lines of his firmly set mouth took on an added fixity.

"Well?" he demanded. His voice was emotionless.

"Just a little friendly call," Cassidy announced, in his strident voice. "Where's the lady of the house?"

"Out." It was Aggie who spoke, very sharply.

"Well, Joe," Cassidy went on, without paying further heed to the girl for a moment, "when she comes back, just tell her it's up to her to make a get-away, and to make it quick."

But Aggie was not one to be ignored under any circumstances. Now, she spoke with some acerbity in her voice, which could at will be wondrous soft and low.

"Say!" she retorted viciously, "you can't throw any scare into us. You hadn't got anything on us. See?"

Cassidy, in response to this outburst, favored the girl with a long stare, and there was hearty amusement in his tones as he answered.

"Nothing on you, eh? Well, well, let's see." He regarded Garson with a grin. "You are Joe Garson, forger." As he spoke, the detective took a note-book from a pocket, found a page, and then read: "First arrested in 1891, for forging the name of Edwin Goodsell to a check for ten thousand dollars. Again arrested June 19, 1893, for forgery. Arrested in April, 1898, for forging the signature of Oscar Hemmenway to a series of bonds that were counterfeit. Arrested as the man back of the Reilly gang, in 1903. Arrested in 1908 for forgery."

There was no change in the face or pose of the man who listened to the reading. When it was done, and the officer looked up with a resumption of his triumphant grin, Garson spoke quietly.

"Haven't any records of convictions, have you?"The grin died, and a snarl sprang in its stead.

"No," he snapped, vindictively. "But we've got the right dope on you, all right, Joe Garson." He turned savagely on the girl, who now had regained her usual expression of demure innocence, but with her rather too heavy brows drawn a little lower than their wont, under the influence of an emotion otherwise concealed.

"And you're little Aggie Lynch," Cassidy declared, as he thrust the note-book back into his pocket. "Just now, you're posing as Mary Turner's cousin. You served two years in Burnsing for blackmail. You were arrested in Buffalo, 

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