"But the girl," she went on, "so nice, so quiet, so sick-looking! I
cannot stand it to see her cooped up in that small room, always
watched over by one or both of those burly wretches. The old man says
she is his daughter and she does not deny it, but I would as soon
think of that little rosy child you see cooing in the window over the
way, belonging to the beggar going in at the gate, as of her with her
lady-like ways having any connection with him and his rough-acting
son. You ought to see her--"
"That is just what I want to do," interrupted I. "Not because you have
tempted my fancy by a recital of her charms," I hastened to add, "but
because she is, if I don't mistake, a woman for whose discovery and
rescue, a large sum of money has been offered."
And without further disguise I acquainted the startled woman before me
with the fact that I was not, as she had always considered, the clerk
out of employment whose daily business it was to sally forth in quest
of a situation, but a member of the city police.
She was duly impressed and easily persuaded to second all my
operations as far as her poor wits would allow, giving me free range
of her upper story, and above all, promising that secrecy without
which all my finely laid plans for capturing the rogues without
raising a scandal, would fall headlong to the ground.
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