第30章 A TIP FROM HEADQUARTERS(3)

The effect of it was more penetrant than a scream."It don't go!...Do you get me?"There was a short interval of silence, then the officer's eyes at last fell.It was Aggie who relieved the tension of the scene.

"He's got you," she remarked, airily."Oi, oi! He's got you!"There were again a few seconds of pause, and then Cassidy made an observation that revealed in some measure the shock of the experience he had just undergone.

"You would have been a big man, Joe, if it hadn't been for that temper of yours.It's got you into trouble once or twice already.Some time it's likely to prove your finish."Garson relaxed his immobility, and a little color crept into his cheeks.

"That's my business," he responded, dully.

"Anyway," the officer went on, with a new confidence, now that his eyes were free from the gaze that had burned into his soul, "you've got to clear out, the whole gang of you--and do it quick."Aggie, who as a matter of fact began to feel that she was not receiving her due share of attention, now interposed, moving forward till her face was close to the detective's.

"We don't scare worth a cent," she snapped, with the virulence of a vixen."You can't do anything to us.We ain't broke the law."There came a sudden ripple of laughter, and the charming lips curved joyously, as she added: "Though perhaps we have bent it a bit."Cassidy sneered, outraged by such impudence on the part of an ex-convict.

"Don't make no difference what you've done," he growled."Gee!"he went on, with a heavy sneer."But things are coming to a pretty pass when a gang of crooks gets to arguing about their rights.That's funny, that is!""Then laugh!" Aggie exclaimed, insolently, and made a face at the officer."Ha, ha, ha!""Well, you've got the tip," Cassidy returned, somewhat disconcerted, after a stolid fashion of his own."It's up to you to take it, that's all.If you don't, one of you will make a long visit with some people out of town, and it'll probably be Mary.Remember, I'm giving it to you straight."Aggie assumed her formal society manner, exaggerated to the point of extravagance.

"Do come again, little one," she chirruped, caressingly."I've enjoyed your visit so much!"But Cassidy paid no apparent attention to her frivolousness; only turned and went noisily out of the drawing-room, offering no return to her daintily inflected good-afternoon.

For her own part, as she heard the outer door close behind the detective, Aggie's expression grew vicious, and the heavy brows drew very low, until the level line almost made her prettiness vanish.

"The truck-horse detective!" she sneered."An eighteen collar, and a six-and-a-half hat! He sure had his nerve, trying to bluff us!"But it was plain that Garson was of another mood.There was anxiety in his face, as he stood staring vaguely out of the window.

"Perhaps it wasn't a bluff, Aggie," he suggested.

"Well, what have we done, I'd like to know?" the girl demanded, confidently.She took a cigarette and a match from the tabouret beside her, and stretched her feet comfortably, if very inelegantly, on a chair opposite.

Garson answered with a note of weariness that was unlike him.

"It ain't what you have done," he said, quietly."It's what they can make a jury think you've done.And, once they set out to get you--God, how they can frame things! If they ever start out after Mary----" He did not finish the sentence, but sank down into his chair with a groan that was almost of despair.

The girl replied with a burst of careless laughter.

"Joe," she said gaily, "you're one grand little forger, all right, all right.But Mary's got the brains.Pooh, I'll string along with her as far as she wants to go.She's educated, she is.

She ain't like you and me, Joe.She talks like a lady, and, what's a damned sight harder, she acts like a lady.I guess Iknow.Wake me up any old night and ask me--just ask me, that's all.She's been tryin' to make a lady out of me!"The vivaciousness of the girl distracted the man for the moment from the gloom of his thoughts, and he turned to survey the speaker with a cynical amusement.

"Swell chance!" he commented, drily.

"Oh, I'm not so worse! Just you watch out." The lively girl sprang up, discarded the cigarette, adjusted an imaginary train, and spoke lispingly in a society manner much more moderate and convincing than that with which she had favored the retiring Cassidy.Voice, pose and gesture proclaimed at least the excellent mimic.

"How do you do, Mrs.Jones! So good of you to call!...My dear Miss Smith, this is indeed a pleasure." She seated herself again, quite primly now, and moved her hands over the tabouret appropriately to her words."One lump, or two?...Yes, I just love bridge.No, I don't play," she continued, simpering; "but, just the same, I love it." With this absurd ending, Aggie again arranged her feet according to her liking on the opposite chair.

"That's the kind of stuff she's had me doing," she rattled on in her coarser voice, "and believe me, Joe, it's damned near killing me.But all the same," she hurried on, with a swift revulsion of mood to the former serious topic, "I'm for Mary strong! You stick to her, Joe, and you'll wear diamon's....And that reminds me! Iwish she'd let me wear mine, but she won't.She says they're vulgar for an innocent country girl like her cousin, Agnes Lynch.

Ain't that fierce?...How can anything be vulgar that's worth a hundred and fifty a carat?"