“You might ask Mr. Demarest,” Mary suggested, pleasantly, “as to whether or not it can be done. The gambling houses can do it, and so keep on breaking the law. The race track men can do it, and laugh at the law. The railroad can do it, to restrain its employees from striking. So, why shouldn't I get one, too? You see, I have money. I can buy all the law I want. And there's nothing you can't do with the law, if you have money enough.... Ask Mr. Demarest. He knows.”
Burke was fairly gasping over this outrage against his authority.
“Can you beat that!” he rumbled with a raucously sonorous vehemence. He regarded Mary with a stare of almost reverential wonder. “A crook appealing to the law!”
There came a new note into the woman's voice as she answered the gibe.
“No, simply getting justice,” she said simply. “That's the remarkable part of it.” She threw off her serious air. “Well, gentlemen,” she concluded, “what are you going to do about it?”
Burke explained.
“This is what I'm going to do about it. One way or another, I'm going to get you.”
The District Attorney, however, judged it advisable to use more persuasive methods.
“Miss Turner,” he said, with an appearance of sincerity, “I'm going to appeal to your sense of fair play.”
Mary's shining eyes met his for a long moment, and before the challenge in hers, his fell. He remembered then those doubts that had assailed him when this girl had been sentenced to prison, remembered the half-hearted plea he had made in her behalf to Richard Gilder.