“That was killed,” Mary said, “killed four years ago.”
But Demarest persisted. Influence had been brought to bear on him. It was for her own sake now that he urged her.
“Let young Gilder alone.”
Mary laughed again. But there was no hint of joyousness in the musical tones. Her answer was frank—brutally frank. She had nothing to conceal.
“His father sent me away for three years—three years for something I didn't do. Well, he's got to pay for it.”
By this time, Burke, a man of superior intelligence, as one must be to reach such a position of authority, had come to realize that here was a case not to be carried through by blustering, by intimidation, by the rough ruses familiar to the force. Here was a woman of extraordinary intelligence, as well as of peculiar personal charm, who merely made sport of his fulminations, and showed herself essentially armed against anything he might do, by a court injunction, a thing unheard of until this moment in the case of a common crook. It dawned upon him that this was, indeed, not a common crook. Moreover, there had grown in him a certain admiration for the ingenuity and resource of this woman, though he retained all his rancor against one who dared thus to resist the duly constituted authority. So, in the end, he spoke to her frankly, without a trace of his former virulence, with a very real, if rugged, sincerity.
“Don't fool yourself, my girl,” he said in his huge voice, which was now modulated to a degree that made it almost unfamiliar to himself. “You can't go through with this. There's always a weak link in the chain somewhere. It's up to me to find it, and I will.”
His candor moved her to a like honesty.
“Now,” she said, and there was respect in the glance she gave the stalwart man, “now you really sound dangerous.”
There came an interruption, alike unexpected by all. Fannie appeared at the door.