Not cattishly, but with patronizing pity, Miss Leigh, bookkeeper,
remarked to Miss Javotte, filing clerk, that if Miss Kennard did not
change that green toque with the white quill to something else pretty
soon, she could be identified by her hat better than by her
fingerprints.
Miss Leigh had been showing one of her new spring hats to Miss Javotte;
she was able to express a _sotto voce_ opinion about Miss Kennard's
toque because Miss Kennard, stenographer, was rattling her typewriter
full tilt. Miss Javotte agreed, spreading her fingers fan shape and
inspecting certain rings with calm satisfaction. "And not even a
rock--only that same old-fashioned cameo thing--speaking of fingers."
"I was speaking of fingerprints," said Miss Leigh, tartly, frowning at
the display of rings, perfectly well aware that they were not bought on
the installment plan out of a filing clerk's wages.
It was quite natural for Miss Leigh to speak of fingerprints. She was an
employe in the Vose-Mern offices. "Vose-Mern Bureau of Investigation"
was the designation on the street corridor directory board of a building
in the purlieus of New York City Hall. On the same board other parties
frankly advertised themselves as detectives. The Vose-Mern agency called
its men and women by the name of operatives. The scope of its
activities was unlimited. It broke strikes, put secret agents into
manufacturing concerns to stimulate efficiency, or calculatingly and in
cold blood put other agents in to wreck a concern in the interests of a
rival. It was a matter of fees. Mern could defend the ethics of such
procedure with interesting arguments; he had been an inspector of police
and held ironic views of human nature; he had invented an anticipatory
system, so he called it, by which he "hothoused" criminal proclivities
in a person in order to show the person's latent possibilities up to an
employer before damage had been wrought to the employer's business or
funds. That is to say--and this for the proper understanding of Mr.
Mern's code in his operations as he moved in the special matters of
which this tale treats--his agency deliberately set women of the type
well hit off by the name "vamps"; "sicked" those women onto bank clerks
and others who could get a hand into a till, and if the women were able
to cajole the victim to the point of stealing or of grabbing in order to
make a get-away to foreign parts with the temptress, the trick was
considered legitimate work of the "anticipatory" sort. The operative
would order the treasure _cached_, would appoint the day and hour for
the get-away--and a plain-clothes man would be waiting at the _cache_!
The Vose-Mern system thus nabbed the culprit, who had revealed his lack
of moral fiber by reason of the hothouse forcing of the situation; Mern
insisted that if the germ were there it should be forced. By his plan
the loot was pulled back and returned to the owner.
Mern had broken the big paper-mill strike for the Comas Consolidated;
he calmly assured his clients that he could furnish a thousand men as
well as one. When he did a thing it was expensive--for he had bands of
picked men always on call, and the men must be paid during their loafing
intervals, waiting for other strikes.
Craig had been close to Mern during the strike. Mern stated that the
ethics of the law allowed a lawyer to defend and extricate, if he could,
a criminal whom he knew was hideously guilty; the lawyer's smartness was
applauded if he won by law against justice. Mern excused on the same
lines his willingness to accept any sort of a commission. It was a
heartless attitude--Mern admitted that it was and said that he didn't
pose as a demon. He seemed to get a lot of comfort out of declaring that
if the fellow he was chasing had the grit and smartness to turn around
and do Mern up, Mern would heartily give the fellow three cheers. Thus
did Mern put his remarkable business on the plane of a man-to-man fight
by his argument, not admitting that there was any baseness in his plots
and his persecution.
Miss Lida Kennard, as confidential stenographer, was deep into the
methods of Mern. It was Mern's unvarying custom to have Miss Kennard in
to listen to and take down all that a client had to state. She was
extremely shocked in the first stages of her association with the
Vose-Mern agency by the nature of the commissions undertaken. But it was
the best position she had secured, after climbing the ladder through the
offices of more or less impecunious attorneys. She needed the good pay
because her mother was an invalid; she continued to need the pay after
her mother died. There were bills to be settled. She had grown used to
setting the installments on those bills ahead of new hats, and the cameo
ring which had been her mother's keepsake was for the sake of memory,
not adornment.
By dint of usage, the Vose-Mern business had come to seem to her like a
real business. Certainly some big men came and solicited Mern's aid and
appeared to think that his methods were proper. In course of time,
listening to Mern's ethics, she came to accept matters at their
practical value and ceased to analyze them for the sake of seeking for
nice balances of right and wrong. She was in and of the Vose-Mern
organization! She sat in on conferences, wrote down placidly plots for
doing up men who had not had the foresight to hire Mern--Vose had been
merely an old detective, and he was dead--and she sometimes entertained
a vague ambition to be an operative herself. She liked pretty hats and
handsome rings--though she was scornfully averse to the Leigh-Javotte
system as she was acquainted with it by the chance remarks the
associates dropped. As to operatives--Miss Kennard had heard--well, she
had heard Miss Elsham, for instance, a crack operative, reveal what the
rewards of the regular work were; and, the way Miss Elsham looked at it,
a girl did not have to lower her self-respect.
In the midst of these thoughts, getting a side glance at the new hat
which Miss Leigh was showing to Miss Javotte, Miss Kennard was called to
conference; the buzzer summoned her.
Mern introduced her to the client of the day; the chief made that his
custom; it always seemed to put the client more at his ease because an
introduction made her an important member of the party--and Mern
stressed the "confidential secretary" thing.
The client was Director Craig of the Comas company.
He rose with a haste which betrayed a natural susceptibility to the
charms of pretty women. He cooed at her rather than spoke, altering his
natural tone, smoothing out all the harshness; it was that clumsy
gallantry by which coarse men strive to pay court to charm.
The girl warranted the approving gaze which Mr. Craig gave to her. He
looked from her frank eyes to her copper-bronze hair, which seemed to
have a glint of sunshine in its waves. He liked the uplift of that round
chin--he remembered that it had seemed to indicate spirit--and he liked
spunk in a girl. He had enjoyed the conferences of the days of the
strike-breaking when he could survey her profile as she busied herself
with her writing, admiring the beauty curve of her lips.
Now he was thrilled by her manner of recognition; he had not expected
that much.
"I remember you, Mr. Craig," she assured the big man, her fingers as
firm in the grip as were his. "You were in here so much on the strike
matter two years ago."
"That's a long time for a New York young lady to remember a man from the
north woods."
"To save myself from seeming like a flatterer, I must say it's because
of the woods feature that I remember you so well. The forest interests
me. I'm afraid I'm inclined to be very foolish about the woods. Why, in
a cafeteria--last fall--there was----"
But she checked herself and flushed. She turned to Mern. "I beg your
pardon. I'm ready." She sat down and opened her notebook.
"But what about it?" quizzed Craig.
"A mere chance meeting with a man from the north country. I really don't
understand why I mentioned it. My interest in the woods--the thought of
the woods--tripped my tongue." She nodded to the stolid Mern as if to
remind him of the business in hand, and Mern ducked his square head at
Craig.
It was the habit of Mern to go thoroughly over a case with a client
before calling in Miss Kennard. At the second going-over in her presence
the topic was better shaken down, was in a more solidified form for her
notebook. The Comas director had already told his story once to the
chief.
Craig leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling, again
collecting his data in his mind. He had dictated before to Miss Kennard
and knew how Mern wanted his names and his facts. "Subject, the spring
drives on the Noda water. Object, hanging up or blocking the independent
drive of Echford Flagg and----"
Miss Kennard's pencil slipped somehow. It fell from her fingers, bounced
from the floor on its rubber tip, and ticked off the sharpened lead
when it hit the floor again.
Lida darted for it, picked it up, and ran out of the room. "I'm going
for another," she explained.
She was gone for some time. Craig glanced out of the window into the
slaty sky, from which rain was falling. It was a day unseasonably warm
and humid for early spring. "I hope it's raining in the Noda. But it's
just as liable to be snow. Latisan can't do much yet awhile." He looked
at his watch as if starting the Noda drives was a matter of minutes. He
was showing some impatience when Miss Kennard returned. She went to the
window, and sat in a chair there, her face turned from them. "If you
don't mind," she apologized. "It's on account of the light. I can hear
perfectly from here."
She heard then that the Comas wanted to put Echford Flagg down and out
as an operator, now that paralysis had stricken him. She had Craig's
assurance delivered to Mern that, without a certain Ward Latisan old
Flagg would not be able to bring his drive down. The Comas director
declared that an ordinary boss could never get along with the devils who
made up the crew. He declared further that Latisan was of a sort to suit
desperadoes and had put into the crew some kind of fire which made the
men dangerous to vested interests on the river. He devoted himself to
Latisan with subdued profanity, despite the presence of the young woman.
He averred that Latisan himself had no love for Flagg--nobody up-country
gave a tinker's hoot for Flagg, anyway. He insisted, desperate in spite
of certain modifying private convictions, that Latisan could be pried
off the job if some kind of a tricky influence could be brought to bear
or if his interest in the fight, as just a fight, could be dulled or
shifted to something else or side-tracked by a ruse. He pictured Flagg
as a man for whom nobody would stand up in his present state, now that
he was sick and out of the game.
"I hate to kick a cripple, even in my business," demurred Mern. "I have
flashes of decency," he continued, dryly. "You seem to be particularly
set on getting to the lumberjack, Latisan. Can't you do him up, and then
let Flagg have half a show for this season--probably his last?"
"Now you're talking of violence to Latisan, aren't you?"
"Let the plug-ugly have what he seems to be looking for," advised Mern.
"That is, if I get it straight from you what his nature is."
"He's all of that--what I have said," reaffirmed Craig, venomously. "But
look here, Mern, you can't go up into that region, where everything is
wide open to all men, and kill a man or abduct him. I'm obliged to
gum-shoe. I have to keep my own executive details away from the home
office, even. We're waiting on the courts for law and on the legislature
for more favors." Craig was sweating copiously, and he wiped his
forehead with the back of his hand. "It's touchy business. If I can pull
old Flagg into camp, it's my biggest stroke outside of nailing the
Latisans in the Tomah. A monopoly will give us settled prices and
control of the flowage. But I insist on doing the job through Latisan.
I'm after him! Now do some thinking for me. No violence,
however--nothing which can be traced to the Three C's."
In the silence Miss Kennard asked, "How do you spell Latisan, Mr.
Craig?"
He told her. "First name Ward. He's the grandson of old John of the
Tomah."
"I'm trying to get the facts straight for Mr. Mern. Do I understand you
to say that the Latisans have failed in their business?"
"They're down and out. I gave the young fool a good tip to save the
remnants, but he wouldn't take it. The only thing I'll give him after
this is poison--if it can't be traced to me or my company."
Mern had swung about in his chair, his vacant stare on the murky sky,
doing the thinking to which he had been exhorted by his client. "Suppose
I slip a picked crowd of my operatives into his crew?"
"He's too wise to take on strangers. And while he's on the job with the
crew the men are so full of that hell-whoop spirit that they can't be
tampered with. Mern, he's got to be cut out of the herd."
"What's his particular failing?"
Craig, if his sour rage against Latisan had been less intense, might
have been less ready to believe that Latisan had taken several months
off as a prodigal son. But Craig wanted to believe that the young man
had been doing what scandal said he had done. That belief strengthened
Craig's hopes. He affected to believe in the reports. He told Mern that
Latisan had been leading a sporting life in the city until the family
money gave out.
"How about bumping him on his soft spot?"
Craig asked questions with his eyes, blinking away the perspiration.
"With a girl," Mern explained. "With one who looks as if she had been
picked right out of the rosy middle of the big bouquet he was attracted
by in the city. With the background of the woods, a single bloomer will
surely hold his attention."
Craig showed interest; he had been obliged to pass up violence, bribery,
bluster. This new plan promised subtlety and subterfuge that would let
out the Three C's. "Got her?"
"Call Miss Elsham on the phone, Miss Kennard! You may do it from the
other room. Ask her to hurry down."
The girl, her face hidden from them, paused at the door. "Are there more
notes? Shall I come back?" She was having difficulty with her voice, but
the men were now talking eagerly about the new plan, and her
discomposure was not remarked.
"I think not," said Mern. "Write out what you have. Make especially full
characterizations of Flagg and Latisan as you have gathered facts about
them from our talk." He had found Miss Kennard to be especially apt in
that work. Not only did she deduce character from descriptions, but she
worked in many valuable suggestions as to how men of a certain nature
should be handled. She seemed to understand the vagaries of men's
dispositions very well indeed.
"What's the matter with Ken?" muttered Miss Javotte, nudging the
bookkeeper.
Lida had flung her arms across the frame of her typewriter and had
hidden her face in her hands.
"Headache," returned Miss Leigh, sapiently. "That toque has struck into
the brain. No girl ought to take chances that way."