第81章 THE TRAP THAT FAILED(6)

"Nobody but you and me," Burke declared, all agog with anticipation of victory at last."I give you my word!"Mary met the gaze of the Inspector fully.In the same instant, she flashed on him a smile that was dazzling, the smile of a woman triumphant in her mastery of the situation.Her face was radiant, luminous with honest mirth.There was something simple and genuine in her beauty that thrilled the man before her, the man trying so vindictively to trap her to her own undoing.For all his grossness, Burke was of shrewd perceptions, and somewhere, half-submerged under the sordid nature of his calling, was a love of things esthetic, a responsiveness to the appeals of beauty.Now, as his glance searched the face of the girl who was bubbling with mirth, he experienced an odd warming of his heart under the spell of her loveliness--a loveliness wholly feminine, pervasive, wholesome.But, too, his soul shook in a premonition of catastrophe, for there was mischief in the beaming eyes of softest violet.There was a demon of mockery playing in the curves of the scarlet lips, as she smiled so winsomely.

All his apprehensions were verified by her utterance.It came in a most casual voice, despite the dancing delight in her face.

The tones were drawled in the matter-of-fact fashion of statement that leads a listener to answer without heed to the exact import of the question, unless very alert, indeed....This is what she said in that so-casual voice:

"I'm not speaking loud enough, am I, stenographer?"And that industrious writer of shorthand notes, absorbed in his task, answered instantly from his hidden place in the corridor.

"No, ma'am, not quite."

Mary laughed aloud, while Burke sat dumfounded.She rose swiftly, and went to the nearest window, and with a pull at the cord sent the shade flying upward.For seconds, there was revealed the busy stenographer, bent over his pad.Then, the noise of the ascending shade, which had been hammering on his consciousness, penetrated, and he looked up.Realization came, as he beheld the woman laughing at him through the window.Consternation beset him.He knew that, somehow, he had bungled fatally.A groan of distress burst from him, and he fled the place in ignominious rout.

There was another whose spirit was equally desirous of flight--Burke! Yet once again, he was beaten at his own game, his cunning made of no avail against the clever interpretation of this woman whom he assailed.He had no defense to offer.He did not care to meet her gaze just then, since he was learning to respect her as one wronged, where he had regarded her hitherto merely as of the flotsam and jetsam of the criminal class.So, he avoided her eyes as she stood by the window regarding him quizzically.In a panic of confusion quite new to him in his years of experience, he pressed the button on his desk.

The doorman appeared with that automatic precision which made him valuable in his position, and the Inspector hailed the ready presence with a feeling of profound relief.

"Dan, take her back!" he said, feebly.

Mary was smiling still as she went to the door.But she could not resist the impulse toward retort.

"Oh, yes," she said, suavely; "you were right on the level with me, weren't you, Burke? Nobody here but you and me!" The words came in a sing-song of mockery.

The Inspector had nothing in the way of answer--only, sat motionless until the door closed after her.Then, left alone, his sole audible comment was a single word--one he had learned, perhaps, from Aggie Lynch:

"Hell!"