“Too busy to take personal charge, and get personal credit, for one of the biggest cases that ever went through this office?”

Maggie had sought only to excite his vanity.  But unknowingly she had also appealed to something else in him:  his very deep concern in the hostile activities of the District Attorney’s office.  If this girl told the truth, then here might be his chance to display such devotion to duty as to turn up some such sensational case as would make this investigation from the District Attorney’s office seem to the public an unholy persecution and make the chagrined District Attorney, who was very sensitive to public opinion, think it wiser to drop the whole matter.

“How do I know you’re not trying to string me?—­or get me out of the way of something bigger?—­or hand me the double-cross?”

“I shall be there all the time, and if you don’t like the way the thing develops you can arrest me.  I suppose you’ve got some kind of law, with a stiff punishment attached, about conspiracy against an officer.”

“Well—­give me all the dope, and tell me where I’m to come,” he yielded ungraciously.

“I’ve told you all I am going to tell.  All the important ‘dope’ you’ll get first-hand by being present when the thing happens.  The place to come is the Hotel Grantham—­room eleven-forty-two—­at eight-thirty sharp.”

To this Barlow grudgingly agreed.  He might have exulted inwardly, but he would have shown no outer graciousness if a committee of citizens had handed him a reward of a million dollars and an engrossed testimonial to his unprecedented services.  Barlow did not know how to thank any one.

Five minutes after she left Headquarters Maggie was in the back room of the Duchess’s pawnshop, which her rapid planning had fixed upon as the next station at which she should stop.  She did not waste a moment in coming to the point with the Duchess.

“Red Hannigan is really the most important of Larry’s old friends who are out to get him, isn’t he?” she asked.

“Yes—­in a way.  I mean among those who honestly think Larry has turned stool and squealer.  He trusted Larry more than any one else—­and now he hates Larry more than any one else.  Rather natural, since he was two months in the Tombs before he could get bail—­because he thinks Larry squealed on him.”

“How’s he stand with his crowd?”

“No one higher.  They’d all take his word for anything.”

“Can you find him at once?” Maggie pursued breathlessly.

That was a trifling question to ask the Duchess; since all the news of her shadowy world came to her ears in some swift obscure manner.

“Yes.  If it is necessary.”

“It’s terribly necessary!  If I can’t get him, the whole thing may fail!”

“What thing?” demanded the Duchess.

“It might all sound impossibly foolish!” cried the excited, desperate Maggie.  “You might tell me so—­and discourage me—­and I simply must go ahead!  I feel rather like—­like a juggler who’s trying for the first time to keep a lot of new things going in the air all at once.  But I think there’s a chance that I may succeed!  I’ll tell you just one thing.  It all has to do with Larry.  I think I may help Larry.”