"And that's why she's here now with a gang of crooks," he retorted.

Garson met the implication fairly.

"Where else should she be?" he demanded, violently. "You ain't got nothing in that record about my jumping into the river after her?" The forger's voice deepened and trembled with the intensity of his emotion, which was now grown so strong that any who listened and looked might guess something of the truth as to his feeling toward this woman of whom he spoke. "That's where I found her--a girl that never did anybody any harm, starving because you police wouldn't give her a chance to work. In the river because she wouldn't take the only other way that was left her to make a living, because she was keeping straight!... Have you got any of that in your book?"

Cassidy, who had been scowling in the face of this arraignment, suddenly gave vent to a croaking laugh of derision.

"Huh!" he said, contemptuously. "I guess you're stuck on her, eh?"

At the words, an instantaneous change swept over Garson. Hitherto, he had been tense, his face set with emotion, a man strong and sullen, with eyes as clear and heartless as those of a beast in the wild. Now, without warning, a startling transformation was wrought. His form stiffened to rigidity after one lightning-swift step forward, and his face grayed. The eyes glowed with the fires of a man's heart in a spasm of hate. He was the embodiment of rage, as he spoke huskily, his voice a whisper that was yet louder than any shout.

"Cut that!"

The eyes of the two men locked. Cassidy struggled with all his pride against the dominant fury this man hurled on him.

"What?" he demanded, blusteringly. But his tone was weaker than its wont.

"I mean," Garson repeated, and there was finality in his accents, a deadly quality that was appalling, "I mean, cut it out--now, here, and all the time! It don't go!" The voice rose slightly. 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 

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