“What do you mean?” the girl repeated. Her slim form was tense with wrath. “I demand my instant release.” There was indescribable rebuke in her slow emphasis of the words.
Burke was impressed in spite of himself, in spite of his accustomed cold indifference to the feelings of others as necessity compelled him to make investigation of them. His harsh, blustering voice softened perceptibly, and he spoke in a wheedling tone, such as one might employ in the effort to tranquillize a spoiled child in a fit of temper.
“Wait a minute,” he remonstrated. “Wait a minute!” He made a pacifically courteous gesture toward one of the chairs, which stood by an end of the desk. “Sit down,” he invited, with an effort toward cajoling.
The scorn of the girl was superb. Her voice came icily, as she answered:
“I shall do nothing of the sort. Sit down, indeed!—here! Why, I have been arrested——” There came a break in the music of her tones throbbing resentment. A little sob crept in, and broke the sequence of words. The dainty face was vivid with shame. “I—” she faltered, “I've been arrested—by a common policeman!”
The Inspector seized on the one flaw left him for defense against her indictment.
“No, no, miss,” he argued, earnestly. “Excuse me. It wasn't any common policeman—it was a detective sergeant.”
But his effort to placate was quite in vain. The ingenuous little beauty with the child's face and the blue eyes so widely opened fairly panted in her revolt against the ignominy of her position, and was not to be so easily appeased. Her voice came vibrant with disdain. Her level gaze on the Inspector was of a sort to suggest to him anxieties over possible complications here.
“You wait!” she cried violently. “You just wait, I tell you, until my papa hears of this!”
Burke regarded the furious girl doubtfully.