“Well,” he went on, at last, “I certainly have to hand it to you, kid. You're a beaut'!”
Aggie sniffed vehemently in rebuke of the gross partiality of fate in his behalf.
“Just as I had him goin'!” she said bitterly, as if in self-communion, without shifting her gaze from the blank surface of the wall.
Now, however, Burke was reminded once again of his official duties, and he turned quickly to the attentive Cassidy.
“Have you got a picture of this young woman?” he asked brusquely. And when Cassidy had replied in the negative, he again faced the adventuress with a mocking grin—in which mockery, too, was a fair fragment for himself, who had been so thoroughly within her toils of blandishment.
“I'd dearly love to have a photograph of you, Miss Helen Travers West,” he said.
The speech aroused the stolid detective to a new interest.
“Helen Travers West?” he repeated, inquiringly.
“Oh, that's the name she told me,” the Inspector explained, somewhat shamefacedly before this question from his inferior. Then he chuckled, for he had sense of humor sufficient to triumph even over his own discomfiture in this encounter. “And she had me winging, too!” he confessed. “Yes, I admit it.” He turned to the girl admiringly. “You sure are immense, little one—immense!” He smiled somewhat more in his official manner of mastery. “And now, may I have the honor of asking you to accept the escort of Mr. Cassidy to our gallery.”
Aggie sprang to her feet and regarded the Inspector with eyes in which was now no innocence, such as had beguiled him so recently from those ingenuous orbs.