“Take her away,” Burke snapped to the detective.
Aggie went toward Cassidy without any sign of reluctance.
“Yes, do, please!” she exclaimed with a sneer. “And do it in a hurry. Being in the room with him makes me sick! She turned to stare at the Inspector with eyes that were very clear and very hard. In this moment, there was nothing childish in their gaze.
“Thought I'd squeal, did you?” she said, evenly. “Yes, I will”—the red lips bent to a smile of supreme scorn—“like hell!”
CHAPTER XXII. THE TRAP THAT FAILED.
Burke, despite his quality of heaviness, was blest with a keen sense of humor, against which at times his professional labors strove mutinously. In the present instance, he had failed utterly to obtain any information of value from the girl whom he had just been examining. On the contrary, he had been befooled outrageously by a female criminal, in a manner to wound deeply his professional pride. Nevertheless, he bore no grudge against the adventuress. His sense of the absurd served him well, and he took a lively enjoyment in recalling the method by which her plausible wiles had beguiled him. He gave her a real respect for the adroitness with which she had deceived him—and he was not one to be readily deceived. So, now, as the scornful maiden went out of the door under the escort of Cassidy, Burke bowed gallantly to her lithe back, and blew a kiss from his thick fingertips, in mocking reverence for her as an artist in her way. Then, he seated himself, pressed the desk call-button, and, when he had learned that Edward Gilder was arrived, ordered that the magnate and the District Attorney be admitted, and that the son, also, be sent up from his cell.
“It's a bad business, sir,” Burke said, with hearty sympathy, to the shaken father, after the formal greetings that followed the entrance of the two men. “It's a very bad business.”
“What does he say?” Gilder questioned. There was something pitiful in the distress of this man, usually so strong and so certain of his course. Now, he was hesitant in his movements, and his mellow voice came more weakly than its wont. There was a pathetic pleading in the dulled eyes with which he regarded the Inspector.
“Nothing!” Burke answered. “That's why I sent for you. I suppose Mr. Demarest has made the situation plain to you.”