第48章 A WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENT(3)

"Can you beat that!" he rumbled with a raucously sonorous vehemence.He regarded Mary with a stare of almost reverential wonder."A crook appealing to the law!"There came a new note into the woman's voice as she answered the gibe.

"No, simply getting justice," she said simply."That's the remarkable part of it." She threw off her serious air."Well, gentlemen," she concluded, "what are you going to do about it?"Burke explained.

"This is what I'm going to do about it.One way or another, I'm going to get you."The District Attorney, however, judged it advisable to use more persuasive methods.

"Miss Turner," he said, with an appearance of sincerity, "I'm going to appeal to your sense of fair play."Mary's shining eyes met his for a long moment, and before the challenge in hers, his fell.He remembered then those doubts that had assailed him when this girl had been sentenced to prison, remembered the half-hearted plea he had made in her behalf to Richard Gilder.

"That was killed," Mary said, "killed four years ago."But Demarest persisted.Influence had been brought to bear on him.It was for her own sake now that he urged her.

"Let young Gilder alone."

Mary laughed again.But there was no hint of joyousness in the musical tones.Her answer was frank--brutally frank.She had nothing to conceal.

"His father sent me away for three years--three years for something I didn't do.Well, he's got to pay for it."By this time, Burke, a man of superior intelligence, as one must be to reach such a position of authority, had come to realize that here was a case not to be carried through by blustering, by intimidation, by the rough ruses familiar to the force.Here was a woman of extraordinary intelligence, as well as of peculiar personal charm, who merely made sport of his fulminations, and showed herself essentially armed against anything he might do, by a court injunction, a thing unheard of until this moment in the case of a common crook.It dawned upon him that this was, indeed, not a common crook.Moreover, there had grown in him a certain admiration for the ingenuity and resource of this woman, though he retained all his rancor against one who dared thus to resist the duly constituted authority.So, in the end, he spoke to her frankly, without a trace of his former virulence, with a very real, if rugged, sincerity.

"Don't fool yourself, my girl," he said in his huge voice, which was now modulated to a degree that made it almost unfamiliar to himself."You can't go through with this.There's always a weak link in the chain somewhere.It's up to me to find it, and Iwill."

His candor moved her to a like honesty.

"Now," she said, and there was respect in the glance she gave the stalwart man, "now you really sound dangerous."There came an interruption, alike unexpected by all.Fannie appeared at the door.

"Mr.Edward Gilder wishes to see you, Miss Turner," she said, with no appreciation of anything dynamic in the announcement.

"Shall I show him in?"

"Oh, certainly," Mary answered, with an admirable pretense of indifference, while Burke glared at Demarest, and the District Attorney appeared ill at ease.

"He shouldn't have come," Demarest muttered, getting to his feet, in reply to the puzzled glance of the Inspector.

Then, while Mary sat quietly in her chair at the desk, and the two men stood watching doubtfully the door, the maid appeared, stood aside, and said simply, "Mr.Gilder."There entered the erect, heavy figure of the man whom Mary had hated through the years.He stopped abruptly just within the room, gave a glance at the two men, then his eyes went to Mary, sitting at her desk, with her face lifted inquiringly.He did not pause to take in the beauty of that face, only its strength.

He stared at her silently for a moment.Then he spoke in his oritund voice, a little tremulous from anxiety.

"Are you the woman?" he said.There was something simple and primitive, something of dignity beyond the usual conventions, in his direct address.

And there was the same primitive simplicity in the answer.

Between the two strong natures there was no subterfuge, no suggestion of polite evasions, of tergiversation, only the plea of truth to truth.Mary's acknowledgment was as plain as his own question.

"I am the woman.What do you want?"...Thus two honest folk had met face to face.

"My son." The man's answer was complete.

But Mary touched a tragic note in her question.It was asked in no frivolous spirit, but, of a sudden, she guessed that his coming was altogether of his own volition, and not the result of his son's information, as at first she had supposed.

"Have you seen him recently?" she asked.

"No," Gilder answered.

"Then, why did you come?"

Thereat, the man was seized with a fatherly fury.His heavy face was congested, and his sonorous voice was harsh with virtuous rebuke.

"Because I intend to save my boy from a great folly.I am informed that he is infatuated with you, and Inspector Burke tells me why--he tells me--why--he tells me----" He paused, unable for a moment to continue from an excess of emotion.But his gray eyes burned fiercely in accusation against her.

Inspector Burke himself filled the void in the halting sentence.

"I told you she had been an ex-convict."

"Yes," Gilder said, after he had regained his self-control.He stared at her pleadingly."Tell me," he said with a certain dignity, "is this true?"Here, then, was the moment for which she had longed through weary days, through weary years.Here was the man whom she hated, suppliant before her to know the truth.Her heart quickened.

Truly, vengeance is sweet to one who has suffered unjustly.

"Is this true?" the man repeated, with something of horror in his voice.

"It is," Mary said quietly.