In his office next morning, Inspector Burke was fuming over the failure of his conspiracy. He had hoped through this plot to vindicate his authority, so sadly flaunted by Garson and Mary Turner. Instead of this much-to-be-desired result from his scheming, the outcome had been nothing less than disastrous. The one certain fact was that his most valuable ally in his warfare against the criminals of the city had been done to death. Some one had murdered Griggs, the stool-pigeon. Where Burke had meant to serve a man of high influence, Edward Gilder, by railroading the bride of the magnate's son to prison, he had succeeded only in making the trouble of that merchant prince vastly worse in the ending of the affair by arresting the son for the capital crime of murder. The situation was, in very truth, intolerable. More than ever, Burke grew hot with intent to overcome the woman who had so persistently outraged his authority by her ingenious devices against the law. Anyhow, the murder of Griggs could not go unpunished. The slayer's identity must be determined, and thereafter the due penalty of the law inflicted, whoever the guilty person might prove to be. To the discovery of this identity, the Inspector was at the present moment devoting himself by adroit questioning of Dacey and Chicago Red, who had been arrested in one of their accustomed haunts by his men a short time before.
The policeman on duty at the door was the only other person in the room, and in consequence Burke permitted himself, quite unashamed, to employ those methods of persuasion which have risen to a high degree of admiration in police circles.
“Come across now!” he admonished. His voice rolled forth like that of a bull of Bashan. He was on his feet, facing the two thieves. His head was thrust forward menacingly, and his eyes were savage. The two men shrank before him—both in natural fear, and, too, in a furtive policy of their own. This was no occasion for them to assert a personal pride against the man who had them in his toils.
“I don't know nothin'!” Chicago Red's voice was between a snarl and a whine. “Ain't I been telling you that for over an hour?”
Burke vouchsafed no answer in speech, but with a nimbleness surprising in one of his bulk, gave Dacey, who chanced to be the nearer of the two, a shove that sent the fellow staggering half-way across the room under its impetus.
With this by way of appreciable introduction to his seriousness of purpose, Burke put a question:
“Dacey, how long have you been out?”
The answer came in a sibilant whisper of dread.
“A week.”
Burke pushed the implication brutally.