ose. For a moment,
her glance ran over the words of the page. Then she looked up at the
lawyer, and there were new lusters in the violet eyes.

"It's splendid," she declared. "Did you have much trouble in getting
it?"

Harris permitted himself the indulgence of an unprofessional chuckle of
keenest amusement before he answered.

"Why, no!" he declared, with reminiscent enjoyment in his manner. "That
is, not really!" There was an enormous complacency in his air over the
event. "But, at the outset, when I made the request, the judge just
naturally nearly fell off the bench. Then, I showed him that Detroit
case, to which you had drawn my attention, and the upshot of it all
was that he gave me what I wanted without a whimper. He couldn't help
himself, you know. That's the long and the short of it."

That mysterious document with the imposing seal, the request for which
had nearly caused a judge to fall off the bench, reposed safely in
Mary's bag when she, returned to the apartment after the visit to the
lawyer's office.

CHAPTER X. MARKED MONEY.

Mary had scarcely received from Aggie an account of Cassidy's
threatening invasion, when the maid announced that Mr. Irwin had called.

"Show him in, in just two minutes," Mary directed.

"Who's the gink?" Aggie demanded, with that slangy diction which was her
habit.

"You ought to know," Mary returned, smiling a little. "He's the
lawyer retained by General Hastings in the matter of a certain
breach-of-promise suit."

"Oh, you mean yours truly," Aggie exclaimed, not in the least abashed by
her forgetfulness in an affair that concerned herself so closely. "Hope
he's brought the money. What about it?"

"Leave the room now," Mary ordered, crisply. "When I call to you, come
in, but be sure and leave everything to me. Merely follow my lead. And,
Agnes--be very ingenue."

"Oh, I'm wise--I'm wise," Aggie nodded, as she hurried out toward her
bedroom. "I'll be a squab--surest thing you know!"

Next moment, Mary gave a formal greeting to the lawyer who represented
the man she planned to mulct effectively, and invited him to a chair
near her, while she herself retained her place at the desk, within a
drawer of which she had just locked the formidable-appearing document
received from Harris.

Irwin lost no time in coming to the point.

"I called in reference to this suit, which Miss Agnes Lynch threatens to
bring against my client, General Hastings."

Mary regarded th