She paused for a moment and turned squarely toward Nick Carter. Then she spoke directly to him. “I have followed you here, Mr. Carter, for my own protection,” she said, using her eyes with all the art she possessed, and lowering her voice until it purred like the animal for which the Paris police had named her. “The chief will tell you that I am not a criminal, and that there is nothing against me, although many ugly things have been said about me. “Mr. Carter, I do not want to have all these matters discussed over there in your country, where I have married, and am happy, so I have come here after you to plead with you to spare me. Surely that is not a great boon to ask at your hands. I ask you now to come with me to my hotel so that I may tell you the story of my chequered life—so that I may prevail upon you to become my champion instead of my traducer. Will you go there with me?” CHAPTER XXI. THE SIREN AT WORK. “Madam,” said Nick Carter, “let us understand each other. I came here to trace out the career you have pursued, not because I expected to make you the victim of my researches, but because I believed that through you I would be able to prove the identity of Bare-Faced Jimmy Duryea. That is the reply to your request for me to tell you why I am in Paris. I will add this: My work here is already finished. I have found the information that I expected to find.” He looked at his watch. “In three hours from now I shall leave for London.” They were seated opposite each other in the parlor of the suite she had taken on her arrival in the city, where he had accompanied her from the office of the chief. Nick had placed no confidence whatever in her stated wish to reveal her life history to him, but he had thought that she might say or do something to betray herself, or to give him the cue he needed in following out his plans. So he had accepted her proposal that he should go with her. She left her chair and crossed the door toward him. He arose as she did so and stood facing her. He knew her to be a dangerous woman; he believed her to be a treacherous one; he had no doubt that just now she was a desperate one. To what ends she might dare to venture in this interview with him he had no idea, but he was thoroughly on his guard. That she would dare to attempt violence of any sort was farthest from his thoughts, for they had gone there together with the full knowledge of the chief of police—and that they had been trailed from the office of the chief Nick did not for a moment doubt. But he did expect that she would try her feminine wiles upon him. He knew that to be her most effective weapon. He had heard enough to understand that she did not hesitate to make use of it when occasion demanded. There are women in the world who have been gifted wondrously, and she was the personification of them all.