concern with
such external merits over which once she had modestly exulted. All
her present energies were set to precise recollection of the ghastly
experience into which she had been thrust.

In its outline, the event had been tragically simple.

There had been thefts in the store. They had been traced eventually to a
certain department, that in which Mary worked. The detective was alert.
Some valuable silks were missed. Search followed immediately. The goods
were found in Mary's locker. That was enough. She was charged with the
theft. She protested innocence--only to be laughed at in derision by
her accusers. Every thief declares innocence. Mr. Gilder himself was
emphatic against her. The thieving had been long continued. An example
must be made. The girl was arrested.

The crowded condition of the court calendar kept her for three months in
the Tombs, awaiting trial. She was quite friendless. To the world, she
was only a thief in duress. At the last, the trial was very short. Her
lawyer was merely an unfledged practitioner assigned to her defense as
a formality of the court. This novice in his profession was so grateful
for the first recognition ever afforded him that he rather assisted than
otherwise the District Attorney in the prosecution of the case.

At the end, twelve good men and true rendered a verdict of guilty
against the shuddering girl in the prisoner's dock.

So simple the history of Mary Turner's trial.... The sentence of the
judge was lenient--only three years!



CHAPTER II. A CHEERFUL PRODIGAL.

That which was the supreme tragedy to the broken girl in the cell merely
afforded rather agreeable entertainment to her former fellows of the
department store. Mary Turner throughout her term of service there had
been without real intimates, so that now none was ready to mourn over
her fate. Even the two room-mates had felt some slight offense, since
they sensed the superiority of her, though vaguely. Now, they found
a smug satisfaction in the fact of her disaster as emphasizing very
pleasurably their own continuance in respectability.

As many a philosopher has observed, we secretly enjoy the misfortunes of
others, particularly of our friends, since they are closest to us. Most
persons hasten to deny this truth in its application to themselves. They
do so either because from lack of clear understanding they are not quite
honest with themselves, from lack of clear introspection, or because, as
may be more easily believed, they are not quite honest in the assertion.
As a matter of fact, we do find a singular satisfaction in the troubles
of others. Contemplation of such suffering renders more striking the
contrasted well-being of our own lot. We need the pains of others
to serve as background for our joys--just as sin is essential as the
background for any appreciation of virtue, even any knowledge of its
existence.... So now, on the day of Mary Turner's trial, there was a
subtle gaiety of gossipings to and fro through the store. The girl's
plight was like a shuttlecock driven hither and yon by the battledores
of many tongues. It was the first time in many years that one of the
employees had been thus accused of theft. Shoplifters were so common as
to be a stale topic. There was a refreshing novelty in this case,
where one of themselves was the culprit. Her fellow workers chatted
desultorily of her as they had opportunity, and complacently thanked
their gods that they were not as she--with reason. Perhaps, a very few
were kindly hearted enough to feel a touch of sympathy for this ruin of
a life.

Of such was Smithson, a member of the executive staff, who did not
hesitate to speak his mind, though none too forcibly. As for that,
Smithson, while the possessor of a dignity nourished by years of
floor-walking, was not given to the holding of vigorous opinions. Yet,
his comment, meager as it was, stood wholly in Mary's favor. And he
spoke with a certain authority, since he had given official attention to
the girl.

Smithson stopped Sarah Edwards, Mr. Gilder's private secretary, as she
was passing through one of the departments that morning, to ask her if
the owner had yet reached his office.

“Been and gone,” was the secretary's answer, with the terseness
characteristic of her.

“Gone!” Smithson repeated, evidently somewhat disturbed by the
information. “I particularly wanted to see him.”

“He'll be back, all right,” Sarah vouchsafed, amiably. “He went
down-town, to the Court of General Sessions. The judge sent for him
about the Mary Turner case.”

“Oh, yes, I remember now,” Smithson exclaimed. Then he added, with a
trace of genuine feeling, “I hope the poor girl gets off. She was a nice
girl--quite the lady, you know, Miss Edwards.”

“No, I don't know,” Sarah rejoined, a bit tartly. Truth to tell, the
secretary was haunted by a grim suspicion that she herself was not quite
the lady of her dreams, and never would be able to acquire the graces of
the Vere De Vere. For Sarah, while a most efficient secretary, was not
in her person of that slender elegance which always characterized her
favorite heroines in the novels she affected. On the contrary, she was
of a sort to have gratified Byron, who declared that a woman in her
maturity should be plump. Now, she recalled with a twinge of envy that
the accused girl had been of an aristocratic slimness of form. “Oh, did
you know her?” she questioned, without any real interest.

Smithson answered with that bland stateliness of manner which was the
fruit of floor-walking politeness.

“Well, I couldn't exactly say I knew her, and yet I might say, after a
manner of speaking, that I did--to a certain extent. You see, they put
her in my department when she first came here to work. She was a good
saleswoman, as saleswomen go. For the matter of that,” he added with a
sudden access of energy, “she was the last girl in the world I'd take
for a thief.” He displayed some evidences of embarrassment over the
honest feeling into which he had been betrayed, and made haste to
recover his usual business manner, as he continued formally. “Will you
please let me know when Mr. Gilder arrives? There are one or two little
matters I wish to discuss with him.”

“All right!” Sarah agreed briskly, and she hurried on toward the private
office.

The secretary was barely seated at her desk when the violent opening of
the door startled her, and, as she looked up, a cheery voice cried out:

“Hello, Dad!”

At the same moment, a young man entered, with an air of care-free
assurance, his face radiant. But, as his glance went to the empty
arm-chair at the desk, he halted abruptly, and his expression changed to
one of disappointment.

“Not here!” he grumbled. Then, once again the smile was on his lips
as his eyes fell on the secretary, who had now risen to her feet in a
flutter of excitement.

“Why, Mr. Dick!” Sarah gasped.

“Hello, Sadie!” came the genial salutation. The young man advanced and
shook hands with her warmly. “I'm home again. Where's Dad?”

Even as he asked the question, the quick sobering of his face bore
witness to his disappointment over not finding his father in the office.
For such was the relationship of the owner of the department store to
this new arrival on the scene. And in the patent chagrin under which the
son now labored was to be found a certain indication of character not
to be disregarded. Unlike many a child, he really loved his father. The
death of the mother years before had left him without other opportunity
for affection in the home, since he had neither brother nor sister. He
loved his father with a depth of feeling that made between the two a
real camaraderie, despite great differences in temperament. In that
simple and sincere regard which he bore for his father, the boy revealed
a heart ready for love, willing to give of itself its best for the one
beloved. Beyond that, as yet, there was little to be said of him with
exactness. He was a spoiled child of fortune, if you wish to have it
so. Certainly, he was only a drone in the world's hive. Thus far, he
had enjoyed the good things of life, without ever doing aught to deserve
them by contributing in return--save by his smiles and his genial air of
happiness.

In the twenty-three years of his life, every gift that money could
lavish had been his. If the sum total of benefit was small, at least
there remained the consoling fact that the harm was even less. Luxury
had not sapped the strength of him. He had not grown vicious, as have so
many of his fellows among the sons of the rich. Some instinct held him
aloof from the grosser vices. His were the trifling faults that had
their origin chiefly in the joy of life, which manifest occasionally in
riotous extravagancies, of a sort actually to harm none, however absurd
and useless they may be.

So much one might see by a glance into the face. He was well groomed,
of course; healthy, all a-tingle with vitality. And in the clear eyes,
which avoided no man's gaze, nor sought any woman's unseemly, there
showed a soul untainted, not yet developed, not yet debased. Through all
his days, Dick Gilder had walked gladly, in the content that springs to
the call of one possessed of a capacity for enjoyment; possessed, too,
of every means for the gratification of desire. As yet, the man of him
was unrevealed in its integrity. No test had been put upon him. The
fires of suffering had not tried the dross of him. What real worth might
lie under this sunny surface the future must determine. There showed now
only this one significant fact: that, in the first moment of his return
from journeyings abroad, he sought his father with all eagerness, and
was sorely grieved because the meeting must still be delayed. It was a
little thing, perhaps. Yet, it was capable of meaning much concerning
the nature of the lad. It revealed surely a tender heart, one responsive
to a pure love. And to one of his class, there are many forces ever
present to atrophy such simple, wholesome power of loving. The ability
to love cleanly and absolutely is the supreme virtue.

Sarah explained that Mr. Gilder had been called to the Court of General
Sessions by the judge.

Dick interrupted her with a gust of laughter.

“What's Dad been doing now?” he demanded, his eyes twinkling. Then,
a reminiscent grin shaped itself on his lips. “Remember the time that
fresh cop arrested him for speeding? Wasn't he wild? I thought he would
have the whole police force discharged.” He smiled again. “The trouble
is,” he declared sedately, “that sort of thing requires practice. Now,
when I'm arrested for speeding, I'm not in the least flustered--oh, not
a little bit! But poor Dad! That one experience of his almost soured his
whole life. It was near the death of him--also, of the city's finest.”

By this time, the secretary had regained her usual poise, which had been
somewhat disturbed by the irruption of the young man. Her round face
shone delightedly as she regarded him. There was a maternal note of
rebuke in her voice as she spoke:

“Why, we didn't expect you back for two or three months yet.”

Once again, Dick laughed, with an infectious gaiety that brought a smile
of response to the secretary's lips.

“Sadie,” he explained confidentially, “don't you dare ever to let the
old man know. He would be all swollen up. It's bad to let a parent swell
up. But the truth is, Sadie, I got kind of homesick for Dad--yes, just
that!” He spoke the words with a sort of shamefaced wonder. It is not
easy for an Anglo-Saxon to confess the realities of affection in
vital intimacies. He repeated the phrase in a curiously appreciative
hesitation, as one astounded by his own emotion. “Yes, homesick for
Dad!”

Then, to cover an excess of sincere feeling, he continued, with a burst
of laughter:

“Besides, Sadie, I was broke.”

The secretary sniffed.

“The cable would have handled that end of it, I guess,” she said,
succinctly.

There was no word of contradiction from Dick, who, from ample
experience, knew that any demand for funds would have received answer
from the father.

“But what is Dad doing in court?” he demanded.

Sarah explained the matter with her usual conciseness:

“One of the girls was arrested for stealing.”

The nature of the son was shown then clearly in one of its best aspects.
At once, he exhibited his instinct toward the quality of mercy, and,
too, his trust in the father whom he loved, by his eager comment.

“And Dad went to court to get her out of the scrape. That's just like
the old man!”

Sarah, however, showed no hint of enthusiasm. Her mind was ever of the
prosaic sort, little prone to flights. In that prosaic quality, was to
be found the explanation of her dependability as a private secretary.
So, now, she merely made a terse statement.

“She was tried to-day, and convicted. The judge sent for Mr. Gilder to
come down this morning and have a talk with him about the sentence.”

There was no lessening of the expression of certainty on the young man's
face. He loved his father, and he trusted where he loved.

“It will be all right,” he declared, in a tone of entire conviction.
“Dad's heart is as big as a barrel. He'll get her off.”

Then, of a sudden, Dick gave a violent start. He added a convincing
groan.

“Oh, Lord!” he exclaimed, dismally. There was shame in his voice. “I
forgot all about it!”

The secretary regarded him with an expression of amazement.

“All about what?” she questioned.

Dick assumed an air vastly more confidential than at any time hitherto.
He leaned toward the secretary's desk, and spoke with a new seriousness
of manner:

“Sadie, have you any money? I'm broker My taxi' has been waiting outside
all this time.”

“Why, yes,” the secretary said, cheerfully. “If you will----”

Dick was discreet enough to turn his attention to a picture on the
wall opposite while Sarah went through those acrobatic performances
obligatory on women who take no chances of losing money by carrying it
in purses.

“There!” she called after a few panting seconds, and exhibited a flushed
face.

Dick turned eagerly and seized the banknote offered him.

“Mighty much obliged, Sadie,” he said, enthusiastically. “But I must
run. Otherwise, this wouldn't be enough for the fare!” And, so saying,
he darted out of the room.



CHAPTER III. ONLY THREE YEARS.

When, at last, the owner of the store entered the office, his face
showed extreme irritation. He did not vouchsafe any greeting to the
secretary, who regarded him with an accurate perception of his mood.
With a diplomacy born of long experience, in her first speech Sarah
afforded an agreeable diversion to her employer's line of thought.

“Mr. Hastings, of the Empire store, called you up, Mr. Gilder, and asked
me to let him know when you returned. Shall I get him on the wire?”

The man's face lightened instantly, and there was even the beginning of
a smile on his lips as he seated himself at the great mahogany desk.

“Yes, yes!” he exclaimed, with evident enthusiasm. The smile grew in
the short interval before the connection was made. When, finally,
he addressed his friend over the telephone, his tones were of the
cheerfulest.

“Oh, good morning. Yes, certainly. Four will suit me admirably....
Sunday? Yes, if you like. We can go out after church, and have luncheon
at the country club.” After listening a moment, he laughed in a pleased
fashion that had in it a suggestion of conscious superiority. “My dear
fellow,” he declared briskly, “you couldn't beat me in a thousand years.
Why, I made the eighteen holes in ninety-two only last week.” He laughed
again at the answer over the wire, then hung up the receiver and pushed
the telephone aside, as he turned his attention to the papers neatly
arranged on the desk ready to his hand.

The curiosity of the secretary could not be longer delayed.

“What did they do with the Turner girl?” she inquired in an elaborately
casual manner.

Gilder did not look up from the heap of papers, but answered rather
harshly, while once again his expression grew forbidding.

“I don't know--I couldn't wait,” he said. He made a petulant gesture as
he went on: “I don't see why Judge Lawlor bothered me about the matter.
He is the one to impose sentence, not I. I am hours behind with my work
now.”

For a few minutes he gave himself up to the routine of business,
distributing the correspondence and other various papers for the action
of subordinates, and speaking his orders occasionally to the attentive
secretary with a quickness and precision that proclaimed the capable
executive. The observer would have realized at once that here was a
man obviously fitted to the control of large affairs. The ability that
marches inevitably to success showed unmistakably in the face and form,
and in the fashion of speech. Edward Gilder was a big man physically,
plainly the possessor of that abundant vital energy which is a prime
requisite for achievement in the ordering of modern business concerns.
Force was, indeed, the dominant quality of the man. His tall figure was
proportionately broad, and he was heavily fleshed. In fact, the body was
too ponderous. Perhaps, in that characteristic might be found a clue
to the chief fault in his nature. For he was ponderous, spiritually and
mentally, as well as materially. The fact was displayed suggestively in
the face, which was too heavy with its prominent jowls and aggressive
chin and rather bulbous nose. But there was nothing flabby anywhere.
The ample features showed no trace of weakness, only a rude, abounding
strength. There was no lighter touch anywhere. Evidently a just man
according to his own ideas, yet never one to temper justice with mercy.
He appeared, and was, a very practical and most prosaic business man. He
was not given to a humorous outlook on life. He took it and himself with
the utmost seriousness. He was almost entirely lacking in imagination,
that faculty which is essential to sympathy.

“Take this,” he directed presently, when he had disposed of the matters
before him. Forthwith, he dictated the following letter, and now his
voice took on a more unctuous note, as of one who is appreciative of his
own excellent generosity.

“THE EDITOR,

“The New York Herald.

“DEAR SIR: Inclosed please find my check for a thousand dollars for your
free-ice fund. It is going to be a very hard summer for the poor, and
I hope by thus starting the contributions for your fine charity at
this early day that you will be able to accomplish even more good than
usually.

“Very truly yours.”

He turned an inquiring glance toward Sarah.

“That's what I usually give, isn't it?”

The secretary nodded energetically.

“Yes,” she agreed in her brisk manner, “that's what you have given every
year for the last ten years.”

The statement impressed Gilder pleasantly. His voice was more mellow as
he made comment. His heavy face was radiant, and he smiled complacently.

“Ten thousand dollars to this one charity alone!” he exclaimed. “Well,
it is pleasant to be able to help those less fortunate than ourselves.”
 He paused, evidently expectant of laudatory corroboration from the
secretary.

But Sarah, though she could be tactful enough on occasion, did not
choose to meet her employer's anticipations just now. For that matter,
her intimate services permitted on her part some degree of familiarity
with the august head of the establishment. Besides, she did not stand in
awe of Gilder, as did the others in his service. No man is a hero to
his valet, or to his secretary. Intimate association is hostile to
hero-worship. So, now, Sarah spoke nonchalantly, to the indignation of
the philanthropist:

“Oh, yes, sir. Specially when you make so much that you don't miss it.”

Gilder's thick gray brows drew down in a frown of displeasure, while his
eyes opened slightly in sheer surprise over the secretary's unexpected
remark. He hesitated for only an instant before replying with an air
of great dignity, in which was a distinct note of rebuke for the girl's
presumption.

“The profits from my store are large, I admit, Sarah. But I neither
smuggle my goods, take rebates from railroads, conspire against small
competitors, nor do any of the dishonest acts that disgrace other
lines of business. So long as I make my profits honestly, I am honestly
entitled to them, no matter how big they are.”

The secretary, being quite content with the havoc she had wrought in her
employer's complacency over his charitableness, nodded, and contented
herself with a demure assent to his outburst.

“Yes, sir,” she agreed, very meekly.

Gilder stared at her for a few seconds, somewhat indignantly. Then,
he bethought himself of a subtle form of rebuke by emphasizing his
generosity.

“Have the cashier send my usual five hundred to the Charities
Organization Society,” he ordered. With this new evidence of his
generous virtue, the frown passed from his brows. If, for a fleeting
moment, doubt had assailed him under the spur of the secretary's words,
that doubt had now vanished under his habitual conviction as to his
sterling worth to the world at large.

It was, therefore, with his accustomed blandness of manner that he
presently acknowledged the greeting of George Demarest, the chief of the
legal staff that looked after the firm's affairs. He was aware without
being told that the lawyer had called to acquaint him with the issue in
the trial of Mary Turner.

“Well, Demarest?” he inquired, as the dapper attorney advanced into the
room at a rapid pace, and came to a halt facing the desk, after a lively
nod in the direction of the secretary.

The lawyer's face sobered, and his tone as he answered was tinged with
constraint.

“Judge Lawlor gave her three years,” he replied, gravely. It was plain
from his manner that he did not altogether approve.

But Gilder was unaffected by the attorney's lack of satisfaction over
the result. On the contrary, he smiled exultantly. His oritund voice
took on a deeper note, as he turned toward the secretary.

“Good!” he exclaimed. “Take this, Sarah.” And he continued, as the girl
opened her notebook and poised the pencil: “Be sure to have Smithson
post a copy of it conspicuously in all the girls' dressing-rooms, and in
the reading-room, and in the lunch-rooms, and in the assembly-room.” He
cleared his throat ostentatiously and proceeded to the dictation of the
notice:

“Mary Turner, formerly employed in this store, was to-day sentenced to
prison for three years, having been convicted for the theft of goods
valued at over four hundred dollars. The management wishes again to
draw attention on the part of its employees to the fact that honesty is
always the best policy.... Got that?”

“Yes, sir.” The secretary's voice was mechanical, without any trace of
feeling. She was not minded to disturb her employer a second time this
morning by injudicious comment.

“Take it to Smithson,” Gilder continued, “and tell him that I wish him
to attend to its being posted according to my directions at once.”

Again, the girl made her formal response in the affirmative, then left
the room.

Gilder brought forth a box of cigars from a drawer of the desk, opened
it and thrust it toward the waiting lawyer, who, however, shook his
head in refusal, and continued to move about the room rather restlessly.
Demarest paid no attention to the other's invitation to a seat, but the
courtesy was perfunctory on Gilder's part, and he hardly perceived
the perturbation of his caller, for he was occupied in selecting and
lighting a cigar with the care of a connoisseur. Finally, he spoke
again, and now there was an infinite contentment in the rich voice.

“Three years--three years! That ought to be a warning to the rest of the
girls.” He looked toward Demarest for acquiescence.

The lawyer's brows were knit as he faced the proprietor of the store.

“Funny thing, this case!” he ejaculated. “In some features, one of the
most unusual I have seen since I have been practicing law.”

The smug contentment abode still on Gilder's face as he puffed in
leisurely ease on his cigar and uttered a trite condolence.

“Very sad!--quite so! Very sad case, I call it.” Demarest went on
speaking, with a show of feeling: “Most unusual case, in my estimation.
You see, the girl keeps on declaring her innocence. That, of course, is
common enough in a way. But here, it's different. The point is, somehow,
she makes her protestations more convincing than they usually do. They
ring true, as it seems to me.”

Gilder smiled tolerantly.

“They didn't ring very true to the jury, it would seem,” he retorted.
And his voice was tart as he added: “Nor to the judge, since he deemed
it his duty to give her three years.”

“Some persons are not very sensitive to impressions in such cases, I
admit,” Demarest returned, coolly. If he meant any subtlety of allusion
to his hearer, it failed wholly to pierce the armor of complacency.

“The stolen goods were found in her locker,” Gilder declared in a
tone of finality. “Some of them, I have been given to understand, were
actually in the pocket of her coat.”

“Well,” the attorney said with a smile, “that sort of thing makes
good-enough circumstantial evidence, and without circumstantial evidence
there would be few convictions for crime. Yet, as a lawyer, I'm free to
admit that circumstantial evidence alone is never quite safe as proof of
guilt. Naturally, she says some one else must have put the stolen goods
there. As a matter of exact reasoning, that is quite within the measure
of possibility. That sort of thing has been done countless times.”

Gilder sniffed indignantly.

“And for what reason?” he demanded. “It's too absurd to think about.”

“In similar cases,” the lawyer answered, “those actually guilty of the
thefts have thus sought to throw suspicion on the innocent in order
to avoid it on themselves when the pursuit got too hot on their trail.
Sometimes, too, such evidence has been manufactured merely to satisfy a
spite against the one unjustly accused.”

“It's too absurd to think about,” Gilder repeated, impatiently. “The
judge and the jury found no fault with the evidence.”

Demarest realized that this advocacy in behalf of the girl was hardly
fitting on the part of the legal representative of the store she was
supposed to have robbed, so he abruptly changed his line of argument.

“She says that her record of five years in your employ ought to count
something in her favor.”

Gilder, however, was not disposed to be sympathetic as to a matter so
flagrantly opposed to his interests.

“A court of justice has decreed her guilty,” he asserted once again,
in his ponderous manner. His emphasis indicated that there the affair
ended.

Demarest smiled cynically as he strode to and fro.

“Nowadays,” he shot out, “we don't call them courts of justice: we call
them courts of law.”

Gilder yielded only a rather dubious smile over the quip. This much he
felt that he could afford, since those same courts served his personal
purposes well in deed.

“Anyway,” he declared, becoming genial again, “it's out of our hands.
There's nothing we can do, now.”

“Why, as to that,” the lawyer replied, with a hint of hesitation, “I am
not so sure. You see, the fact of the matter is that, though I helped to
prosecute the case, I am not a little bit proud of the verdict.”

Gilder raised his eyebrows in unfeigned astonishment. Even yet, he was
quite without appreciation of the attorney's feeling in reference to the
conduct of the case.

“Why?” he questioned, sharply.

“Because,” the lawyer said, again halting directly before the desk, “in
spite of all the evidence against her, I am not sure that Mary Turner is
guilty--far from it, in fact!”

Gilder uttered an ejaculation of contempt, but Demarest went on
resolutely.

“Anyhow,” he explained, “the girl wants to see you, and I wish to urge
you to grant her an interview.”

Gilder flared at this suggestion, and scowled wrathfully on the lawyer,
who, perhaps with professional prudence, had turned away in his rapid
pacing of the room.

“What's the use?” Gilder stormed. A latent hardness revealed itself at
the prospect of such a visitation. And along with this hardness came
another singular revelation of the nature of the man. For there was
consternation in his voice, as he continued in vehement expostulation
against the idea. If there was harshness in his attitude there was,
too, a fugitive suggestion of tenderness alarmed over the prospect of
undergoing such an interview with a woman.

“I can't have her crying all over the office and begging for mercy,” he
protested, truculently. But a note of fear lay under the petulance.

Demarest's answer was given with assurance,

“You are mistaken about that. The girl doesn't beg for mercy. In fact,
that's the whole point of the matter. She demands justice--strange as
that may seem, in a court of law!--and nothing else. The truth is, she's
a very unusual girl, a long way beyond the ordinary sales-girl, both in
brains and in education.”

“The less reason, then, for her being a thief,” Gilder grumbled in his
heaviest voice.

“And perhaps the less reason for believing her to be a thief,” the
lawyer retorted, suavely. He paused for a moment, then went on. There
was a tone of sincere determination in his voice. “Just before the judge
imposed sentence, he asked her if she had anything to say. You know,
it's just a usual form--a thing that rarely means much of anything.
But this case was different, let me tell you. She surprised us all by
answering at once that she had. It's really a pity, Gilder, that you
didn't wait. Why, that poor girl made a--damn--fine speech!”

The lawyer's forensic aspirations showed in his honest appreciation of
the effectiveness of such oratory from the heart as he had heard in the
courtroom that day.

“Pooh! pooh!” came the querulous objection. “She seems to have
hypnotized you.” Then, as a new thought came to the magnate, he spoke
with a trace of anxiety. There were always the reporters, looking for
space to fill with foolish vaporings.

“Did she say anything against me, or the store?”

“Not a word,” the lawyer replied, gravely. His smile of appreciation was
discreetly secret. “She merely told us how her father died when she was
sixteen years old. She was compelled after that to earn her own living.
Then she told how she had worked for you for five years steadily,
without there ever being a single thing against her. She said, too, that
she had never seen the things found in her locker. And she said more
than that! She asked the judge if he himself understood what it means
for a girl to be sentenced to prison for something she hadn't done.
Somehow, Gilder, the way she talked had its effect on everybody in the
courtroom. I know! It's my business to understand things like that. And
what she said rang true. What she said, and the way she said it,
take brains and courage. The ordinary crook has neither. So, I had a
suspicion that she might be speaking the truth. You see, Gilder, it all
rang true! And it's my business to know how things ring in that
way.” There was a little pause, while the lawyer moved back and forth
nervously. Then, he added: “I believe Lawlor would have suspended
sentence if it hadn't been for your talk with him.”

There were not wanting signs that Gilder was impressed. But the gentler
fibers of the man were atrophied by the habits of a lifetime. What heart
he had once possessed had been buried in the grave of his young wife, to
be resurrected only for his son. In most things, he was consistently a
hard man. Since he had no imagination, he could have no real sympathy.

He whirled about in his swivel chair, and blew a cloud of smoke from his
mouth. When he spoke, his voice was deeply resonant.

“I simply did my duty,” he said. “You are aware that I did not seek
any consultation with Judge Lawlor. He sent for me, and asked me what I
thought about the case--whether I thought it would be right to let the
girl go on a suspended sentence. I told him frankly that I believed that
an example should be made of her, for the sake of others who might be
tempted to steal. Property has some rights, Demarest, although it seems
to be getting nowadays so that anybody is likely to deny it.” Then the
fretful, half-alarmed note sounded in his voice again, as he continued:
“I can't understand why the girl wants to see me.”

The lawyer smiled dryly, since he had his back turned at the moment.

“Why,” he vouchsafed, “she just said that, if you would see her for ten
minutes, she would tell you how to stop the thefts in this store.”

Gilder displayed signs of triumph. He brought his chair to a level and
pounded the desk with a weighty fist.

“There!” he cried. “I knew it. The girl wants to confess. Well, it's
the first sign of decent feeling she's shown. I suppose it ought to be
encouraged. Probably there have been others mixed up in this.”

Demarest attempted no denial.

“Perhaps,” he admitted, though he spoke altogether without conviction.
“But,” he continued insinuatingly, “at least it can do no harm if you
see her. I thought you would be willing, so I spoke to the District
Attorney, and he has given orders to bring her here for a few minutes on
the way to the Grand Central Station. They're taking her up to Burnsing,
you know. I wish, Gilder, you would have a little talk with her. No harm
in that!” With the saying, the lawyer abruptly went out of the office,
leaving the owner of the store fuming.



CHAPTER IV. KISSES AND KLEPTOMANIA.

“Hello, Dad!”

After the attorney's departure, Gilder had been rather fussily going
over some of the papers on his desk. He was experiencing a vague feeling
of injury on account of the lawyer's ill-veiled efforts to arouse his
sympathy in behalf of the accused girl. In the instinct of strengthening
himself against the possibility of yielding to what he deemed weakness,
the magnate rehearsed the facts that justified his intolerance, and,
indeed, soon came to gloating over the admirable manner in which
righteousness thrives in the world. And it was then that an interruption
came in the utterance of two words, words of affection, of love, cried
out in the one voice he most longed to hear--for the voice was that of
his son. Yet, he did not look up. The thing was altogether impossible!
The boy was philandering, junketing, somewhere on the Riviera. His
first intimation as to the exact place would come in the form of a cable
asking for money. Somehow, his feelings had been unduly stirred that
morning; he had grown sentimental, dreaming of pleasant things.... All
this in a second. Then, he looked up. Why, it was true! It was Dick's
face there, smiling in the doorway. Yes, it was Dick, it was Dick
himself! Gilder sprang to his feet, his face suddenly grown younger,
radiant.

“Dick!” The big voice was softened to exquisite tenderness.

As the eyes of the two met, the boy rushed forward, and in the next
moment the hands of father and son clasped firmly. They were silent in
the first emotion of their greeting. Presently, Gilder spoke, with an
effort toward harshness in his voice to mask how much he was shaken.
But the tones rang more kindly than any he had used for many a day,
tremulous with affection.

“What brought you back?” he demanded.

Dick, too, had felt the tension of an emotion far beyond that of the
usual things. He was forced to clear his throat before he answered
with that assumption of nonchalance which he regarded as befitting the
occasion.

“Why, I just wanted to come back home,” he said; lightly. A sudden
recollection came to give him poise in this time of emotional
disturbance, and he added hastily: “And, for the love of heaven, give
Sadie five dollars. I borrowed it from her to pay the taxi'. You see,
Dad, I'm broke.”

“Of course!” With the saying, Edward Gilder roared Gargantuan laughter.
In the burst of merriment, his pent feelings found their vent. He
was still chuckling when he spoke, sage from much experience of ocean
travel. “Poker on the ship, I suppose.”

The young man, too, smiled reminiscently as he answered:

“No, not that, though I did have a little run in at Monte Carlo. But it
was the ship that finished me, at that. You see, Dad, they hired Captain
Kidd and a bunch of pirates as stewards, and what they did to little
Richard was something fierce. And yet, that wasn't the real trouble,
either. The fact is, I just naturally went broke. Not a hard thing to do
on the other side.”

“Nor on this,” the father interjected, dryly.

“Anyhow, it doesn't matter much,” Dick replied, quite unabashed. “Tell
me, Dad, how goes it?”

Gilder settled himself again in his chair, and gazed benignantly on his
son.

“Pretty well,” he said contentedly; “pretty well, son. I'm glad to see
you home again, my boy.” There was a great tenderness in the usually
rather cold gray eyes.

The young man answered promptly, with delight in his manner of speech,
and a sincerity that revealed the underlying merit of his nature.

“And I'm glad to be home, Dad, to be”--there was again that clearing of
the throat, but he finished bravely--“with you.”

The father avoided a threatening display of emotion by an abrupt change
of subject to the trite.

“Have a good time?” he inquired casually, while fumbling with the papers
on the desk.

Dick's face broke in a smile of reminiscent happiness.

“The time of my young life!” He paused, and the smile broadened. There
was a mighty enthusiasm in his voice as he continued: “I tell you, Dad,
it's a fact that I did almost break the bank at Monte Carlo. I'd have
done it sure, if only my money had held out.”

“It seems to me that I've heard something of the sort before,” was
Gilder's caustic comment. But his smile was still wholly sympathetic. He
took a curious vicarious delight in the escapades of his son, probably
because he himself had committed no follies in his callow days. “Why
didn't you cable me?” he asked, puzzled at such restraint on the part of
his son.

Dick answered with simple sincerity.

“Because it gave me a capital excuse for coming home.”

It was Sarah who afforded a diversion. She had known Dick while he was
yet a child, had bought him candy, had felt toward him a maternal liking
that increased rather than diminished as he grew to manhood. Now, her
face lighted at sight of him, and she smiled a welcome.

“I see you have found him,” she said, with a ripple of laughter.

Dick welcomed this interruption of the graver mood.

“Sadie,” he said, with a manner of the utmost seriousness, “you are
looking finer than ever. And how thin you have grown!”

The girl, eager with fond fancies toward the slender ideal, accepted the
compliment literally.

“Oh, Mr. Dick!” she exclaimed, rapturously. “How much do you think I
have lost?”

The whimsical heir of the house of Gilder surveyed his victim
critically, then spoke with judicial solemnity.

“About two ounces, Sadie.”

There came a look of deep hurt on Sadie's face at the flippant jest,
which Dick himself was quick to note.

He had not guessed she was thus acutely sensitive concerning her
plumpness. Instantly, he was all contrition over his unwitting offense
inflicted on her womanly vanity.

“Oh, I'm sorry, Sadie,” he exclaimed penitently. “Please don't be really
angry with me. Of course, I didn't mean----”

“To twit on facts!” the secretary interrupted, bitterly.

“Pooh!” Dick cried, craftily. “You aren't plump enough to be sensitive
about it. Why, you're just right.” There was something very boyish about
his manner, as he caught at the girl's arm. A memory of the days when
she had cuddled him caused him to speak warmly, forgetting the presence
of his father. “Now, don't be angry, Sadie. Just give me a little kiss,
as you used to do.” He swept her into his arms, and his lips met hers
in a hearty caress. “There!” he cried. “Just to show there's no ill
feeling.”

The girl was completely mollified, though in much embarrassment.

“Why, Mr. Dick!” she stammered, in confusion. “Why, Mr. Dick!”

Gilder, who had watched the scene in great astonishment, now interposed
to end it.

“Stop, Dick!” he commanded, crisply. “You are actually making Sarah
blush. I think that's about enough, son.”

But a sudden unaccustomed gust of affection swirled in the breast of
the lad. Plain Anglo-Saxon as he was, with all that implies as to the
avoidance of displays of emotion, nevertheless he had been for a
long time in lands far from home, where the habits of impulsive and
affectionate peoples were radically unlike our own austerer forms. So
now, under the spur of an impulse suggested by the dalliance with the
buxom secretary, he grinned widely and went to his father.

“A little kiss never hurts any one,” he declared, blithely. Then he
added vivaciously: “Here, I'll show you!”

With the words, he clasped his arms around his father's neck, and,
before that amazed gentleman could understand his purpose, he had kissed
soundly first the one cheek and then the other, each with a hearty,
wholesome smack of filial piety. This done, he stood back, still beaming
happily, while the astounded Sarah tittered bewilderedly. For his own
part, Dick was quite unashamed. He loved his father. For once, he had
expressed that fondness in a primitive fashion, and he was glad.

The older man withdrew a step, and there rested motionless, under the
sway of an emotion akin to dismay. He stood staring intently at his son
with a perplexity in his expression that was almost ludicrous. When, at
last, he spoke, his voice was a rumble of strangely shy pleasure.

“God bless my soul!” he exclaimed, violently. Then he raised a hand, and
rubbed first one cheek, and after it its fellow, with a gentleness that
was significant. The feeling provoked by the embrace showed plainly in
his next words. “Why, that's the first time you have kissed me, Dick,
since you were a little boy. God bless my soul!” he repeated. And now
there was a note of jubilation.

The son, somewhat disturbed by this emotion he had aroused, nevertheless
answered frankly with the expression of his own feeling, as he advanced
and laid a hand on his father's shoulder.

“The fact is, Dad,” he said quietly, with a smile that was good to see,
“I am awfully glad to see you again.”

“Are you, son?” the father cried happily. Then, abruptly his manner
changed, for he felt himself perilously close to the maudlin in this new
yielding to sentimentality. Such kisses of tenderness, however agreeable
in themselves, were hardly fitting to one of his dignity. “You clear out
of here, boy,” he commanded, brusquely. “I'm a working man. But here,
wait a minute,” he added. He brought forth from a pocket a neat sheaf of
banknotes, which he held out. “There's carfare for you,” he said with a
chuckle. “And now clear out. I'll see you at dinner.”

Dick bestowed the money in his pocket, and again turned toward the door.

“You can always get rid of me on the same terms,” he remarked slyly. And
then the young man gave evidence that he, too, had some of his father's
ability in things financial. For, in the doorway he turned with a final
speech, which was uttered in splendid disregard for the packet of money
he had just received--perhaps, rather, in a splendid regard for it. “Oh,
Dad, please don't forget to give Sadie that five dollars I borrowed from
her for the taxi'.” And with that impertinent reminder he was gone.

The owner of the store returned to his labors with a new zest, for the
meeting with his son had put him in high spirits. Perhaps it might have
been better for Mary Turner had she come to him just then, while he
was yet in this softened mood. But fate had ordained that other events
should restore him to his usual harder self before their interview. The
effect was, indeed, presently accomplished by the advent of Smithson
into the office. He entered with an expression of discomfiture on his
rather vacuous countenance. He walked almost nimbly to the desk and
spoke with evident distress, as his employer looked up interrogatively.

“McCracken has detained--er--a--lady, sir,” he said, feebly. “She has
been searched, and we have found about a hundred dollars worth of laces
on her.”

“Well?” Gilder demanded, impatiently. Such affairs were too common in
the store to make necessary this intrusion of the matter on him. “Why
did you come to me about it?” His staff knew just what to do with
shoplifters.

At once, Smithson became apologetic, while refusing to retreat.

“I'm very sorry, sir,” he said haltingly, “but I thought it wiser, sir,
to--er--to bring the matter to your personal attention.”

“Quite unnecessary, Smithson,” Gilder returned, with asperity. “You know
my views on the subject of property. Tell McCracken to have the thief
arrested.”

Smithson cleared his throat doubtfully, and in his stress of feeling
he even relaxed a trifle that majestical erectness of carriage that had
made him so valuable as a floor-walker.

“She's not exactly a--er--a thief,” he ventured.

“You are trifling, Smithson,” the owner of the store exclaimed, in high
exasperation. “Not a thief! And you caught her with a hundred dollars
worth of laces that she hadn't bought. Not a thief! What in heaven's
name do you call her, then?”

“A kleptomaniac,” Smithson explained, retaining his manner of mild
insistence. “You see, sir, it's this way. The lady happens to be the
wife of J. W. Gaskell, the banker, you know.”

Yes, Gilder did know. The mention of the name was like a spell in the
effect it wrought on the attitude of the irritated owner of the store.
Instantly, his expression changed. While before his features had been
set grimly, while his eyes had flashed wrathfully, there was now only
annoyance over an event markedly unfortunate.

“How extremely awkward!” he cried; and there was a very real concern
in his voice. He regarded Smithson kindly, whereat that rather puling
gentleman once again assumed his martial bearing. “You were quite
right in coming to me.” For a moment he was silent, plunged in thought.
Finally he spoke with the decisiveness characteristic of him. “Of
course, there's nothing we can do. Just put the stuff back on the
counter, and let her go.”

But Smithson had not yet wholly unburdened himself. Instead of
immediately leaving the room in pursuance of the succinct instructions
given him, he again cleared his throat nervously, and made known a
further aggravating factor in the situation.

“She's very angry, Mr. Gilder,” he announced, timidly. “She--er--she
demands an--er--an apology.”

The owner of the store half-rose from his chair, then threw himself back
with an exclamation of disgust. He again ejaculated the words with which
he had greeted his son's unexpected kisses, but now there was a vast
difference in the intonation.

“God bless my soul!” he cried. From his expression, it was clear that a
pious aspiration was farthest from his thought. On the contrary! Again,
he fell silent, considering the situation which Smithson had presented,
and, as he reflected, his frown betrayed the emotion natural enough
under the circumstances. At last, however, he mastered his irritation to
some degree, and spoke his command briefly. “Well, Smithson, apologize
to her. It can't be helped.” Then his face lighted with a sardonic
amusement. “And, Smithson,” he went on with a sort of elephantine
playfulness, “I shall take it as a personal favor if you will tactfully
advise the lady that the goods at Altman and Stern's are really even
finer than ours.”

When Smithson had left the office, Gilder turned to his secretary.

“Take this,” he directed, and he forthwith dictated the following letter
to the husband of the lady who was not a thief, as Smithson had so
painstakingly pointed out:

“J. W. GASKELL, ESQ.,

“Central National Bank, New York.

“MY DEAR Mr. GASKELL: I feel that I should be doing less than my duty as
a man if I did not let you know at once that Mrs. Gaskell is in urgent
need of medical attention. She came into our store to-day, and----”

He paused for a moment. “No, put it this way,” he said finally:

“We found her wandering about our store to-day in a very nervous
condition. In her excitement, she carried away about one hundred
dollars' worth of rare laces. Not recognizing her, our store detective
detained her for a short time. Fortunately for us all, Mrs. Gaskell was
able to explain who she was, and she has just gone to her home. Hoping
for Mrs. Gaskell's speedy recovery, and with all good wishes, I am,

“Yours very truly.”

Yet, though he had completed the letter, Gilder did not at once take up
another detail of his business. Instead, he remained plunged in thought,
and now his frown was one of simple bewilderment. A number of minutes
passed before he spoke, and then his words revealed distinctly what had
been his train of meditation.

“Sadie,” he said in a voice of entire sincerity, “I can't understand
theft. It's a thing absolutely beyond my comprehension.”

On the heels of this ingenuous declaration, Smithson entered the office,
and that excellent gentleman appeared even more perturbed than before.

“What on earth is the matter now?” Gilder spluttered, suspiciously.

“It's Mrs. Gaskell still,” Smithson replied in great trepidation. “She
wants you personally, Mr. Gilder, to apologize to her. She says that the
action taken against her is an outrage, and she is not satisfied with
the apologies of all the rest of us. She says you must make one,
too, and that the store detective must be discharged for intolerable
insolence.”

Gilder bounced up from his chair angrily.

“I'll be damned if I'll discharge McCracken,” he vociferated, glaring on
Smithson, who shrank visibly.

But that mild and meek man had a certain strength of pertinacity.
Besides, in this case, he had been having multitudinous troubles of
his own, which could be ended only by his employer's placating of the
offended kleptomaniac.

“But about the apology, Mr. Gilder,” he reminded, speaking very
deferentially, yet with insistence.

Business instinct triumphed over the magnate's irritation, and his face
cleared.

“Oh, I'll apologize,” he said with a wry smile of discomfiture. “I'll
make things even up a bit when I get an apology from Gaskell. I shrewdly
suspect that that estimable gentleman is going to eat humble pie, of my
baking, from his wife's recipe. And his will be an honest apology--which
mine won't, not by a damned sight!” With the words, he left the room, in
his wake a hugely relieved Smithson.

Alone in the office, Sarah neglected her work for a few minutes to brood
over the startling contrast of events that had just forced itself on her
attention. She was not a girl given to the analysis of either persons or
things, but in this instance the movement of affairs had come close to
her, and she was compelled to some depth of feeling by the two aspects
of life on which to-day she looked. In the one case, as she knew it, a
girl under the urge of poverty had stolen. That thief had been promptly
arrested, finally she had been tried, had been convicted, had been
sentenced to three years in prison. In the other case, a woman of wealth
had stolen. There had been no punishment. A euphemism of kleptomania had
been offered and accepted as sufficient excuse for her crime. A polite
lie had been written to her husband, a banker of power in the city. To
her, the proprietor of the store was even now apologizing in courteous
phrases of regret.... And Mary Turner had been sentenced to three years
in prison. Sadie shook her head in dolorous doubt, as she again bent
over the keys of her typewriter. Certainly, some happenings in this
world of ours did not seem quite fair.



CHAPTER V. THE VICTIM OF THE LAW.

It was on this same day that Sarah, on one of her numerous trips through
the store in behalf of Gilder, was accosted by a salesgirl, whose name,
Helen Morris, she chanced to know. It was in a spot somewhere out of
the crowd, so that for the moment the two were practically alone.
The salesgirl showed signs of embarrassment as she ventured to lay a
detaining hand on Sarah's arm, but she maintained her position, despite
the secretary's manner of disapproval.

“What on earth do you want?” Sarah inquired, snappishly.

The salesgirl put her question at once.

“What did they do to Mary Turner?”

“Oh, that!” the secretary exclaimed, with increased impatience over
the delay, for she was very busy, as always. “You will all know soon
enough.”

“Tell me now.” The voice of the girl was singularly compelling; there
was something vividly impressive about her just now, though her pallid,
prematurely mature face and the thin figure in the regulation black
dress and white apron showed ordinarily only insignificant. “Tell me
now,” she repeated, with a monotonous emphasis that somehow moved Sarah
to obedience against her will, greatly to her own surprise.

“They sent her to prison for three years,” she answered, sharply.

“Three years?” The salesgirl had repeated the words in a tone that was
indefinable, yet a tone vehement in its incredulous questioning. “Three
years?” she said again, as one refusing to believe.

“Yes,” Sarah said, impressed by the girl's earnestness; “three years.”

“Good God!” There was no irreverence in the exclamation that broke from
the girl's lips. Instead, only a tense horror that touched to the roots
of emotion.

Sarah regarded this display of feeling on the part of the young woman
before her with an increasing astonishment. It was not in her own nature
to be demonstrative, and such strong expression of emotion as this she
deemed rather suspicious. She recalled, in addition, the fact that his
was not the first time that Helen Morris had shown a particular interest
in the fate of Mary Turner. Sarah wondered why.

“Say,” she demanded, with the directness habitual to her, “why are you
so anxious about it? This is the third time you have asked me about Mary
Turner. What's it to you, I'd like to know?”

The salesgirl started violently, and a deep flush drove the accustomed
pallor from her cheeks. She was obviously much disturbed by the
question.

“What is it to me?” she repeated in an effort to gain time. “Why,
nothing--nothing at all!” Her expression of distress lightened a little
as she hit on an excuse that might serve to justify her interest.
“Nothing at all, only--she's a friend of mine, a great friend of mine.
Oh, yes!” Then, in an instant, the look of relief vanished, as once
again the terrible reality hammered on her consciousness, and an
overwhelming dejection showed in the dull eyes and in the drooping
curves of the white lips. There was a monotone of desolation as she
went on speaking in a whisper meant for the ears of no other. “It's
awful--three years! Oh, I didn't understand! It's awful!--awful!” With
the final word, she hurried off, her head bowed. She was still murmuring
brokenly, incoherently. Her whole attitude was of wondering grief.

Sarah stared after the girl in complete mystification. She could not at
first guess any possible cause for an emotion so poignant. Presently,
however, her shrewd, though very prosaic, commonsense suggested a simple
explanation of the girl's extraordinary distress.

“I'll bet that girl has been tempted to steal. But she didn't, because
she was afraid.” With this satisfactory conclusion of her wonderment,
the secretary hurried on her way, quite content. It never occurred to
her that the girl might have been tempted to steal--and had not resisted
the temptation.

It was on account of this brief conversation with the salesgirl that
Sarah was thinking intently of Mary Turner, after her return to the
office, from which Gilder himself happened to be absent for the moment.
As the secretary glanced up at the opening of the door, she did not at
first recognize the figure outlined there. She remembered Mary Turner
as a tall, slender girl, who showed an underlying vitality in every
movement, a girl with a face of regular features, in which was a
complexion of blended milk and roses, with a radiant joy of life shining
through all her arduous and vulgar conditions. Instead of this, now, she
saw a frail form that stood swaying in the opening of the doorway, that
bent in a sinister fashion which told of bodily impotence, while the
face was quite bloodless. And, too, there was over all else a pall of
helplessness--helplessness that had endured much, and must still endure
infinitely more.

As a reinforcement of the dread import of that figure of wo, a man stood
beside it, and one of his hands was clasped around the girl's wrist, a
man who wore his derby hat somewhat far back on his bullet-shaped head,
whose feet were conspicuous in shoes with very heavy soles and very
square toes.

It was the man who now took charge of the situation. Cassidy, from
Headquarters, spoke in a rough, indifferent voice, well suited to his
appearance of stolid strength.

“The District Attorney told me to bring this girl here on my way to the
Grand Central Station with her.”

Sarah got to her feet mechanically. Somehow, from the raucous notes of
the policeman's voice, she understood in a flash of illumination that
the pitiful figure there in the doorway was that of Mary Turner, whom
she had remembered so different, so frightfully different. She spoke
with a miserable effort toward her usual liveliness.

“Mr. Gilder will be right back. Come in and wait.” She wished to say
something more, something of welcome or of mourning, to the girl there,
but she found herself incapable of a single word for the moment, and
could only stand dumb while the man stepped forward, with his charge
following helplessly in his clutch.

The two went forward very slowly, the officer, carelessly conscious of
his duty, walking with awkward steps to suit the feeble movements of the
girl, the girl letting herself be dragged onward, aware of the futility
of any resistance to the inexorable power that now had her in its
grip, of which the man was the present agent. As the pair came thus
falteringly into the center of the room, Sarah at last found her voice
for an expression of sympathy.

“I'm sorry, Mary,” she said, hesitatingly. “I'm terribly sorry, terribly
sorry!”

The girl, who had halted when the officer halted, as a matter of course,
did not look up. She stood still, swaying a little as if from weakness.
Her voice was lifeless.

“Are you?” she said. “I did not know. Nobody has been near me the whole
time I have been in the Tombs.” There was infinite pathos in the tones
as she repeated the words so fraught with dreadfulness. “Nobody has been
near me!”

The secretary felt a sudden glow of shame. She realized the justice of
that unconscious accusation, for, till to-day, she had had no thought of
the suffering girl there in the prison. To assuage remorse, she sought
to give evidence as to a prevalent sympathy.

“Why,” she exclaimed, “there was Helen Morris to-day! She has been
asking about you again and again. She's all broken up over your
trouble.”

But the effort on the secretary's part was wholly without success.

“Who is Helen Morris?” the lifeless voice demanded. There was no
interest in the question.

Sarah experienced a momentary astonishment, for she was still
remembering the feverish excitement displayed by the salesgirl, who had
declared herself to be a most intimate friend of the convict. But the
mystery was to remain unsolved, since Gilder now entered the office. He
walked with the quick, bustling activity that was ordinarily expressed
in his every movement. He paused for an instant, as he beheld the
two visitors in the center of the room, then he spoke curtly to the
secretary, while crossing to his chair at the desk.

“You may go, Sarah. I will ring when I wish you again.”

There followed an interval of silence, while the secretary was leaving
the office and the girl with her warder stood waiting on his pleasure.
Gilder cleared his throat twice in an embarrassment foreign to him,
before finally he spoke to the girl. At last, the proprietor of
the store expressed himself in a voice of genuine sympathy, for the
spectacle of wo presented there before his very eyes moved him to a real
distress, since it was indeed actual, something that did not depend on
an appreciation to be developed out of imagination.

“My girl,” Gilder said gently--his hard voice was softened by an honest
regret--“my girl, I am sorry about this.”

“You should be!” came the instant answer. Yet, the words were uttered
with a total lack of emotion. It seemed from their intonation that
the speaker voiced merely a statement concerning a recondite matter of
truth, with which sentiment had nothing whatever to do. But the effect
on the employer was unfortunate. It aroused at once his antagonism
against the girl. His instinct of sympathy with which he had greeted
her at the outset was repelled, and made of no avail. Worse, it was
transformed into an emotion hostile to the one who thus offended him by
rejection of the well-meant kindliness of his address

“Come, come!” he exclaimed, testily. “That's no tone to take with me.”

“Why? What sort of tone do you expect me to take?” was the retort in
the listless voice. Yet, now, in the dullness ran a faint suggestion of
something sinister.

“I expected a decent amount of humility from one in your position,” was
the tart rejoinder of the magnate.

Life quickened swiftly in the drooping form of the girl. Her muscles
tensed. She stood suddenly erect, in the vigor of her youth again. Her
face lost in the same second its bleakness of pallor. The eyes opened
widely, with startling abruptness, and looked straight into those of the
man who had employed her.

“Would you be humble,” she demanded, and now her voice was become softly
musical, yet forbidding, too, with a note of passion, “would you be
humble if you were going to prison for three years--for something you
didn't do?”

There was anguish in the cry torn from the girl's throat in the sudden
access of despair. The words thrilled Gilder beyond anything that he
had supposed possible in such case. He found himself in this emergency
totally at a loss, and moved in his chair doubtfully, wishing to say
something, and quite unable. He was still seeking some question, some
criticism, some rebuke, when he was unfeignedly relieved to hear the
policeman's harsh voice.

“Don't mind her, sir,” Cassidy said. He meant to make his manner very
reassuring. “They all say that. They are innocent, of course! Yep--they
all say it. It don't do 'em any good, but just the same they all swear
they're innocent. They keep it up to the very last, no matter how right
they've been got.”

The voice of the girl rang clear. There was a note of insistence
that carried a curious dignity of its own. The very simplicity of her
statement might have had a power to convince one who listened without
prejudice, although the words themselves were of the trite sort that any
protesting criminal might utter.

“I tell you, I didn't do it!”

Gilder himself felt the surge of emotion that swung through these
moments, but he would not yield to it. With his lack of imagination,
he could not interpret what this time must mean to the girl before him.
Rather, he merely deemed it his duty to carry through this unfortunate
affair with a scrupulous attention to detail, in the fashion that had
always been characteristic of him during the years in which he had
steadily mounted from the bottom to the top.

“What's the use of all this pretense?” he demanded, sharply. “You were
given a fair trial, and there's an end of it.”

The girl, standing there so feebly, seeming indeed to cling for support
to the man who always held her thus closely by the wrist, spoke again
with an astonishing clearness, even with a sort of vivacity, as if she
explained easily something otherwise in doubt.

“Oh, no, I wasn't!” she contradicted bluntly, with a singular confidence
of assertion. “Why, if the trial had been fair, I shouldn't be here.”

The harsh voice of Cassidy again broke in on the passion of the girl
with a professional sneer.

“That's another thing they all say.”

But the girl went on speaking fiercely, impervious to the man's coarse
sarcasm, her eyes, which had deepened almost to purple, still fixed
piercingly on Gilder, who, for some reason wholly inexplicable to him,
felt himself strangely disturbed under that regard.

“Do you call it fair when the lawyer I had was only a boy--one whom the
court told me to take, a boy trying his first case--my case, that
meant the ruin of my life? My lawyer! Why, he was just getting
experience--getting it at my expense!” The girl paused as if exhausted
by the vehemence of her emotion, and at last the sparkling eyes drooped
and the heavy lids closed over them. She swayed a little, so that the
officer tightened his clasp on her wrist.

There followed a few seconds of silence. Then Gilder made an effort to
shake off the feeling that had so possessed him, and to a certain degree
he succeeded.

“The jury found you guilty,” he asserted, with an attempt to make his
voice magisterial in its severity.

Instantly, Mary was aroused to a new outburst of protest. Once again,
her eyes shot their fires at the man seated behind the desk, and she
went forward a step imperiously, dragging the officer in her wake.

“Yes, the jury found me guilty,” she agreed, with fine scorn in the
musical cadences of her voice. “Do you know why? I can tell you,
Mr. Gilder. It was because they had been out for three hours without
reaching a decision. The evidence didn't seem to be quite enough for
some of them, after all. Well, the judge threatened to lock them up all
night. The men wanted to get home. The easy thing to do was to find me
guilty, and let it go at that. Was that fair, do you think? And that's
not all, either. Was it fair of you, Mr. Gilder? Was it fair of you to
come to the court this morning, and tell the judge that I should be sent
to prison as a warning to others?”

A quick flush burned on the massive face of the man whom she thus
accused, and his eyes refused to meet her steady gaze of reproach.

“You know!” he exclaimed, in momentary consternation. Again, her mood
had affected his own, so that through a few hurrying seconds he felt
himself somehow guilty of wrong against this girl, so frank and so
rebuking.

“I heard you in the courtroom,” she said. “The dock isn't very far from
the bench where you spoke to the judge about my case. Yes, I heard you.
It wasn't: Did I do it? Or, didn't I do it? No; it was only that I must
be made a warning to others.”

Again, silence fell for a tense interval. Then, finally, the girl spoke
in a different tone. Where before her voice had been vibrant with the
instinct of complaint against the mockery of justice under which she
suffered, now there was a deeper note, that of most solemn truth.

“Mr. Gilder,” she said simply, “as God is my judge, I am going to prison
for three years for something I didn't do.”

But the sincerity of her broken cry fell on unheeding ears. The coarse
nature of the officer had long ago lost whatever elements of softness
there might have been to develop in a gentler occupation. As for the
owner of the store, he was not sufficiently sensitive to feel the verity
in the accents of the speaker. Moreover, he was a man who followed the
conventional, with never a distraction due to imagination and sympathy.
Just now, too, he was experiencing a keen irritation against himself
because of the manner in which he had been sensible to the influence
of her protestation, despite his will to the contrary. That irritation
against himself only reacted against the girl, and caused him to
steel his heart to resist any tendency toward commiseration. So, this
declaration of innocence was made quite in vain--indeed, served rather
to strengthen his disfavor toward the complainant, and to make his
manner harsher when she voiced the pitiful question over which she had
wondered and grieved.

“Why did you ask the judge to send me to prison?”

“The thieving that has been going on in this store for over a year has
got to stop,” Gilder answered emphatically, with all his usual energy
of manner restored. As he spoke, he raised his eyes and met the girl's
glance fairly. Thought of the robberies was quite enough to make him
pitiless toward the offender.

“Sending me to prison won't stop it,” Mary Turner said, drearily.

“Perhaps not,” Gilder sternly retorted. “But the discovery and
punishment of the other guilty ones will.” His manner changed to a
business-like alertness. “You sent word to me that you could tell me how
to stop the thefts in the store. Well, my girl, do this, and, while I
can make no definite promise, I'll see what can be done about getting
you out of your present difficulty.” He picked up a pencil, pulled a
pad of blank paper convenient to his hand, and looked at the girl
expectantly, with aggressive inquiry in his gaze. “Tell me now,” he
concluded, “who were your pals?”

The matter-of-fact manner of this man who had unwittingly wronged her so
frightfully was the last straw on the girl's burden of suffering. Under
it, her patient endurance broke, and she cried out in a voice of utter
despair that caused Gilder to start nervously, and even impelled the
stolid officer to a frown of remonstrance.

“I have no pals!” she ejaculated, furiously. “I never stole anything in
my life. Must I go on telling you over and over again?” Her voice rose
in a wail of misery. “Oh, why won't any one believe me?”

Gilder was much offended by this display of an hysterical grief, which
seemed to his phlegmatic temperament altogether unwarranted by the
circumstances. He spoke decisively.

“Unless you can control yourself, you must go.” He pushed away the pad
of paper, and tossed the pencil aside in physical expression of his
displeasure. “Why did you send that message, if you have nothing to
say?” he demanded, with increasing choler.

But now the girl had regained her former poise. She stood a little
drooping and shaken, where for a moment she had been erect and tensed.
There was a vast weariness in her words as she answered.

“I have something to tell you, Mr. Gilder,” she said, quietly. “Only,
I--I sort of lost my grip on the way here, with this man by my side.”

“Most of 'em do, the first time,” the officer commented, with a certain
grim appreciation.

“Well?” Gilder insisted querulously, as the girl hesitated.

At once, Mary went on speaking, and now a little increase of vigor
trembled in her tones.

“When you sit in a cell for three months waiting for your trial, as I
did, you think a lot. And, so, I got the idea that if I could talk to
you, I might be able to make you understand what's really wrong. And if
I could do that, and so help out the other girls, what has happened to
me would not, after all, be quite so awful--so useless, somehow.” Her
voice lowered to a quick pleading, and she bent toward the man at the
desk. “Mr. Gilder,” she questioned, “do you really want to stop the
girls from stealing?”

“Most certainly I do,” came the forcible reply.

The girl spoke with a great earnestness, deliberately.

“Then, give them a fair chance.”

The magnate stared in sincere astonishment over this absurd, this futile
suggestion for his guidance.

“What do you mean?” he vociferated, with rising indignation. There was
an added hostility in his demeanor, for it seemed to him that this thief
of his goods whom he had brought to justice was daring to trifle with
him. He grew wrathful over the suspicion, but a secret curiosity still
held his temper within bounds “What do you mean?” he repeated; and now
the full force of his strong voice set the room trembling.

The tones of the girl came softly musical, made more delicately resonant
to the ear by contrast with the man's roaring.

“Why,” she said, very gently, “I mean just this: Give them a living
chance to be honest.”

“A living chance!” The two words were exploded with dynamic violence.
The preposterousness of the advice fired Gilder with resentment so
pervasive that through many seconds he found himself unable to express
the rage that flamed within him.

The girl showed herself undismayed by his anger.

“Yes,” she went on, quietly; “that's all there is to it. Give them a
living chance to get enough food to eat, and a decent room to sleep in,
and shoes that will keep their feet off the pavement winter mornings. Do
you think that any girl wants to steal? Do you think that any girl wants
to risk----?”

By this time, however, Gilder had regained his powers of speech, and he
interrupted stormily.

“And is this what you have taken up my time for? You want to make a
maudlin plea for guilty, dishonest girls, when I thought you really
meant to bring me facts.”

Nevertheless, Mary went on with her arraignment uncompromisingly. There
was a strange, compelling energy in her inflections that penetrated even
the pachydermatous officer, so that, though he thought her raving, he
let her rave on, which was not at all his habit of conduct, and did
indeed surprise him mightily. As for Gilder, he felt helpless in some
puzzling fashion that was totally foreign to his ordinary self. He was
still glowing with wrath over the method by which he had been victimized
into giving the girl a hearing. Yet, despite his chagrin, he realized
that he could not send her from him forthwith. By some inexplicable
spell she bound him impotent.

“We work nine hours a day,” the quiet voice went on, a curious pathos
in the rich timbre of it; “nine hours a day, for six days in the week.
That's a fact, isn't it? And the trouble is, an honest girl can't live
on six dollars a week. She can't do it, and buy food and clothes, and
pay room-rent and carfare. That's another fact, isn't it?”

Mary regarded the owner of the store with grave questioning in her
violet eyes. Under the urgency of emotion, color crept into the pallid
cheeks, and now her face was very beautiful--so beautiful, indeed, that
for a little the charm of its loveliness caught the man's gaze, and he
watched her with a new respect, born of appreciation for her feminine
delightfulness. The impression was far too brief. Gilder was not given
to esthetic raptures over women. Always, the business instinct was the
dominant. So, after the short period of amazed admiration over such
unexpected winsomeness, his thoughts flew back angrily to the matters
whereof she spoke so ridiculously.

“I don't care to discuss these things,” he declared peremptorily, as the
girl remained silent for a moment.

“And I have no wish to discuss anything,” Mary returned evenly. “I
only want to give you what you asked for--facts.” A faint smile of
reminiscence curved the girl's lips. “When they first locked me up,” she
explained, without any particular evidence of emotion, “I used to sit
and hate you.”

“Oh, of course!” came the caustic exclamation from Gilder.

“And then, I thought that perhaps you did not understand,” Mary
continued; “that, if I were to tell you how things really are, it might
be you would change them somehow.”

At this ingenuous statement, the owner of the store gave forth a gasp of
sheer stupefaction.

“I!” he cried, incredulously. “I change my business policy because you
ask me to!”

There was something imperturbable in the quality of the voice as the
girl went resolutely forward with her explanation. It was as if she
were discharging a duty not to be gainsaid, not to be thwarted by
any difficulty, not even the realization that all the effort must be
ultimately in vain.

“Do you know how we girls live?--but, of course, you don't. Three of us
in one room, doing our own cooking over the two-burner gas-stove, and
our own washing and ironing evenings, after being on our feet for nine
hours.”

The enumeration of the sordid details left the employer absolutely
unmoved, since he lacked the imagination necessary to sympathize
actually with the straining evil of a life such as the girl had known.
Indeed, he spoke with an air of just remonstrance, as if the girl's
charges were mischievously faulty.

“I have provided chairs behind the counters,” he stated.

There was no especial change in the girl's voice as she answered his
defense. It continued musically low, but there was in it the insistent
note of sincerity.

“But have you ever seen a girl sitting in one of them?” she questioned,
coldly. “Please answer me. Have you? Of course not,” she said, after a
little pause during which the owner had remained silent. She shook
her head in emphatic negation. “And do you understand why? It's simply
because every girl knows that the manager of her department would think
he could get along without her, if he were to see her sitting down
----loafing, you know! So, she would be discharged. All it amounts to
is that, after being on her feet for nine hours, the girl usually walks
home, in order to save carfare. Yes, she walks, whether sick or well.
Anyhow, you are generally so tired, it don't make much difference which
you are.”

Gilder was fuming under these strictures, which seemed to him altogether
baseless attacks on himself. His exasperation steadily waxed against the
girl, a convicted felon, who thus had the audacity to beard him.

“What has all this to do with the question of theft in the store?”
 he rumbled, huffily. “That was the excuse for your coming here. And,
instead of telling me something, you rant about gas-stoves and carfare.”

The inexorable voice went on in its monotone, as if he had not spoken.

“And, when you are really sick, and have to stop work, what are you
going to do then? Do you know, Mr. Gilder, that the first time a
straight girl steals, it's often because she had to have a doctor--or
some luxury like that? And some of them do worse than steal. Yes, they
do--girls that started straight, and wanted to stay that way. But, of
course, some of them get so tired of the whole grind that--that----”

The man who was the employer of hundreds concerning whom these grim
truths were uttered, stirred uneasily in his chair, and there came a
touch of color into the healthy brown of his cheeks as he spoke his
protest.

“I'm not their guardian. I can't watch over them after they leave the
store. They are paid the current rate of wages--as much as any other
store pays.” As he spoke, the anger provoked by this unexpected
assault on him out of the mouth of a convict flamed high in virtuous
repudiation. “Why,” he went on vehemently, “no man living does more
for his employees than I do. Who gave the girls their fine rest-rooms
upstairs? I did! Who gave them the cheap lunch-rooms? I did!”

“But you won't pay them enough to live on!” The very fact that the words
were spoken without any trace of rancor merely made this statement of
indisputable truth obnoxious to the man, who was stung to more savage
resentment in asserting his impugned self-righteousness.

“I pay them the same as the other stores do,” he repeated, sullenly.

Yet once again, the gently cadenced voice gave answer, an answer
informed with that repulsive insistence to the man who sought to resist
her indictment of him.

“But you won't pay them enough to live on.” The simple lucidity of the
charge forbade direct reply.

Gilder betook himself to evasion by harking back to the established
ground of complaint.

“And, so, you claim that you were forced to steal. That's the plea you
make for yourself and your friends.”

“I wasn't forced to steal,” came the answer, spoken in the monotone that
had marked her utterance throughout most of the interview. “I wasn't
forced to steal, and I didn't steal. But, all the same, that's the plea,
as you call it, that I'm making for the other girls. There are hundreds
of them who steal because they don't get enough to eat. I said I would
tell you how to stop the stealing. Well, I have done it. Give the girls
a fair chance to be honest. You asked me for the names, Mr. Gilder.
There's only one name on which to put the blame for the whole
business--and that name is Edward Gilder!... Now, won't you do something
about it?”

At that naked question, the owner of the store jumped up from his
chair, and stood glowering at the girl who risked a request so full of
vituperation against himself.

“How dare you speak to me like this?” he thundered.

There was no disconcertion exhibited by the one thus challenged. On the
contrary, she repeated her question with a simple dignity that still
further outraged the man.

“Won't you, please, do something about it?”

“How dare you?” he shouted again. Now, there was stark wonder in his
eyes as he put the question.

“Why, I dared,” Mary Turner explained, “because you have done all the
harm you can to me. And, now, I'm trying to give you the chance to do
better by the others. You ask me why I dare. I have a right to dare!
I have been straight all my life. I have wanted decent food and warm
clothes, and--a little happiness, all the time I have worked for you,
and I have gone without those things, just to stay straight.... The end
of it all is: You are sending me to prison for something I didn't do.
That's why I dare!”

Cassidy, the officer in charge of Mary Turner, had stood patiently
beside her all this while, always holding her by the wrist. He had
been mildly interested in the verbal duel between the big man of the
department store and this convict in his own keeping. Vaguely, he had
marveled at the success of the frail girl in declaiming of her injuries
before the magnate. He had felt no particular interest beyond that,
merely looking on as one might at any entertaining spectacle. The
question at issue was no concern of his. His sole business was to take
the girl away when the interview should be ended. It occurred to him now
that this might, in fact, be the time to depart. It seemed, indeed, that
the insistent reiteration of the girl had at last left he owner of the
store quite powerless to answer. It was possible, then, that it were
wiser the girl should be removed. With the idea in mind, he stared
inquiringly at Gilder until he caught that flustered gentleman's eye.
A nod from the magnate sufficed him. Gilder, in truth, could not trust
himself just then to an audible command. He was seriously disturbed by
the gently spoken truths that had issued from the girl's lips. He was
not prepared with any answer, though he hotly resented every word of
her accusation. So, when he caught the question in the glance of
the officer, he felt a guilty sensation of relief as he signified an
affirmative by his gesture.

Cassidy faced about, and in his movement there was a tug at the wrist
of the girl that set her moving toward the door. Her realization of what
this meant was shown in her final speech.

“Oh, he can take me now,” she said, bitterly. Then her voice rose above
the monotone that had contented her hitherto. Into the music of her
tones beat something sinister, evilly vindictive, as she faced about at
the doorway to which Cassidy had led her. Her face, as she scrutinized
once again the man at the desk, was coldly malignant.

“Three years isn't forever,” she said, in a level voice. “When I come
out, you are going to pay for every minute of them, Mr. Gilder. There
won't be a day or an hour that I won't remember that at the last it was
your word sent me to prison. And you are going to pay me for that. You
are going to pay me for the five years I have starved making money for
you--that, too! You are going to pay me for all the things I am losing
today, and----”

The girl thrust forth her left hand, on that side where stood the
officer. So vigorous was her movement that Cassidy's clasp was thrown
off the wrist. But the bond between the two was not broken, for from
wrist to wrist showed taut the steel chain of the manacles. The girl
shook the links of the handcuffs in a gesture stronger than words. In
her final utterance to the agitated man at the desk, there was a cold
threat, a prophecy of disaster. From the symbol of her degradation, she
looked to the man whose action had placed it there. In the clashing of
their glances, hers won the victory, so that his eyes fell before the
menace in hers.

“You are going to pay me for this!” she said. Her voice was little more
than a whisper, but it was loud in the listener's heart. “Yes, you are
going to pay--for this!”



CHAPTER VI. INFERNO.

They were grim years, those three during which Mary Turner served her
sentence in Burnsing. There was no time off for good behavior. The girl
learned soon that the favor of those set in authority over her could
only be won at a cost against which her every maidenly instinct
revolted. So, she went through the inferno of days and nights in a
dreariness of suffering that was deadly. Naturally, the life there was
altogether an evil thing. There was the material ill ever present in
the round of wearisome physical toil, the coarse, distasteful food, the
hard, narrow couch, the constant, gnawing irksomeness of imprisonment,
away from light and air, away from all that makes life worth while.

Yet, these afflictions were not the worst injuries to mar the girl
convict's life. That which bore upon her most weightily and incessantly
was the degradation of this environment from which there was never any
respite, the viciousness of this spot wherein she had been cast through
no fault of her own. Vileness was everywhere, visibly in the faces of
many, and it was brimming from the souls of more, subtly hideous. The
girl held herself rigidly from any personal intimacy with her fellows.
To some extent, at least, she could separate herself from their
corruption in the matter of personal association. But, ever present,
there was a secret energy of vice that could not be escaped so
simply--nor, indeed, by any device; that breathed in the spiritual
atmosphere itself of the place. Always, this mysterious, invisible, yet
horribly potent, power of sin was like a miasma throughout the prison.
Always, it was striving to reach her soul, to make her of its own. She
fought the insidious, fetid force as best she might. She was not evil
by nature. She had been well grounded in principles of righteousness.
Nevertheless, though she maintained the integrity of her character,
that character suffered from the taint. There developed over the girl's
original sensibility a shell of hardness, which in time would surely
come to make her less scrupulous in her reckoning of right and wrong.

Yet, as a rule, character remains the same throughout life as to its
prime essentials, and, in this case, Mary Turner at the end of her term
was vitally almost as wholesome as on the day when she began the serving
of the sentence. The change wrought in her was chiefly of an external
sort. The kindliness of her heart and her desire for the seemly joys of
life were unweakened. But over the better qualities of her nature
was now spread a crust of worldly hardness, a denial of appeal to her
sensibilities. It was this that would eventually bring her perilously
close to contented companioning with crime.

The best evidence of the fact that Mary Turner's soul was not fatally
soiled must be found in the fact that still, at the expiration of her
sentence, she was fully resolved to live straight, as the saying is
which she had quoted to Gilder. This, too, in the face of sure knowledge
as to the difficulties that would beset the effort, and in the face of
the temptations offered to follow an easier path.

There was, for example, Aggie Lynch, a fellow convict, with whom she
had a slight degree of acquaintance, nothing more. This young woman, a
criminal by training, offered allurements of illegitimate employment in
the outer world when they should be free. Mary endured the companionship
with this prisoner because a sixth sense proclaimed the fact that here
was one unmoral, rather than immoral--and the difference is mighty. For
that reason, Aggie Lynch was not actively offensive, as were most of the
others. She was a dainty little blonde, with a baby face, in which were
set two light-blue eyes, of a sort to widen often in demure wonder over
most things in a surprising and naughty world. She had been convicted of
blackmail, and she made no pretense even of innocence. Instead, she was
inclined to boast over her ability to bamboozle men at her will. She
was a natural actress of the ingenue role, and in that pose she could
unfailingly beguile the heart of the wisest of worldly men.

Perhaps, the very keen student of physiognomy might have discovered
grounds for suspecting her demureness by reason of the thick, level
brows that cast a shadow on the bland innocence of her face. For the
rest, she possessed a knack of rather harmless perversity, a fair
smattering of grammar and spelling, and a lively sense of humor within
her own limitations, with a particularly small intelligence in other
directions. Her one art was histrionics of the kind that made an
individual appeal. In such, she was inimitable. She had been reared in a
criminal family, which must excuse much. Long ago, she had lost track
of her father; her mother she had never known. Her one relation was a
brother of high standing as a pickpocket. One principal reason of her
success in leading on men to make fools of themselves over her, to their
everlasting regret afterward, lay in the fact that, in spite of all the
gross irregularities of her life, she remained chaste. She deserved no
credit for such restraint, since it was a matter purely of temperament,
not of resolve.

The girl saw in Mary Turner the possibilities of a ladylike personality
that might mean much financial profit in the devious ways of which she
was a mistress. With the frankness characteristic of her, she proceeded
to paint glowing pictures of a future shared to the undoing of ardent
and fatuous swains. Mary Turner listened with curiosity, but she was in
no wise moved to follow such a life, even though it did not necessitate
anything worse than a fraudulent playing at love, without physical
degradation. So, she steadfastly continued her refusals, to the great
astonishment of Aggie, who actually could not understand in the least,
even while she believed the other's declaration of innocence of the
crime for which she was serving a sentence. But, for her own part, such
innocence had nothing to do with the matter. Where, indeed, could be
the harm in making some old sinner pay a round price for his folly? And
always, in response to every argument, Mary shook her head in negation.
She would live straight.

Then, the heavy brows of Aggie would draw down a little, and the baby
face would harden.

“You will find that you are up against a hell of a frost,” she would
declare, brutally.

Mary found the profane prophecy true. Back in New York, she experienced
a poverty more ravaging than any she had known in those five lean years
of her working in the store. She had been absolutely penniless for two
days, and without food through the gnawing hours, when she at last found
employment of the humblest in a milliner's shop. Followed a blessed
interval in which she worked contentedly, happy over the meager stipend,
since it served to give her shelter and food honestly earned.

But the ways of the police are not always those of ordinary decency. In
due time, an officer informed Mary's employer concerning the fact of
her record as a convict, and thereupon she was at once discharged. The
unfortunate victim of the law came perilously close to despair then.
Yet, her spirit triumphed, and again she persevered in that resolve
to live straight. Finally, for the second time, she secured a cheap
position in a cheap shop--only to be again persecuted by the police, so
that she speedily lost the place.

Nevertheless, indomitable in her purpose, she maintained the struggle.
A third time she obtained work, and there, after a little, she told
her employer, a candy manufacturer in a small way, the truth as to her
having been in prison. The man had a kindly heart, and, in addition,
he ran little risk in the matter, so he allowed her to remain. When,
presently, the police called his attention to the girl's criminal
record, he paid no heed to their advice against retaining her services.
But such action on his part offended the greatness of the law's dignity.
The police brought pressure to bear on the man. They even called in the
assistance of Edward Gilder himself, who obligingly wrote a very severe
letter to the girl's employer. In the end, such tactics alarmed the
man. For the sake of his own interests, though unwillingly enough, he
dismissed Mary from his service.

It was then that despair did come upon the girl. She had tried with all
the strength of her to live straight. Yet, despite her innocence,
the world would not let her live according to her own conscience. It
demanded that she be the criminal it had branded her--if she were to
live at all. So, it was despair! For she would not turn to evil, and
without such turning she could not live. She still walked the streets
falteringly, seeking some place; but her heart was gone from the quest.
Now, she was sunken in an apathy that saved her from the worst pangs
of misery. She had suffered so much, so poignantly, that at last her
emotions had grown sluggish. She did not mind much even when her tiny
hoard of money was quite gone, and she roamed the city, starving....
Came an hour when she thought of the river, and was glad!

Mary remembered, with a wan smile, how, long ago, she had thought with
amazed horror of suicide, unable to imagine any trouble sufficient
to drive one to death as the only relief. Now, however, the thing was
simple to her. Since there was nothing else, she must turn to that--to
death. Indeed, it was so very simple, so final, and so easy, after the
agonies she had endured, that she marveled over her own folly in not
having sought such escape before.... Even with the first wild fancy, she
had unconsciously bent her steps westward toward the North River. Now,
she quickened her pace, anxious for the plunge that should set the term
to sorrow. In her numbed brain was no flicker of thought as to whatever
might come to her afterward. Her sole guide was that compelling
passion of desire to be done with this unbearable present. Nothing else
mattered--not in the least!

So, she came through the long stretch of ill-lighted streets, crossed
some railroad tracks to a pier, over which she hurried to the far end,
where it projected out to the fiercer currents of the Hudson. There,
without giving herself a moment's pause for reflection or hesitation,
she leaped out as far as her strength permitted into the coil of
waters.... But, in that final second, natural terror in the face of
death overcame the lethargy of despair--a shriek burst from her lips.

But for that scream of fear, the story of Mary Turner had ended there
and then. Only one person was anywhere near to catch the sound. And that
single person heard. On the south side of the pier a man had just tied
up a motor-boat. He stood up in alarm at the cry, and was just in time
to gain a glimpse of a white face under the dim moonlight as it swept
down with the tide, two rods beyond him. On the instant, he threw off
his coat and sprang far out after the drifting body. He came to it in a
few furious strokes, caught it. Then began the savage struggle to save
her and himself. The currents tore at him wrathfully, but he fought
against them with all the fierceness of his nature. He had strength
a-plenty, but it needed all of it, and more, to win out of the river's
hungry clutch. What saved the two of them was the violent temper of the
man. Always, it had been the demon to set him aflame. To-night, there
in the faint light, within the grip of the waters, he was moved to
insensate fury against the element that menaced. His rage mounted, and
gave him new power in the battle. Maniacal strength grew out of supreme
wrath. Under the urge of it, he conquered--at last brought himself and
his charge to the shore.

When, finally, the rescuer was able to do something more than gasp
chokingly, he gave anxious attention to the woman whom he had brought
out from the river. Yet, at the outset, he could not be sure that she
still lived. She had shown no sign of life at any time since he had
first seized her. That fact had been of incalculable advantage to him
in his efforts to reach the shore with her. Now, however, it alarmed him
mightily, though it hardly seemed possible that she could have drowned.
So far as he could determine, she: had not even sunk once beneath the
surface. Nevertheless, she displayed no evidence of vitality, though
he chafed her hands for a long time. The shore here was very lonely; it
would take precious time to summon aid. It seemed, notwithstanding, that
this must be the only course. Then just as the man was about to leave
her, the girl sighed, very faintly, with an infinite weariness, and
opened her eyes. The man echoed the sigh, but his was of joy, since now
he knew that his strife in the girl's behalf had not been in vain.

Afterward, the rescuer experienced no great difficulty in carrying
out his work to a satisfactory conclusion. Mary revived to clear
consciousness, which was at first inclined toward hysteria, but this
phase yielded soon under the sympathetic ministrations of the man. His
rather low voice was soothing to her tired soul, and his whole air
was at once masterful and gently tender. Moreover, there was an
inexpressible balm to her spirit in the very fact that some one was thus
ministering to her. It was the first time for many dreadful years that
any one had taken thought for her welfare. The effect of it was like a
draught of rarest wine to warm her heart. So, she rested obediently as
he busied himself with her complete restoration, and, when finally she
was able to stand, and to walk with the support of his arm, she went
forward slowly at his side without so much even as a question of
whither.

And, curiously, the man himself shared the gladness that touched
the mood of the girl, for he experienced a sudden pride in his
accomplishment of the night, a pride that delighted a starved part of
his nature. Somewhere in him were the seeds of self-sacrifice, the
seeds of a generous devotion to others. But those seeds had been left
undeveloped in a life that had been lived since early boyhood outside
the pale of respectability. To-night, Joe Garson had performed, perhaps,
his first action with no thought of self at the back of it. He had
risked his life to save that of a stranger. The fact astonished him,
while it pleased him hugely. The sensation was at once novel and
thrilling. Since it was so agreeable, he meant to prolong the glow of
self-satisfaction by continuing to care for this waif of the river. He
must make his rescue complete. It did not occur to him to question his
fitness for the work. His introspection did not reach to a point of
suspecting that he, an habitual criminal, was necessarily of a sort to
be most objectionable as the protector of a young girl. Indeed, had any
one suggested the thought to him, he would have met it with a sneer, to
the effect that a wretch thus tired of life could hardly object to any
one who constituted himself her savior.

In this manner, Joe Garson, the notorious forger, led the dripping girl
eastward through the squalid streets, until at last they came to an
adequately lighted avenue, and there a taxicab was found. It carried
them farther north, and to the east still, until at last it came to a
halt before an apartment house that was rather imposing, set in a street
of humbler dwellings. Here, Garson paid the fare, and then helped
the girl to alight, and on into the hallway. Mary went with him quite
unafraid, though now with a growing curiosity. Strange as it all was,
she felt that she could trust this man who had plucked her from death,
who had worked over her with so much of tender kindliness. So, she
waited patiently; only, watched with intentness as he pressed the button
of a flat number. She observed with interest the thick, wavy gray of
his hair, which contradicted pleasantly the youthfulness of his
clean-shaven, resolute face, and the spare, yet well-muscled form.

The clicking of the door-latch sounded soon, and the two entered, and
went slowly up three flights of stairs. On the landing beyond the third
flight, the door of a rear flat stood open, and in the doorway appeared
the figure of a woman.

“Well, Joe, who's the skirt?” this person demanded, as the man and his
charge halted before her. Then, abruptly, the round, baby-like face of
the woman puckered in amazement. Her voice rose shrill. “My Gawd, if it
ain't Mary Turner!”

At that, the newcomer's eyes opened swiftly to their widest, and she
stared astounded in her turn.

“Aggie!” she cried.



CHAPTER VII. WITHIN THE LAW.

In the time that followed, Mary lived in the flat which Aggie Lynch
occupied along with her brother, Jim, a pickpocket much esteemed among
his fellow craftsmen. The period wrought transformations of radical and
bewildering sort in both the appearance and the character of the girl.
Joe Garson, the forger, had long been acquainted with Aggie and her
brother, though he considered them far beneath him in the social scale,
since their criminal work was not of that high kind on which he prided
himself. But, as he cast about for some woman to whom he might take the
hapless girl he had rescued, his thoughts fell on Aggie, and forthwith
his determination was made, since he knew that she was respectable,
viewed according to his own peculiar lights. He was relieved rather than
otherwise to learn that there was already an acquaintance between the
two women, and the fact that his charge had served time in prison did
not influence him one jot against her. On the contrary, it increased in
some measure his respect for her as one of his own kind. By the time he
had learned as well of her innocence, he had grown so interested
that even her folly, as he was inclined to deem it, did not cause any
wavering in his regard.

Now, at last, Mary Turner let herself drift. It seemed to her that she
had abandoned herself to fate in that hour when she threw herself into
the river. Afterward, without any volition on her part, she had been
restored to life, and set within an environment new and strange to her,
in which soon, to her surprise, she discovered a vivid pleasure. So,
she fought no more, but left destiny to work its will unhampered by
her futile strivings. For the first time in her life, thanks to the
hospitality of Aggie Lynch, secretly reinforced from the funds of Joe
Garson, Mary found herself living in luxurious idleness, while her every
wish could be gratified by the merest mention of it. She was fed on the
daintiest of fare, for Aggie was a sybarite in all sensuous pleasures
that were apart from sex. She was clothed with the most delicate
richness for the first time as to those more mysterious garments which
women love, and she soon had a variety of frocks as charming as her
graceful form demanded. In addition, there were as many of books and
magazines as she could wish. Her mind, long starved like her body,
seized avidly on the nourishment thus afforded. In this interest, Aggie
had no share--was perhaps a little envious over Mary's absorption in
printed pages. But for her consolation were the matters of food and
dress, and of countless junketings. In such directions, Aggie was the
leader, an eager, joyous one always. She took a vast pride in her guest,
with the unmistakable air of elegance, and she dared to dream of great
triumphs to come, though as yet she carefully avoided any suggestion to
Mary of wrong-doing.

In the end, the suggestion came from Mary Turner herself, to the great
surprise of Aggie, and, truth to tell, of herself.

There were two factors that chiefly influenced her decision. The first
was due to the feeling that, since the world had rejected her, she
need no longer concern herself with the world's opinion, or retain any
scruples over it. Back of this lay her bitter sentiment toward the man
who had been the direct cause of her imprisonment, Edward Gilder. It
seemed to her that the general warfare against the world might well be
made an initial step in the warfare she meant to wage, somehow, some
time, against that man personally, in accordance with the hysterical
threat she had uttered to his face.

The factor that was the immediate cause of her decision on an irregular
mode of life was an editorial in one of the daily newspapers. This was
a scathing arraignment of a master in high finance. The point of the
writer's attack was the grim sarcasm for such methods of thievery as are
kept within the law. That phrase held the girl's fancy, and she read the
article again with a quickened interest. Then, she began to meditate.
She herself was in a curious, indeterminate attitude as far as concerned
the law. It was the law that had worked the ruin of her life, which she
had striven to make wholesome. In consequence, she felt for the law no
genuine respect, only detestation as for the epitome of injustice.
Yet, she gave it a superficial respect, born of those three years of
suffering which had been the result of the penalty inflicted on her. It
was as an effect of this latter feeling that she was determined on one
thing of vital importance: that never would she be guilty of anything
to pit her against the law's decrees. She had known too many hours
of anguish in the doom set on her life because she had been deemed a
violator of the law. No, never would she let herself take any position
in which the law could accuse her.... But there remained the fact that
the actual cause of her long misery was this same law, manipulated by
the man she hated. It had punished her, though she had been without
fault. For that reason, she must always regard it as her enemy, must,
indeed, hate it with an intensity beyond words--with an intensity equal
to that she bore the man, Gilder. Now, in the paragraph she had just
read she found a clue to suggestive thought, a hint as to a means by
which she might satisfy her rancor against the law that had outraged
her--and this in safety since she would attempt nought save that within
the law.

Mary's heart leaped at the possibility back of those three words,
“within the law.” She might do anything, seek any revenge, work any
evil, enjoy any mastery, as long as she should keep within the law.
There could be no punishment then. That was the lesson taught by the
captain in high finance. He was at pains always in his stupendous
robberies to keep within the law. To that end, he employed lawyers of
mighty cunning and learning to guide his steps aright in such tortuous
paths.

There, then, was the secret. Why should she not use the like means? Why,
indeed? She had brains enough to devise, surely. Beyond that, she
needed only to keep her course most carefully within those limits of
wrong-doing permitted by the statutes. For that, the sole requirement
would be a lawyer equally unscrupulous and astute. At once, Mary's mind
was made up. After all, the thing was absurdly simple. It was merely a
matter for ingenuity and for prudence in alliance.... Moreover, there
would come eventually some adequate device against her arch-enemy,
Edward Gilder.

Mary meditated on the idea for many days, and ever it seemed
increasingly good to her. Finally, it developed to a point where she
believed it altogether feasible, and then she took Joe Garson into
her confidence. He was vastly astonished at the outset and not quite
pleased. To his view, this plan offered merely a fashion of setting
difficulties in the way of achievement. Presently, however, the
sincerity and persistence of the girl won him over. The task of
convincing him would have been easier had he himself ever known the
torment of serving a term in prison. Thus far, however, the forger
had always escaped the penalty for his crimes, though often close to
conviction. But Mary's arguments were of a compelling sort as she set
them forth in detail, and they made their appeal to Garson, who was by
no means lacking in a shrewd native intelligence. He agreed that the
experiment should be made, notwithstanding the fact that he felt no
particular enthusiasm over the proposed scheme of working. It is likely
that his own strong feeling of attraction toward the girl whom he had
saved from death, who now appeared before him as a radiantly beautiful
young woman, was more persuasive than the excellent ideas which she
presented so emphatically, and with a logic so impressive.

An agreement was made by which Joe Garson and certain of his more
trusted intimates in the underworld were to put themselves under the
orders of Mary concerning the sphere of their activities. Furthermore,
they bound themselves not to engage in any devious business without her
consent. Aggie, too, was one of the company thus constituted, but she
figured little in the preliminary discussions, since neither Mary nor
the forger had much respect for the intellectual capabilities of the
adventuress, though they appreciated to the full her remarkable powers
of influencing men to her will.

It was not difficult to find a lawyer suited to the necessities of the
undertaking. Mary bore in mind constantly the high financier's reliance
on the legal adviser competent to invent a method whereby to baffle the
law at any desired point, and after judicious investigation she selected
an ambitious and experienced Jew named Sigismund Harris, just in the
prime of his mental vigors, who possessed a knowledge of the law only to
be equalled by his disrespect for it. He seemed, indeed, precisely
the man to fit the situation for one desirous of outraging the law
remorselessly, while still retaining a place absolutely within it.

Forthwith, the scheme was set in operation. As a first step, Mary Turner
became a young lady of independent fortune, who had living with her a
cousin, Miss Agnes Lynch. The flat was abandoned. In its stead was an
apartment in the nineties on Riverside Drive, in which the ladies
lived alone with two maids to serve them. Garson had rooms in the
neighborhood, but Jim Lynch, who persistently refused the conditions
of such an alliance, betook himself afar, to continue his reckless
gathering of other folk's money in such wise as to make him amenable to
the law the very first time he should be caught at it.

A few tentative ventures resulted in profits so large that the company
grew mightily enthusiastic over the novel manner of working. In each
instance, Harris was consulted, and made his confidential statement as
to the legality of the thing proposed. Mary gratified her eager mind
by careful studies in this chosen line of nefariousness. After a
few perfectly legal breach-of-promise suits, due to Aggie's winsome
innocence of demeanor, had been settled advantageously out of court,
Mary devised a scheme of greater elaborateness, with the legal acumen of
the lawyer to endorse it in the matter of safety.

This netted thirty thousand dollars. It was planned as the swindling
of a swindler--which, in fact, had now become the secret principle in
Mary's morality.

A gentleman possessed of some means, none too scrupulous himself, but
with high financial aspirations, advertised for a partner to invest
capital in a business sure to bring large returns. This advertisement
caught the eye of Mary Turner, and she answered it. An introductory
correspondence encouraged her to hope for the victory in a game of
cunning against cunning. She consulted with the perspicacious Mr.
Harris, and especially sought from him detailed information as to
partnership law. His statements gave her such confidence that presently
she entered into a partnership with the advertiser. By the terms
of their agreement, each deposited thirty thousand dollars to the
partnership account. This sum of sixty thousand dollars was ostensibly
to be devoted to the purchase of a tract of land, which should afterward
be divided into lots, and resold to the public at enormous profit. As
a matter of fact, the advertiser planned to make a spurious purchase
of the tract in question, by means of forged deeds granted by an
accomplice, thus making through fraud a neat profit of thirty thousand
dollars. The issue was, however, disappointing to him in the extreme. No
sooner was the sixty thousand dollars on deposit in the bank than Mary
Turner drew out the whole amount, as she had a perfect right to do
legally. When the advertiser learned of this, he was, naturally enough,
full to overflowing with wrath. But after an interview with Harris he
swallowed this wrath as best he might. He found that his adversary knew
a dangerous deal as to his various swindling operations. In short, he
could not go into court with clean hands, which is a prime stipulation
of the law--though often honored in the breach. But the advertiser's
hands were too perilously filthy, so he let himself be mulcted in raging
silence.

The event established Mary as the arbiter in her own coterie. Here was,
in truth, a new game, a game most entertaining, and most profitable,
and not in the least risky. Immediately after the adventure with the
advertiser, Mary decided that a certain General Hastings would make an
excellent sacrifice on the altar of justice--and to her own financial
profit. The old man was a notorious roue, of most unsavory reputation
as a destroyer of innocence. It was probable that he would easily fall a
victim to the ingenuous charms of Aggie. As for that precocious damsel,
she would run no least risk of destruction by the satyr. So, presently,
there were elaborate plottings. General Hastings met Aggie in the
most casual way. He was captivated by her freshness and beauty, her
demureness, her ignorance of all things vicious. Straightway, he set his
snares, being himself already limed. He showered every gallant attention
on the naive bread-and-butter miss, and succeeded gratifyingly soon in
winning her heart--to all appearance. But he gained nothing more, for
the coy creature abruptly developed most effective powers of resistance
to every blandishment that went beyond strictest propriety. His ardor
cooled suddenly when Harris filed the papers in a suit for ten thousand
dollars damages for breach of promise.

Even while this affair was still in the course of execution, Mary
found herself engaged in a direction that offered at least the hope
of attaining her great desire, revenge against Edward Gilder. This
opportunity came in the person of his son, Dick. After much contriving,
she secured an introduction to that young man. Forthwith, she showed
herself so deliciously womanly, so intelligent, so daintily feminine,
so singularly beautiful, that the young man was enamored almost at once.
The fact thrilled Mary to the depths of her heart, for in this son of
the man whom she hated she saw the instrument of vengeance for which
she had so longed. Yet, this one thing was so vital to her that she said
nothing of her purposes, not even to Aggie, though that observant person
may have possessed suspicions more or less near the truth.

It was some such suspicion that lay behind her speech as, in negligee,
she sat cross-legged on the bed, smoking a cigarette in a very knowing
way, while watching Mary, who was adjusting her hat before the mirror of
her dressing-table, one pleasant spring morning.

“Dollin' up a whole lot, ain't you?” Aggie remarked, affably, with that
laxity of language which characterized her natural moods.

“I have a very important engagement with Dick Gilder,” Mary replied,
tranquilly. She vouchsafed nothing more definite as to her intentions.

“Nice boy, ain't he?” Aggie ventured, insinuatingly.

“Oh, I suppose so,” came the indifferent answer from Mary, as she tilted
the picture hat to an angle a trifle more jaunty.

The pseudo cousin sniffed.

“You s'pose that, do you? Well, anyhow, he's here so much we ought to
be chargin' him for his meal-ticket. And yet I ain't sure that you even
know whether he's the real goods, or not.”

The fair face of Mary Turner hardened the least bit. There shone an
expression of inscrutable disdain in the violet eyes, as she turned to
regard Aggie with a level glance.

“I know that he's the son--the only son!--of Edward Gilder. The fact is
enough for me.”

The adventuress of the demure face shook her head in token of complete
bafflement. Her rosy lips pouted in petulant dissatisfaction.

“I don't get you, Mary,” she admitted, querulously. “You never used to
look at the men. The way you acted when you first run round with me,
I thought you sure was a suffragette. And then you met this young
Gilder--and--good-night, nurse!”

The hardness remained in Mary's face, as she continued to regard her
friend. But, now, there was something quizzical in the glance with which
she accompanied the monosyllable:

“Well?”

Again, Aggie shook her head in perplexity.

“His old man sends you up for a stretch for something you didn't do--and
you take up with his son like----”

“And yet you don't understand!” There was scorn for such gross stupidity
in the musical voice.

Aggie choked a little from the cigarette smoke, as she gave a gasp when
suspicion of the truth suddenly dawned on her slow intelligence.

“My Gawd!” Her voice came in a treble shriek of apprehension. “I'm
wise!”

“But you must understand this,” Mary went on, with an authoritative
note in her voice. “Whatever may be between young Gilder and me is to be
strictly my own affair. It has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of
you, or with our schemes for money-making. And, what is more, Agnes, I
don't want to talk about it. But----”

“Yes?” queried Aggie, encouragingly, as the other paused. She hopefully
awaited further confidences.

“But I do want to know,” Mary continued with some severity, “what
you meant by talking in the public street yesterday with a common
pickpocket.”

Aggie's childlike face changed swiftly its expression from a sly
eagerness to sullenness.

“You know perfectly well, Mary Turner,” she cried indignantly, “that
I only said a few words in passin' to my brother Jim. And he ain't no
common pickpocket. Hully Gee! He's the best dip in the business.”

“But you must not be seen speaking with him,” Mary directed, with a
certain air of command now become habitual to her among the members of
her clique. “My cousin, Miss Agnes Lynch, must be very careful as to her
associates.”

The volatile Agnes was restored to good humor by some subtle quality in
the utterance, and a family pride asserted itself.

“He just stopped me to say it's been the best year he ever had,” she
explained, with ostentatious vanity.

Mary appeared sceptical.

“How can that be,” she demanded, “when the dead line now is John
Street?”

“The dead line!” Aggie scoffed. A peal of laughter rang merrily from her
curving lips.

“Why, Jim takes lunch every day in the Wall Street Delmonico's. Yes,”
 she went on with increasing animation, “and only yesterday he went down
to Police Headquarters, just for a little excitement, 'cause Jim does
sure hate a dull life. Say, he told me they've got a mat at the
door with 'Welcome' on it--in letters three feet high. Now,
what--do--you--think--of that!” Aggie teetered joyously, the while
she inhaled a shockingly large mouthful of smoke. “And, oh, yes!”
 she continued happily, “Jim, he lifted a leather from a bull who was
standing in the hallway there at Headquarters! Jim sure does love
excitement.”

Mary lifted her dark eyebrows in half-amused inquiry.

“It's no use, Agnes,” she declared, though without entire sincerity; “I
can't quite keep up with your thieves' argot--your slang, you know. Just
what did this brother of yours do?”

“Why, he copped the copper's kale,” Aggie translated, glibly.

Mary threw out her hands in a gesture of dismay.

Thereupon, the adventuress instantly assumed a most ladylike and mincing
air which ill assorted with the cigarette that she held between her
lips.

“He gently removed a leathern wallet,” she said sedately, “containing
a large sum of money from the coat pocket of a member of the detective
force.” The elegance of utterance was inimitably done. But in the next
instant, the ordinary vulgarity of enunciation was in full play again.
“Oh, Gee!” she cried gaily. “He says Inspector Burke's got a gold watch
that weighs a ton, an' all set with diamon's!--which was give to 'im
by--admirin' friends!... We didn't contribute.”

“Given to him,” Mary corrected, with a tolerant smile.

Aggie sniffed once again.

“What difference does it make?” she demanded, scornfully. “He's got it,
ain't he?” And then she added with avaricious intensity: “Just as soon
as I get time, I'm goin' after that watch--believe me!”

Mary shook her head in denial.

“No, you are not,” she said, calmly. “You are under my orders now. And
as long as you are working with us, you will break no laws.”

“But I can't see----” Aggie began to argue with the petulance of a
spoiled child.

Mary's voice came with a certainty of conviction born of fact.

“When you were working alone,” she said gravely, did you have a home
like this?”

“No,” was the answer, spoken a little rebelliously.

“Or such clothes? Most of all, did you have safety from the police?”

“No,” Aggie admitted, somewhat more responsively. “But, just the same, I
can't see----”

Mary began putting on her gloves, and at the same time strove to give
this remarkable young woman some insight into her own point of view,
though she knew the task to be one well-nigh impossible.

“Agnes,” she said, didactically, “the richest men in this country have
made their fortunes, not because of the law, but in spite of the law.
They made up their minds what they wanted to do, and then they engaged
lawyers clever enough to show them how they could do it, and still keep
within the law. Any one with brains can get rich in this country if he
will engage the right lawyer. Well, I have the brains--and Harris is
showing me the law--the wonderful twisted law that was made for the
rich! Since we keep inside the law, we are safe.”

Aggie, without much apprehension of the exact situation, was moved to a
dimpled mirth over the essential humor of the method indicated.

“Gee, that's funny,” she cried happily. “You an' me an' Joe Garson
handin' it to 'em, an' the bulls can't touch us! Next thing you know,
Harris will be havin' us incorporated as the American Legal Crime
Society.”

“I shouldn't be in the least surprised,” Mary assented, as she finished
buttoning her gloves. She smiled, but there was a hint of grimness in
the bending of her lips. That grimness remained, as she glanced at
the clock, then went toward the door of the room, speaking over her
shoulder.

“And, now I must be off to a most important engagement with Mr. Dick
Gilder.”



CHAPTER VIII. A TIP FROM HEADQUARTERS.

Presently, when she had finished the cigarette, Aggie proceeded to her
own chamber and there spent a considerable time in making a toilette
calculated to set off to its full advantage the slender daintiness of
her form. When at last she was gowned to her satisfaction, she went
into the drawing-room of the apartment and gave herself over to more
cigarettes, in an easy chair, sprawled out in an attitude of comfort
never taught in any finishing school for young ladies. She at the same
time indulged her tastes in art and literature by reading the jokes and
studying the comic pictures in an evening paper, which the maid brought
in at her request. She had about exhausted this form of amusement when
the coming of Joe Garson, who was usually in and out of the apartment
a number of times daily, provided a welcome diversion. After a casual
greeting between the two, Aggie explained, in response to his question,
that Mary had gone out to keep an engagement with Dick Gilder.

There was a little period of silence while the man, with the resolute
face and the light gray eyes that shone so clearly underneath the thick,
waving silver hair, held his head bent downward as if in intent thought.
When, finally, he spoke, there was a certain quality in his voice that
caused Aggie to regard him curiously.

“Mary has been with him a good deal lately,” he said, half
questioningly.

“That's what,” was the curt agreement.

Garson brought out his next query with the brutal bluntness of his kind;
and yet there was a vague suggestion of tenderness in his tones under
the vulgar words.

“Think she's stuck on him?” He had seated himself on a settee opposite
the girl, who did not trouble on his account to assume a posture more
decorous, and he surveyed her keenly as he waited for a reply.

“Why not?” Aggie retorted. “Bet your life I'd be, if I had a chance.
He's a swell boy. And his father's got the coin, too.”

At this the man moved impatiently, and his eyes wandered to the window.
Again, Aggie studied him with a swift glance of interrogation. Not being
the possessor of an over-nice sensibility as to the feelings of others,
she now spoke briskly.

“Joe, if there's anything on your mind, shoot it.”

Garson hesitated for a moment, then decided to unburden himself, for he
craved precise knowledge in this matter.

“It's Mary,” he explained, with some embarrassment; “her and young
Gilder.”

“Well?” came the crisp question.

“Well, somehow,” Garson went on, still somewhat confusedly, “I can't see
any good of it, for her.”

“Why?” Aggie demanded, in surprise.

Garson's manner grew easier, now that the subject was well broached.

“Old man Gilder's got a big pull,” he vouchsafed, “and if he caught on
to his boy's going with Mary, he'd be likely to send the police after
us--strong! Believe me, I ain't looking for any trip up the river.”

Aggie shook her head, quite unaffected by the man's suggestion of
possible peril in the situation.

“We ain't done nothin' they can touch us for,” she declared, with
assurance. “Mary says so.”

Garson, however, was unconvinced, notwithstanding his deference to the
judgment of his leader.

“Whether we've done anything, or whether we haven't, don't matter,” he
objected. “Once the police set out after you, they'll get you. Russia
ain't in it with some of the things I have seen pulled off in this
town.”

“Oh, can that 'fraid talk!” Aggie exclaimed, roughly. “I tell you they
can't get us. We've got our fingers crossed.”

She would have said more, but a noise at the hall door interrupted her,
and she looked up to see a man in the opening, while behind him appeared
the maid, protesting angrily.

“Never mind that announcing thing with me,” the newcomer rasped to the
expostulating servant, in a voice that suited well his thick-set figure,
with the bullet-shaped head and the bull-like neck. Then he turned to
the two in the drawing-room, both of whom had now risen to their feet.

“It's all right, Fannie,” Aggie said hastily to the flustered maid. “You
can go.”

As the servant, after an indignant toss of the head, departed along the
passage, the visitor clumped heavily forward and stopped in the center
of the room, looking first at one and then the other of the two with a
smile that was not pleasant. He was not at pains to remove the derby
hat which he wore rather far back on his head. By this single sign, one
might have recognized Cassidy, who had had Mary Turner in his charge
on the occasion of her ill-fated visit to Edward Gilder's office, four
years before, though now the man had thickened somewhat, and his ruddy
face was grown even coarser.

“Hello, Joe!” he cried, familiarly. “Hello, Aggie!”

The light-gray eyes of the forger had narrowed perceptibly as he
recognized the identity of the unceremonious caller, while the lines of
his firmly set mouth took on an added fixity.

“Well?” he demanded. His voice was emotionless.

“Just a little friendly call,” Cassidy announced, in his strident voice.
“Where's the lady of the house?”

“Out.” It was Aggie who spoke, very sharply.

“Well, Joe,” Cassidy went on, without paying further heed to the girl
for a moment, “when she comes back, just tell her it's up to her to make
a get-away, and to make it quick.”

But Aggie was not one to be ignored under any circumstances. Now, she
spoke with some acerbity in her voice, which could at will be wondrous
soft and low.

“Say!” she retorted viciously, “you can't throw any scare into us. You
hadn't got anything on us. See?”

Cassidy, in response to this outburst, favored the girl with a long
stare, and there was hearty amusement in his tones as he answered.

“Nothing on you, eh? Well, well, let's see.” He regarded Garson with a
grin. “You are Joe Garson, forger.” As he spoke, the detective took a
note-book from a pocket, found a page, and then read: “First arrested in
1891, for forging the name of Edwin Goodsell to a check for ten thousand
dollars. Again arrested June 19, 1893, for forgery. Arrested in April,
1898, for forging the signature of Oscar Hemmenway to a series of bonds
that were counterfeit. Arrested as the man back of the Reilly gang, in
1903. Arrested in 1908 for forgery.”

There was no change in the face or pose of the man who listened to the
reading. When it was done, and the officer looked up with a resumption
of his triumphant grin, Garson spoke quietly.

“Haven't any records of convictions, have you?”

The grin died, and a snarl sprang in its stead.

“No,” he snapped, vindictively. “But we've got the right dope on you,
all right, Joe Garson.” He turned savagely on the girl, who now had
regained her usual expression of demure innocence, but with her
rather too heavy brows drawn a little lower than their wont, under the
influence of an emotion otherwise concealed.

“And you're little Aggie Lynch,” Cassidy declared, as he thrust the
note-book back into his pocket. “Just now, you're posing as Mary
Turner's cousin. You served two years in Burnsing for blackmail. You
were arrested in Buffalo, convicted, and served your stretch. Nothing on
you? Well, well!” Again there was triumph in the officer's chuckle.

Aggie showed no least sign of perturbation in the face of
this revelation of her unsavory record. Only an expression of
half-incredulous wonder and delight beamed from her widely opened blue
eyes and was emphasized in the rounding of the little mouth.

“Why,” she cried, and now there was softness enough in the cooing notes,
“my Gawd! It looks as though you had actually been workin'!”

The sarcasm was without effect on the dull sensibilities of the officer.
He went on speaking with obvious enjoyment of the extent to which his
knowledge reached.

“And the head of the gang is Mary Turner. Arrested four years ago for
robbing the Emporium. Did her stretch of three years.”

“Is that all you've got about her?” Garson demanded, with such
abruptness that Cassidy forgot his dignity sufficiently to answer with
an unqualified yes.

The forger continued speaking rapidly, and now there was an undercurrent
of feeling in his voice.

“Nothing in your record of her about her coming out without a friend
in the world, and trying to go straight? You ain't got nothing in that
pretty little book of your'n about your going to the millinery store
where she finally got a job, and tipping them off to where 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 than its
wont.

“I mean,” Garson repeated, and there was finality in his accents, a
deadly quality that was appalling, “I mean, cut it out--now, here, and
all the time! It don't go!” The voice rose slightly. The effect of it
was more penetrant than a scream. “It don't go!... Do you get me?”

There was a short interval of silence, then the officer's eyes at last
fell. It was Aggie who relieved the tension of the scene.

“He's got you,” she remarked, airily. “Oi, oi! He's got you!”

There were again a few seconds of pause, and then Cassidy made an
observation that revealed in some measure the shock of the experience he
had just undergone.

“You would have been a big man, Joe, if it hadn't been for that temper
of yours. It's got you into trouble once or twice already. Some time
it's likely to prove your finish.”

Garson relaxed his immobility, and a little color crept into his cheeks.

“That's my business,” he responded, dully.

“Anyway,” the officer went on, with a new confidence, now that his eyes
were free from the gaze that had burned into his soul, “you've got to
clear out, the whole gang of you--and do it quick.”

Aggie, who as a matter of fact began to feel that she was not receiving
her due share of attention, now interposed, moving forward till her face
was close to the detective's.

“We don't scare worth a cent,” she snapped, with the virulence of a
vixen. “You can't do anything to us. We ain't broke the law.” There came
a sudden ripple of laughter, and the charming lips curved joyously, as
she added: “Though perhaps we have bent it a bit.”

Cassidy sneered, outraged by such impudence on the part of an
ex-convict.

“Don't make no difference what you've done,” he growled. “Gee!” he went
on, with a heavy sneer. “But things are coming to a pretty pass when a
gang of crooks gets to arguing about their rights. That's funny, that
is!”

“Then laugh!” Aggie exclaimed, insolently, and made a face at the
officer. “Ha, ha, ha!”

“Well, you've got the tip,” Cassidy returned, somewhat disconcerted,
after a stolid fashion of his own. “It's up to you to take it, that's
all. If you don't, one of you will make a long visit with some people
out of town, and it'll probably be Mary. Remember, I'm giving it to you
straight.”

Aggie assumed her formal society manner, exaggerated to the point of
extravagance.

“Do come again, little one,” she chirruped, caressingly. “I've enjoyed
your visit so much!”

But Cassidy paid no apparent attention to her frivolousness; only turned
and went noisily out of the drawing-room, offering no return to her
daintily inflected good-afternoon.

For her own part, as she heard the outer door close behind the
detective, Aggie's expression grew vicious, and the heavy brows drew
very low, until the level line almost made her prettiness vanish.

“The truck-horse detective!” she sneered. “An eighteen collar, and a
six-and-a-half hat! He sure had his nerve, trying to bluff us!”

But it was plain that Garson was of another mood. There was anxiety in
his face, as he stood staring vaguely out of the window.

“Perhaps it wasn't a bluff, Aggie,” he suggested.

“Well, what have we done, I'd like to know?” the girl demanded,
confidently. She took a cigarette and a match from the tabouret beside
her, and stretched her feet comfortably, if very inelegantly, on a chair
opposite.

Garson answered with a note of weariness that was unlike him.

“It ain't what you have done,” he said, quietly. “It's what they can
make a jury think you've done. And, once they set out to get you--God,
how they can frame things! If they ever start out after Mary----” He did
not finish the sentence, but sank down into his chair with a groan that
was almost of despair.

The girl replied with a burst of careless laughter.

“Joe,” she said gaily, “you're one grand little forger, all right, all
right. But Mary's got the brains. Pooh, I'll string along with her as
far as she wants to go. She's educated, she is. She ain't like you and
me, Joe. She talks like a lady, and, what's a damned sight harder,
she acts like a lady. I guess I know. Wake me up any old night and ask
me--just ask me, that's all. She's been tryin' to make a lady out of
me!”

The vivaciousness of the girl distracted the man for the moment from
the gloom of his thoughts, and he turned to survey the speaker with a
cynical amusement.

“Swell chance!” he commented, drily.

“Oh, I'm not so worse! Just you watch out.” The lively girl sprang
up, discarded the cigarette, adjusted an imaginary train, and spoke
lispingly in a society manner much more moderate and convincing than
that with which she had favored the retiring Cassidy. Voice, pose and
gesture proclaimed at least the excellent mimic.

“How do you do, Mrs. Jones! So good of you to call!... My dear Miss
Smith, this is indeed a pleasure.” She seated herself again, quite
primly now, and moved her hands over the tabouret appropriately to her
words. “One lump, or two?... Yes, I just love bridge. No, I don't play,”
 she continued, simpering; “but, just the same, I love it.” With this
absurd ending, Aggie again arranged her feet according to her liking on
the opposite chair. “That's the kind of stuff she's had me doing,” she
rattled on in her coarser voice, “and believe me, Joe, it's damned near
killing me. But all the same,” she hurried on, with a swift revulsion
of mood to the former serious topic, “I'm for Mary strong! You stick to
her, Joe, and you'll wear diamon's.... And that reminds me! I wish she'd
let me wear mine, but she won't. She says they're vulgar for an innocent
country girl like her cousin, Agnes Lynch. Ain't that fierce?... How can
anything be vulgar that's worth a hundred and fifty a carat?”



CHAPTER IX. A LEGAL DOCUMENT.

Mary Turner spent less than an hour in that mysteriously important
engagement with Dick Gilder, of which she had spoken to Aggie. After
separating from the young man, she went alone down Broadway, walking the
few blocks of distance to Sigismund Harris's office. On a corner, her
attention was caught by the forlorn face of a girl crossing into the
side street. A closer glance showed that the privation of the gaunt
features was emphasized by the scant garments, almost in tatters.
Instantly, Mary's quick sympathies were aroused, the more particularly
since the wretched child seemed of about the age she herself had been
when her great suffering had befallen. So, turning aside, she soon
caught up with the girl and spoke an inquiry.

It was the familiar story, a father out of work, a sick mother, a brood
of hungry children. Some confused words of distress revealed the fact
that the wobegone girl was even then fighting the final battle of purity
against starvation. That she still fought on in such case proved enough
as to her decency of nature, wholesome despite squalid surroundings.
Mary's heart was deeply moved, and her words of comfort came with a
simple sincerity that was like new life to the sorely beset waif. She
promised to interest herself in securing employment for the father,
such care as the mother and children might need, along with a proper
situation for the girl herself. In evidence of her purpose, she took her
engagement-book from her bag, and set down the street and number of the
East Side tenement where the family possessed the one room that
mocked the word home, and she gave a banknote to the girl to serve the
immediate needs.

When she went back to resume her progress down Broadway, Mary felt
herself vastly cheered by the warm glow within, which is the reward of
a kindly act, gratefully received. And, on this particular morning, she
craved such assuagement of her spirit, for the conscience that, in
spite of all her misdeeds, still lived was struggling within her. In
her revolt against a world that had wantonly inflicted on her the worst
torments, Mary Turner had thought that she might safely disregard those
principles in which she had been so carefully reared. She had believed
that by the deliberate adoption of a life of guile within limits allowed
by the law, she would find solace for her wants, while feeling that thus
she avenged herself in some slight measure for the indignities she had
undergone unjustly. Yet, as the days passed, days of success as far as
her scheming was concerned, this brilliant woman, who had tried to deem
herself unscrupulous, found that lawlessness within the law failed to
satisfy something deep within her soul. The righteousness that was
her instinct was offended by the triumphs achieved through so devious
devices, though she resolutely set her will to suppress any spiritual
rebellion.

There was, as well, another grievance of her nature, yet more subtle,
infinitely more painful. This lay in her craving for tenderness. She
was wholly woman, notwithstanding the virility of her intelligence,
its audacity, its aggressiveness. She had a heart yearning for the
multitudinous affections that are the prerogative of the feminine; she
had a heart longing for love, to receive and to give in full measure....
And her life was barren. Since the death of her father, there had been
none on whom she could lavish the great gifts of her tenderness. Through
the days of her working in the store, circumstances had shut her out
from all association with others congenial. No need to rehearse the
impossibilities of companionship in the prison life. Since then, the
situation had not vitally improved, in spite of her better worldly
condition. For Garson, who had saved her from death, she felt a strong
and lasting gratitude--nothing that relieved the longing for nobler
affections. There was none other with whom she had any intimacy except
that, of a sort, with Aggie Lynch, and by no possibility could the
adventuress serve as an object of deep regard. The girl was amusing
enough, and, indeed, a most likable person at her best. But she was,
after all, a shallow-pated individual, without a shred of principle of
any sort whatsoever, save the single merit of unswerving loyalty to her
“pals.” Mary cherished a certain warm kindliness for the first woman
who had befriended her in any way, but beyond this there was no finer
feeling.

Nevertheless, it is not quite accurate to say that Mary Turner had had
no intimacy in which her heart might have been seriously engaged. In one
instance, of recent happening, she had been much in association with a
young man who was of excellent standing in the world, who was of good
birth, good education, of delightful manners, and, too, wholesome and
agreeable beyond the most of his class. This was Dick Gilder, and, since
her companionship with him, Mary had undergone a revulsion greater than
ever before against the fate thrust on her, which now at last she had
chosen to welcome and nourish by acquiescence as best she might.

Of course, she could not waste tenderness on this man, for she had
deliberately set out to make him the instrument of her vengeance against
his father. For that very reason, she suffered much from a conscience
newly clamorous. Never for an instant did she hesitate in her
long-cherished plan of revenge against the one who had brought ruin on
her life, yet, through all her satisfaction before the prospect of final
victory after continued delay, there ran the secret, inescapable sorrow
over the fact that she must employ this means to attain her end. She had
no thought of weakening, but the better spirit within her warred against
the lust to repay an eye for an eye. It was the new Gospel against the
old Law, and the fierceness of the struggle rent her. Just now, the
doing of the kindly act seemed somehow to gratify not only her maternal
instinct toward service of love, but, too, to muffle for a little the
rebuking voice of her inmost soul.

So she went her way more at ease, more nearly content again with herself
and with her system of living. Indeed, as she was shown into the private
office of the ingenious interpreter of the law, there was not a hint of
any trouble beneath the bright mask of her beauty, radiantly smiling.

Harris regarded his client with an appreciative eye, as he bowed in
greeting, and invited her to a seat. The lawyer was a man of fine
physique, with a splendid face of the best Semitic type, in which were
large, dark, sparkling eyes--eyes a Lombroso perhaps might have judged
rather too closely set. As a matter of fact, Harris had suffered a
flagrant injustice in his own life from a suspicion of wrong-doing which
he had not merited by any act. This had caused him a loss of prestige in
his profession. He presently adopted the wily suggestion of the adage,
that it is well to have the game if you have the name, and he resolutely
set himself to the task of making as much money as possible by any means
convenient. Mary Turner as a client delighted his heart, both because of
the novelty of her ideas and for the munificence of the fees which she
ungrudgingly paid with never a protest. So, as he beamed on her now, and
spoke a compliment, it was rather the lawyer than the man that was moved
to admiration.

“Why, Miss Turner, how charming!” he declared, smiling. “Really, my dear
young lady, you look positively bridal.”

“Oh, do you think so?” Mary rejoined, with a whimsical pout, as she
seated herself. For the moment her air became distrait, but she quickly
regained her poise, as the lawyer, who had dropped back into his
chair behind the desk, went on speaking. His tone now was crisply
business-like.

“I sent your cousin, Miss Agnes Lynch, the release which she is to
sign,” he explained, “when she gets that money from General Hastings.
I wish you'd look it over, when you have time to spare. It's all right,
I'm sure, but I confess that I appreciate your opinion of things,
Miss Turner, even of legal documents--yes, indeed, I do!--perhaps
particularly of legal documents.”

“Thank you,” Mary said, evidently a little gratified by the frank praise
of the learned gentleman for her abilities. “And have you heard from
them yet?” she inquired.

“No,” the lawyer replied. “I gave them until to-morrow. If I don't
hear then, I shall start suit at once.” Then the lawyer's manner became
unusually bland and self-satisfied as he opened a drawer of the desk
and brought forth a rather formidable-appearing document, bearing a
most impressive seal. “You will be glad to know,” he went on unctuously,
“that I was entirely successful in carrying out that idea of yours as to
the injunction. My dear Miss Turner,” he went on with florid compliment,
“Portia was a squawking baby, compared with you.”

“Thank you again,” Mary answered, as she took the legal paper which he
held outstretched toward her. Her scarlet lips were curved happily, and
the clear oval of her cheeks blossomed to a deeper rose. For a moment,
her glance ran over the words of the page. Then she looked up at the
lawyer, and there were new lusters in the violet eyes.

“It's splendid,” she declared. “Did you have much trouble in getting
it?”

Harris permitted himself the indulgence of an unprofessional chuckle of
keenest amusement before he answered.

“Why, no!” he declared, with reminiscent enjoyment in his manner. “That
is, not really!” There was an enormous complacency in his air over the
event. “But, at the outset, when I made the request, the judge just
naturally nearly fell off the bench. Then, I showed him that Detroit
case, to which you had drawn my attention, and the upshot of it all
was that he gave me what I wanted without a whimper. He couldn't help
himself, you know. That's the long and the short of it.”

That mysterious document with the imposing seal, the request for which
had nearly caused a judge to fall off the bench, reposed safely in
Mary's bag when she, returned to the apartment after the visit to the
lawyer's office.



CHAPTER X. MARKED MONEY.

Mary had scarcely received from Aggie an account of Cassidy's
threatening invasion, when the maid announced that Mr. Irwin had called.

“Show him in, in just two minutes,” Mary directed.

“Who's the gink?” Aggie demanded, with that slangy diction which was her
habit.

“You ought to know,” Mary returned, smiling a little. “He's the
lawyer retained by General Hastings in the matter of a certain
breach-of-promise suit.”

“Oh, you mean yours truly,” Aggie exclaimed, not in the least abashed by
her forgetfulness in an affair that concerned herself so closely. “Hope
he's brought the money. What about it?”

“Leave the room now,” Mary ordered, crisply. “When I call to you, come
in, but be sure and leave everything to me. Merely follow my lead. And,
Agnes--be very ingenue.”

“Oh, I'm wise--I'm wise,” Aggie nodded, as she hurried out toward her
bedroom. “I'll be a squab--surest thing you know!”

Next moment, Mary gave a formal greeting to the lawyer who represented
the man she planned to mulct effectively, and invited him to a chair
near her, while she herself retained her place at the desk, within a
drawer of which she had just locked the formidable-appearing document
received from Harris.

Irwin lost no time in coming to the point.

“I called in reference to this suit, which Miss Agnes Lynch threatens to
bring against my client, General Hastings.”

Mary regarded the attorney with a level glance, serenely expressionless
as far as could be achieved by eyes so clear and shining, and her voice
was cold as she replied with significant brusqueness.

“It's not a threat, Mr. Irwin. The suit will be brought.”

The lawyer frowned, and there was a strident note in his voice when he
answered, meeting her glance with an uncompromising stare of hostility.

“You realize, of course,” he said finally, “that this is merely plain
blackmail.”

There was not the change of a feature in the face of the woman who
listened to the accusation. Her eyes steadfastly retained their clear
gaze into his; her voice was still coldly formal, as before.

“If it's blackmail, Mr. Irwin, why don't you consult the police?”
 she inquired, with manifest disdain. Mary turned to the maid, who now
entered in response to the bell she had sounded a minute before. “Fanny,
will you ask Miss Lynch to come in, please?” Then she faced the lawyer
again, with an aloofness of manner that was contemptuous. “Really, Mr.
Irwin,” she drawled, “why don't you take this matter to the police?”

The reply was uttered with conspicuous exasperation.

“You know perfectly well,” the lawyer said bitterly, “that General
Hastings cannot afford such publicity. His position would be
jeopardized.”

“Oh, as for that,” Mary suggested evenly, and now there was a trace of
flippancy in her fashion of speaking, “I'm sure the police would keep
your complaint a secret. Really, you know, Mr. Irwin, I think you had
better take your troubles to the police, rather than to me. You will get
much more sympathy from them.”

The lawyer sprang up, with an air of sudden determination.

“Very well, I will then,” he declared, sternly. “I will!”

Mary, from her vantage point at the desk across from him, smiled a
smile that would have been very engaging to any man under more favorable
circumstances, and she pushed in his direction the telephone that stood
there.

“3100, Spring,” she remarked, encouragingly, “will bring an officer
almost immediately.” She leaned back in her chair, and surveyed the
baffled man amusedly.

The lawyer was furious over the failure of his effort to intimidate this
extraordinarily self-possessed young woman, who made a mock of his every
thrust. But he was by no means at the end of his resources.

“Nevertheless,” he rejoined, “you know perfectly well that General
Hastings never promised to marry this girl. You know----” He broke off
as Aggie entered the drawing-room,

Now, the girl was demure in seeming almost beyond belief, a childish
creature, very fair and dainty, guileless surely, with those untroubled
eyes of blue, those softly curving lips of warmest red and the more
delicate bloom in the rounded cheeks. There were the charms of innocence
and simplicity in the manner of her as she stopped just within the
doorway, whence she regarded Mary with a timid, pleading gaze, her
slender little form poised lightly as if for flight

“Did you want me, dear?” she asked. There was something half-plaintive
in the modulated cadences of the query.

“Agnes,” Mary answered affectionately, “this is Mr. Irwin, who has come
to see you in behalf of General Hastings.”

“Oh!” the girl murmured, her voice quivering a little, as the lawyer,
after a short nod, dropped again into his seat; “oh, I'm so frightened!”
 She hurried, fluttering, to a low stool behind the desk, beside Mary's
chair, and there she sank down, drooping slightly, and catching hold of
one of Mary's hands as if in mute pleading for protection against the
fear that beset her chaste soul.

“Nonsense!” Mary exclaimed, soothingly. “There's really nothing at all
to be frightened about, my dear child.” Her voice was that with which
one seeks to cajole a terrified infant. “You mustn't be afraid, Agnes.
Mr. Irwin says that General Hastings did not promise to marry you. Of
course, you understand, my dear, that under no circumstances must you
say anything that isn't strictly true, and that, if he did not promise
to marry you, you have no case--none at all. Now, Agnes, tell me: did
General Hastings promise to marry you?”

“Oh, yes--oh, yes, indeed!” Aggie cried, falteringly. “And I wish he
would. He's such a delightful old gentleman!” As she spoke, the girl let
go Mary's hand and clasped her own together ecstatically.

The legal representative of the delightful old gentleman scowled
disgustedly at this outburst. His voice was portentous, as he put a
question.

“Was that promise made in writing?”

“No,” Aggie answered, gushingly. “But all his letters were in writing,
you know. Such wonderful letters!” She raised her blue eyes toward
the ceiling in a naive rapture. “So tender, and so--er--interesting!”
 Somehow, the inflection on the last word did not altogether suggest the
ingenuous.

“Yes, yes, I dare say,” Irwin agreed, hastily, with some evidences of
chagrin. He had no intention of dwelling on that feature of the letters,
concerning which he had no doubt whatsoever, since he knew the amorous
General very well indeed. They would be interesting, beyond shadow of
questioning, horribly interesting. Such was the confessed opinion of the
swain himself who had written them in his folly--horribly interesting
to all the reading public of the country, since the General was a
conspicuous figure.

Mary intervened with a suavity that infuriated the lawyer almost beyond
endurance.

“But you're quite sure, Agnes,” she questioned gently, “that General
Hastings did promise to marry you?” The candor of her manner was
perfect.

And the answer of Aggie was given with a like convincing emphasis.

“Oh, yes!” she declared, tensely. “Why, I would swear to it.” The limpid
eyes, so appealing in their soft lusters, went first to Mary, then gazed
trustingly into those of the routed attorney.

“You see, Mr. Irwin, she would swear to that,” emphasized Mary.

“We're beaten,” he confessed, dejectedly, turning his glance toward
Mary, whom, plainly, he regarded as his real adversary in the combat on
his client's behalf. “I'm going to be quite frank with you, Miss
Turner, quite frank,” he stated with more geniality, though with a very
crestfallen air. Somehow, indeed, there was just a shade too much of
the crestfallen in the fashion of his utterance, and the woman whom he
addressed watched warily as he continued. “We can't afford any scandal,
so we're going to settle at your own terms.” He paused expectantly, but
Mary offered no comment; only maintained her alert scrutiny of the
man. The lawyer, therefore, leaned forward with a semblance of frank
eagerness. Instantly, Aggie had become agog with greedily blissful
anticipations, and she uttered a slight ejaculation of joy; but Irwin
paid no heed to her. He was occupied in taking from his pocket a thick
bill-case, and from this presently a sheaf of banknotes, which he laid
on the desk before Mary, with a little laugh of discomfiture over having
been beaten in the contest.

As he did so, Aggie thrust forth an avaricious hand, but it was caught
and held by Mary before it reached above the top of the desk, and the
avaricious gesture passed unobserved by the attorney.

“We can't fight where ladies are concerned,” he went on, assuming, as
best he might contrive, a chivalrous tone. “So, if you will just hand
over General Hastings' letters, why, here's your money.”

Much to the speaker's surprise, there followed an interval of silence,
and his puzzlement showed in the knitting of his brows. “You have the
letters, haven't you?” he demanded, abruptly.

Aggie coyly took a thick bundle from its resting place on her rounded
bosom.

“They never leave me,” she murmured, with dulcet passion. There was
in her voice a suggestion of desolation--a desolation that was the
blighting effect of letting the cherished missives go from her.

“Well, they can leave you now, all right,” the lawyer remarked
unsympathetically, but with returning cheerfulness, since he saw the end
of his quest in visible form before him. He reached quickly forward for
the packet, which Aggie extended willingly enough. But it was Mary who,
with a swift movement, caught and held it.

“Not quite yet, Mr. Irwin, I'm afraid,” she said, calmly.

The lawyer barely suppressed a violent ejaculation of annoyance.

“But there's the money waiting for you,” he protested, indignantly.

The rejoinder from Mary was spoken with great deliberation, yet with
a note of determination that caused a quick and acute anxiety to the
General's representative.

“I think,” Mary explained tranquilly, “that you had better see our
lawyer, Mr. Harris, in reference to this. We women know nothing of such
details of business settlement.”

“Oh, there's no need for all that formality,” Irwin urged, with a great
appearance of bland friendliness.

“Just the same,” Mary persisted, unimpressed, “I'm quite sure you would
better see Mr. Harris first.” There was a cadence of insistence in her
voice that assured the lawyer as to the futility of further pretense on
his part.

“Oh, I see,” he said disagreeably, with a frown to indicate his complete
sagacity in the premises.

“I thought you would, Mr. Irwin,” Mary returned, and now she smiled in
a kindly manner, which, nevertheless, gave no pleasure to the chagrined
man before her. As he rose, she went on crisply: “If you'll take the
money to Mr. Harris, Miss Lynch will meet you in his office at four
o'clock this afternoon, and, when her suit for damages for breach
of promise has been legally settled out of court, you will get the
letters.... Good-afternoon, Mr. Irwin.”

The lawyer made a hurried bow which took in both of the women, and
walked quickly toward the door. But he was arrested before he reached
it by the voice of Mary, speaking again, still in that imperturbable
evenness which so rasped his nerves, for all its mellow resonance. But
this time there was a sting, of the sharpest, in the words themselves.

“Oh, you forgot your marked money, Mr. Irwin,” Mary said.

The lawyer wheeled, and stood staring at the speaker with a certain
sheepishness of expression that bore witness to the completeness of his
discomfiture. Without a word, after a long moment in which he perceived
intently the delicate, yet subtly energetic, loveliness of this slender
woman, he walked back to the desk, picked up the money, and restored it
to the bill-case. This done, at last he spoke, with a new respect in his
voice, a quizzical smile on his rather thin lips.

“Young woman,” he said emphatically, “you ought to have been a lawyer.”
 And with that laudatory confession of her skill, he finally took
his departure, while Mary smiled in a triumph she was at no pains to
conceal, and Aggie sat gaping astonishment over the surprising turn of
events.

It was the latter volatile person who ended the silence that followed on
the lawyer's going.

“You've darn near broke my heart,” she cried, bouncing up violently,
“letting all that money go out of the house.... Say, how did you know it
was marked?”

“I didn't,” Mary replied, blandly; “but it was a pretty good guess,
wasn't it? Couldn't you see that all he wanted was to get the letters,
and have us take the marked money? Then, my simple young friend, we
would have been arrested very neatly indeed--for blackmail.”

Aggie's innocent eyes rounded in an amazed consternation, which was not
at all assumed.

“Gee!” she cried. “That would have been fierce! And now?” she
questioned, apprehensively.

Mary's answer repudiated any possibility of fear.

“And now,” she explained contentedly, “he really will go to our lawyer.
There, he will pay over that same marked money. Then, he will get the
letters he wants so much. And, just because it's a strictly business
transaction between two lawyers, with everything done according to legal
ethics----”

“What's legal ethics?” Aggie demanded, impetuously. “They sound some
tasty!” With the comment, she dropped weakly into a chair.

Mary laughed in care-free enjoyment, as well she might after winning the
victory in such a battle of wits.

“Oh,” she said, happily, “you just get it legally, and you get twice as
much!”

“And it's actually the same old game!” Aggie mused. She was doing her
best to get a clear understanding of the matter, though to her it was
all a mystery most esoteric.

Mary reviewed the case succinctly for the other's enlightenment.

“Yes, it's the same game precisely,” she affirmed. “A shameless old roue
makes love to you, and he writes you a stack of silly letters.”

The pouting lips of the listener took on a pathetic droop, and her voice
quivered as she spoke with an effective semblance of virginal terror.

“He might have ruined my life!”

Mary continued without giving much attention to these histrionics.

“If you had asked him for all this money for the return of his letters,
it would have been blackmail, and we'd have gone to jail in all human
probability. But we did no such thing--no, indeed! What we did wasn't
anything like that in the eyes of the law. What we did was merely to
have your lawyer take steps toward a suit for damages for breach of
promise of marriage for the sum of ten thousand dollars. Then, his
lawyer appears in behalf of General Hastings, and there follow a
number of conferences between the legal representatives of the opposing
parties. By means of these conferences, the two legal gentlemen run up
very respectable bills of expenses. In the end, we get our ten thousand
dollars, and the flighty old General gets back his letters.... My dear,”
 Mary concluded vaingloriously, “we're inside the law, and so we're
perfectly safe. And there you are!”




CHAPTER XI. THE THIEF.

Mary remained in joyous spirits after her victorious matching of brains
against a lawyer of high standing in his profession. For the time being,
conscience was muted by gratified ambition. Her thoughts just then were
far from the miseries of the past, with their evil train of consequences
in the present. But that past was soon to be recalled to her with a
vividness most terrible.

She had entered the telephone-booth, which she had caused to be
installed out of an extra closet of her bedroom for the sake of greater
privacy on occasion, and it was during her absence from the drawing-room
that Garson again came into the apartment, seeking her. On being told
by Aggie as to Mary's whereabouts, he sat down to await her return,
listening without much interest to the chatter of the adventuress.... It
was just then that the maid appeared.

“There's a girl wants to see Miss Turner,” she explained.

The irrepressible Aggie put on her most finically elegant air.

“Has she a card?” she inquired haughtily, while the maid tittered
appreciation.

“No,” was the answer. “But she says it's important. I guess the poor
thing's in hard luck, from the look of her,” the kindly Fannie added.

“Oh, then she'll be welcome, of course,” Aggie declared, and Garson
nodded in acquiescence. “Tell her to come in and wait, Fannie. Miss
Turner will be here right away.” She turned to Garson as the maid left
the room. “Mary sure is an easy boob,” she remarked, cheerfully. “Bless
her soft heart!”

A curiously gentle smile of appreciation softened the immobility of the
forger's face as he again nodded assent.

“We might just as well pipe off the skirt before Mary gets here,” Aggie
suggested, with eagerness.

A minute later, a girl perhaps twenty years of age stepped just within
the doorway, and stood there with eyes downcast, after one swift,
furtive glance about her. Her whole appearance was that of dejection.
Her soiled black gown, the cringing posture, the pallor of her face,
proclaimed the abject misery of her state.

Aggie, who was not exuberant in her sympathies for any one other than
herself, addressed the newcomer with a patronizing inflection, modulated
in her best manner.

“Won't you come in, please?” she requested.

The shrinking girl shot another veiled look in the direction of the
speaker.

“Are you Miss Turner?” she asked, in a voice broken by nervous dismay.

“Really, I am very sorry,” Aggie replied, primly; “but I am only her
cousin, Miss Agnes Lynch. But Miss Turner is likely to be back any
minute now.”

“Can I wait?” came the timid question.

“Certainly,” Aggie answered, hospitably. “Please sit down.”

As the girl obediently sank down on the nearest chair, Garson addressed
her sharply, so that the visitor started uneasily at the unexpected
sound.

“You don't know Miss Turner?”

“No,” came the faint reply.

“Then, what do you want to see her about?”

There was a brief pause before the girl could pluck up courage enough
for an answer. Then, it was spoken confusedly, almost in a whisper.

“She once helped a girl friend of mine, and I thought--I thought----”

“You thought she might help you,” Garson interrupted.

But Aggie, too, possessed some perceptive powers, despite the fact that
she preferred to use them little in ordinary affairs.

“You have been in stir--prison, I mean.” She hastily corrected the lapse
into underworld slang.

Came a distressed muttering of assent from the girl.

“How sad!” Aggie remarked, in a voice of shocked pity for one so
inconceivably unfortunate. “How very, very sad!”

This ingenuous method of diversion was put to an end by the entrance of
Mary, who stopped short on seeing the limp figure huddled in the chair.

“A visitor, Agnes?” she inquired.

At the sound of her voice, and before Aggie could hit on a fittingly
elegant form of reply, the girl looked up. And now, for the first
time, she spoke with some degree of energy, albeit there was a sinister
undertone in the husky voice.

“You're Miss Turner?” she questioned.

“Yes,” Mary said, simply. Her words rang kindly; and she smiled
encouragement.

A gasp burst from the white lips of the girl, and she cowered as one
stricken physically.

“Mary Turner! Oh, my God! I----” She hid her face within her arms and
sat bent until her head rested on her knees in an abasement of misery.

Vaguely startled by the hysterical outburst from the girl, Mary's
immediate thought was that here was a pitiful instance of one suffering
from starvation.

“Joe,” she directed rapidly, “have Fannie bring a glass of milk with an
egg and a little brandy in it, right away.”

The girl in the chair was shaking soundlessly under the stress of her
emotions. A few disjointed phrases fell from her quivering lips.

“I didn't know--oh, I couldn't!”

“Don't try to talk just now,” Mary warned, reassuringly. “Wait until
you've had something to eat.”

Aggie, who had observed developments closely, now lifted her voice in
tardy lamentations over her own stupidity. There was no affectation of
the fine lady in her self-reproach.

“Why, the poor gawk's hungry!” she exclaimed! “And I never got the dope
on her. Ain't I the simp!”

The girl regained a degree of self-control, and showed something of
forlorn dignity.

“Yes,” she said dully, “I'm starving.”

Mary regarded the afflicted creature with that sympathy born only of
experience.

“Yes,” she said softly, “I understand.” Then she spoke to Aggie. “Take
her to my room, and let her rest there for a while. Have her drink the
egg and milk slowly, and then lie down for a few minutes anyhow.”

Aggie obeyed with an air of bustling activity.

“Sure, I will!” she declared. She went to the girl and helped her to
stand up. “We'll fix you out all right,” she said, comfortingly. “Come
along with me.... Hungry! Gee, but that's tough!”

Half an hour afterward, while Mary was at her desk, giving part of her
attention to Joe Garson, who sat near, and part to a rather formidable
pile of neatly arranged papers, Aggie reported with her charge, who,
though still shambling of gait, and stooping, showed by some faint color
in her face and an increased steadiness of bearing that the food had
already strengthened her much.

“She would come,” Aggie explained. “I thought she ought to rest for a
while longer anyhow.” She half-shoved the girl into a chair opposite the
desk, in an absurd travesty on the maternal manner.

“I'm all right, I tell you,” came the querulous protest.

Whereupon, Aggie gave over the uncongenial task of mothering, and
settled herself comfortably in a chair, with her legs merely crossed as
a compromise between ease and propriety.

“Are you quite sure?” Mary said to the girl. And then, as the other
nodded in assent, she spoke with a compelling kindliness. “Then you
must tell us all about it--this trouble of yours, you know. What is your
name?”

Once again the girl had recourse to the swift, searching, furtive
glance, but her voice was colorless as she replied, listlessly:

“Helen Morris.”

Mary regarded the girl with an expression that was inscrutable when she
spoke again.

“I don't have to ask if you have been in prison,” she said gravely.
“Your face shows it.”

“I--I came out--three months ago,” was the halting admission.

Mary watched the shrinking figure reflectively for a long minute before
she spoke again. Then there was a deeper resonance in her voice.

“And you'd made up your mind to go straight?”

“Yes.” The word was a whisper.

“You were going to do what the chaplain had told you,” Mary went on in
a voice vibrant with varied emotions. “You were going to start all over
again, weren't you? You were going to begin a new life, weren't you?”
 The bent head of the girl bent still lower in assent. There came a
cynical note into Mary's utterance now.

“It doesn't work very well, does it?” she asked, bitterly.

The girl gave sullen agreement.

“No,” she said dully; “I'm whipped.”

Mary's manner changed on the instant. She spoke cheerfully for the first
time.

“Well, then,” she questioned, “how would you like to work with us?”

The girl looked up for a second with another of her fleeting, stealthy
glances.

“You--you mean that----?”

Mary explained her intention in the matter very explicitly. Her voice
grew boastful.

“Our kind of work pays well when you know how. Look at us.”

Aggie welcomed the opportunity for speech, too long delayed.

“Hats from Joseph's, gowns from Lucile's, and cracked ice from
Tiffany's. But it ain't ladylike to wear it,” she concluded with a
reproachful glance at her mentor.

Mary disregarded the frivolous interruption, and went on speaking to the
girl, and now there was something pleasantly cajoling in her manner.

“Suppose I should stake you for the present, and put you in with a good
crowd. All you would have to do would be to answer advertisements for
servant girls. I will see that you have the best of references. Then,
when you get in with the right people, you will open the front door some
night and let in the gang. Of course, you will make a get-away when they
do, and get your bit as well.”

There flashed still another of the swift, sly glances, and the lips of
the girl parted as if she would speak. But she did not; only, her head
sagged even lower on her breast, and the shrunken form grew yet more
shrunken. Mary, watching closely, saw these signs, and in the same
instant a change came over her. Where before there had been an
underlying suggestion of hardness, there was now a womanly warmth of
genuine sympathy.

“It doesn't suit you?” she said, very softly. “Good! I was in hopes it
wouldn't. So, here's another plan.” Her voice had become very winning.
“Suppose you could go West--some place where you would have a fair
chance, with money enough so you could live like a human being till you
got a start?”

There came a tensing of the relaxed form, and the head lifted a little
so that the girl could look at her questioner. And, this time, the
glance, though of the briefest, was less furtive.

“I will give you that chance,” Mary said simply, “if you really want
it.”

That speech was like a current of strength to the wretched girl. She sat
suddenly erect, and her words came eagerly.

“Oh, I do!” And now her hungry gaze remained fast on the face of the
woman who offered her salvation.

Mary sprang up and moved a step toward the girl who continued to stare
at her, fascinated. She was now all wholesome. The memory of her
own wrongs surged in her during this moment only to make her more
appreciative of the blessedness of seemly life. She was moved to a
divine compassion over this waif for whom she might prove a beneficent
providence. There was profound conviction in the emphasis with which she
spoke her warning.

“Then I have just one thing to say to you first. If you are going to
live straight, start straight, and then go through with it. Do you know
what that means?”

“You mean, keep straight all the time?” The girl spoke with a force
drawn from the other's strength.

“I mean more than that,” Mary went on earnestly. “I mean, forget that
you were ever in prison. I don't know what you have done--I don't think
I care. But whatever it was, you have paid for it--a pretty big price,
too.” Into these last words there crept the pathos of one who knew. The
sympathy of it stirred the listener to fearful memories.

“I have, I have!” The thin voice broke, wailing.

“Well, then,” Mary went on, “just begin all over again, and be sure you
stand up for your rights. Don't let them make you pay a second time. Go
where no one knows you, and don't tell the first people who are kind to
you that you have been crooked. If they think you are straight, why, be
it. Then nobody will have any right to complain.” Her tone grew suddenly
pleading. “Will you promise me this?”

“Yes, I promise,” came the answer, very gravely, quickened with hope.

“Good!” Mary exclaimed, with a smile of approval. “Wait a minute,” she
added, and left the room.

“Huh! Pretty soft for some people,” Aggie remarked to Garson, with a
sniff. She felt no alarm lest she wound the sensibilities of the girl.
She herself had never let delicacy interfere between herself and money.
It was really stranger that the forger, who possessed a more sympathetic
nature, did not scruple to speak an assent openly. Somehow, he felt an
inexplicable prejudice against this abject recipient of Mary's bounty,
though not for the world would he have checked the generous impulse on
the part of the woman he so revered. It was his instinct on her behalf
that made him now vaguely uneasy, as if he sensed some malign influence
against her there present with them.

Mary returned soon. In her hand she carried a roll of bills. She went
to the girl and held out the money. Her voice was business-like now, but
very kind.

“Take this. It will pay your fare West, and keep you quite a while if
you are careful.”

But, without warning, a revulsion seized on the girl. Of a sudden, she
shrank again, and turned her head away, and her body trembled.

“I can't take it,” she stammered. “I can't! I can't!”

Mary stood silent for a moment from sheer amazement over the change.
When she spoke, her voice had hardened a little. It is not agreeable to
have one's beneficence flouted.

“Didn't you come here for help?” she demanded.

“Yes,” was the faltering reply, “but--but--I didn't know--it was you!”
 The words came with a rush of desperation.

“Then, you have met me before?” Mary said, quietly.

“No, no!” The girl's voice rose shrill.

Aggie spoke her mind with commendable frankness.

“She's lying.”

And, once again, Garson agreed. His yes was spoken in a tone of complete
certainty. That Mary, too, was of their opinion was shown in her next
words.

“So, you have met me before? Where?”

The girl unwittingly made confession in her halting words.

“I--I can't tell you.” There was despair in her voice.

“You must.” Mary spoke with severity. She felt that this mystery held in
it something sinister to herself. “You must,” she repeated imperiously.

The girl only crouched lower.

“I can't!” she cried again. She was panting as if in exhaustion.

“Why can't you?” Mary insisted. She had no sympathy now for the girl's
distress, merely a great suspicious curiosity.

“Because--because----” The girl could not go on.

Mary's usual shrewdness came to her aid, and she put her next question
in a different direction.

“What were you sent up for?” she asked briskly. “Tell me.”

It was Garson who broke the silence that followed.

“Come on, now!” he ordered. There was a savage note in his voice under
which the girl visibly winced. Mary made a gesture toward him that he
should not interfere. Nevertheless, the man's command had in it a
threat which the girl could not resist and she answered, though with
a reluctance that made the words seem dragged from her by some outside
force--as indeed they were.

“For stealing.”

“Stealing what?” Mary said.

“Goods.”

“Where from?”

A reply came in a breath so low that it was barely audible.

“The Emporium.”

In a flash of intuition, the whole truth was revealed to the woman who
stood looking down at the cowering creature before her.

“The Emporium!” she repeated. There was a tragedy in the single word.
Her voice grew cold with hate, the hate born of innocence long tortured.
“Then you are the one who----”

The accusation was cut short by the girl's shriek.

“I am not! I am not, I tell you.”

For a moment, Mary lost her poise. Her voice rose in a flare of rage.

“You are! You are!”

The craven spirit of the girl could struggle no more. She could only
sit in a huddled, shaking heap of dread. The woman before her had
been disciplined by sorrow to sternest self-control. Though racked by
emotions most intolerable, Mary soon mastered their expression to such
an extent that when she spoke again, as if in self-communion, her words
came quietly, yet with overtones of a supreme wo.

“She did it!” Then, after a little, she addressed the girl with a
certain wondering before this mystery of horror. “Why did you throw the
blame on me?”

The girl made several efforts before her mumbling became intelligible,
and then her speech was gasping, broken with fear.

“I found out they were watching me, and I was afraid they would catch
me. So, I took them and ran into the cloak-room, and put them in a
locker that wasn't close to mine, and some in the pocket of a coat that
was hanging there. God knows I didn't know whose it was. I just put them
there--I was frightened----”

“And you let me go to prison for three years!” There was a menace in
Mary's voice under which the girl cringed again.

“I was scared,” she whined. “I didn't dare to tell.”

“But they caught you later,” Mary went on inexorably. “Why didn't you
tell then?”

“I was afraid,” came the answer from the shuddering girl. “I told them
it was the first time I had taken anything and they let me off with a
year.”

Once more, the wrath of the victim flamed high.

“You!” Mary cried. “You cried and lied, and they let you off with a
year. I wouldn't cry. I told the truth--and----” Her voice broke in a
tearless sob. The color had gone out of her face, and she stood rigid,
looking down at the girl whose crime had ruined her life with an
expression of infinite loathing in her eyes. Garson rose from his chair
as if to go to her, and his face passed swiftly from compassion to
ferocity as his gaze went from the woman he had saved from the river
to the girl who had been the first cause of her seeking a grave in the
waters. Yet, though he longed with every fiber of him to comfort the
stricken woman, he did not dare intrude upon her in this time of her
anguish, but quietly dropped back into his seat and sat watching with
eyes now tender, now baleful, as they shifted their direction.

Aggie took advantage of the pause. Her voice was acid.

“Some people are sneaks--just sneaks!”

Somehow, the speech was welcome to the girl, gave her a touch of courage
sufficient for cowardly protestations. It seemed to relieve the tension
drawn by the other woman's torment. It was more like the abuse that was
familiar to her. A gush of tears came.

“I'll never forgive myself, never!” she moaned.

Contempt mounted in Mary's breast.

“Oh, yes, you will,” she said, malevolently. “People forgive themselves
pretty easily.” The contempt checked for a little the ravages of her
grief. “Stop crying,” she commanded harshly. “Nobody is going to hurt
you.” She thrust the money again toward the girl, and crowded it into
the half-reluctant, half-greedy hand.

“Take it, and get out.” The contempt in her voice rang still sharper,
mordant.

Even the puling creature writhed under the lash of Mary's tones. She
sprang up, slinking back a step.

“I can't take it!” she cried, whimpering. But she did not drop the
money.

“Take the chance while you have it,” Mary counseled, still with the
contempt that pierced even the hardened girl's sense of selfishness. She
pointed toward the door. “Go!--before I change my mind.”

The girl needed, indeed, no second bidding. With the money still
clutched in her hand, she went forth swiftly, stumbling a little in her
haste, fearful lest, at the last moment, the woman she had so wronged
should in fact change in mood, take back the money--ay, even give her
over to that terrible man with the eyes of hate, to put her to death as
she deserved.

Freed from the miasma of that presence, Mary remained motionless for a
long minute, then sighed from her tortured heart. She turned and went
slowly to her chair at the desk, and seated herself languidly, weakened
by the ordeal through which she had passed.

“A girl I didn't know!” she said, bewilderedly; “perhaps had never
spoken to--who smashed my life like that! Oh, if it wasn't so awful, it
would be--funny! It would be funny!” A gust of hysterical laughter burst
from her. “Why, it is funny!” she cried, wildly. “It is funny!”

“Mary!” Garson exclaimed sharply. He leaped across the room to face her.
“That's no good!” he said severely.

Aggie, too, rushed forward.

“No good at all!” she declared loudly.

The interference recalled the distressed woman to herself. She made a
desperate effort for self-command. Little by little, the unmeaning look
died down, and presently she sat silent and moveless, staring at the two
with stormy eyes out of a wan face.

“You were right,” she said at last, in a lifeless voice. “It's done, and
can't be undone. I was a fool to let it affect me like that. I really
thought I had lost all feeling about it, but the sight of that girl--the
knowledge that she had done it--brought it all back to me. Well, you
understand, don't you?”

“We understand,” Garson said, grimly. But there was more than grimness,
infinitely more, in the expression of his clear, glowing eyes.

Aggie thought that it was her turn to voice herself, which she did
without undue restraint.

“Perhaps, we do, but I dunno! I'll tell you one thing, though. If any
dame sent me up for three years and then wanted money from me, do you
think she'd get it? Wake me up any time in the night and ask me. Not
much--not a little bit much! I'd hang on to it like an old woman to her
last tooth.” And that was Aggie's final summing up of her impressions
concerning the scene she had just witnessed.



CHAPTER XII. A BRIDEGROOM SPURNED.

After Aggie's vigorous comment there followed a long silence. That
volatile young person, little troubled as she was by sensitiveness,
guessed the fact that just now further discussion of the event would be
distasteful to Mary, and so she betook herself discreetly to a cigarette
and the illustrations of a popular magazine devoted to the stage. As for
the man, his reticence was really from a fear lest in speaking at all
he might speak too freely, might betray the pervasive violence of his
feeling. So, he sat motionless and wordless, his eyes carefully

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