business on the dot--and no frills on it! Keep to cases!"

"Now you're talking," Burke declared, with a new appreciation of
the versatility of this woman--who had not been wasting her time
hitherto, and had no wish to lose it now.

"You can't do anything to us," Aggie declared, strongly. There
remained no trace of the shrinking violet that had been Miss
Helen Travers West. Now, she revealed merely the business woman
engaged in a fight against the law, which was opposed definitely
to her peculiar form of business.

"You can't do anything to me, and you know you can't!" she went
on, with an almost convincing tranquillity of assertion. "Why,
I'll be sprung inside an hour." There came a ripple of laughter
that reminded the Inspector of the fashion in which he had been
overcome by this woman's wiles. And she spoke with a certitude
of conviction that was rather terrifying to one who had just
fallen under the stress of her spells.

"Why, habeas corpus is my lawyer's middle name!"

"On the level, now," the Inspector demanded, quite unmoved by the
final declarations, "when did you see Mary Turner last?"

Aggie resorted anew to her practices of deception. Her voice held
the accents of unimpeachable truth, and her eyes looked
unflinchingly into those of her questioner as she answered.

"Early this morning," she declared. "We slept together last