Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/19

Rh "Wait!" interrupted the Chief.

"No, I can't wait, and I won't wait," I flung back at him, "for I've waited too long. You may use what you call a down-and-outer in petticoats for a few lines of your work, but don't make the mistake of putting me in that class because I happened to do some of this work for you. It may have called for a shell of coarseness, more often than not, and I gave you what you wanted. I wore commonness for you, the same as I wore this nickel badge of yours. And I may have picked up the trick of handing over your Eighth Ward style of talk because you pointed out that it often paid in your line of business. But I've lived clean, and I'm going to stay clean. You even thought you could break my spirit by giving me the worst of your rough-neck work in that Antonino abduction case. I didn't even object when you used me as a plant for that Mann-Act photographer up in the Arcade Building when he advertised for figure-models. And you put me through some moves that only an honest woman would have endured when we rounded up that Brooklyn false-claims couple. But I swallowed it all because I knew I was working on the side of the law. Then it began to dawn on you that I could do the finer lines of work, and you began by dressing