wall. The police official was, in truth,
totally bewildered. Here was inexplicable mystery. Finally, he addressed
the detective curtly.

"Cassidy, do you know this woman?"

"Sure, I do!" came the placid answer. He went on to explain with the
direct brevity of his kind. "She's little Aggie Lynch--con' woman, from
Buffalo--two years for blackmail--did her time at Burnsing."

With this succinct narrative concerning the girl who sat mute and
motionless in the chair with her eyes fast on the wall, Cassidy relapsed
into silence, during which he stared rather perplexedly at his chief,
who seemed to be in the throes of unusual emotion. As the detective
expressed it in his own vernacular: For the first time in his
experience, the Inspector appeared to be actually "rattled."

For a little time, there was silence, the while Burke sat staring at the
averted face of the girl. His expression was that of one who has just
undergone a soul-stirring shock. Then, presently, he set his features
grimly, rose from his chair, and walked to a position directly in the
front of the girl, who still refused to look in his direction.

"Young woman----" he began, severely. Then, of a sudden he laughed.
"You picked the right business, all right, all right!" he said, with a
certain enthusiasm. He laughed aloud until his eyes were only slits, and
his ample paunch trembled vehemently.

"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 suffici