However, by the time Miss Marguerite Elsham--having given full attention
to her person and attire--arrived at the office, Miss Kennard had
completed her manuscript and the sheets were lying at Mern's elbow on
his desk.
In order to bridge a part of the gap of waiting Mern had given his
client some information about Miss Elsham and her ability.
"Very competent on the coax, Mr. Craig. Last job was a paying teller. He
had twenty thousand in his jeans when he stepped out of the taxi that
had taken him and Elsham to the steamer dock. Tickets for Rio! Crowley,
our pinch artist, nabbed him and bawled out Elsham, who was weeping in
the cab. Crowley and Elsham work well together. You understand that if
she goes to the woods Crowley must go along on the side. They won't
appear as knowing each other. But Crowley may be called on to shove his
mitt between Elsham and trouble."
"I don't care how many are on pay--if you achieve results," said Craig.
The field director, introduced to Miss Elsham when she entered breezily,
termed her in his thoughts as being at least a 1925 model. He wondered
just what words he would find in the way of advice about toning down her
style for north country operations.
She took her seat sideways on the edge of Mern's desk, thus testifying
to her sure standing in the establishment, her tightly drawn skirt
displaying an attractive contour. For a fleeting moment--hating Latisan
so venomously--Craig rather envied Latisan his prospects as a victim.
Miss Elsham produced a silver cigarette case, lighted up, and exhaled
twin streams of smoke from a shapely nose. "Shoot!" she counseled.
Mern, after his slow fashion, fumbled with the sheets of Miss Kennard's
manuscript.
Miss Elsham thriftily utilized the moments allowed her by Mern's
hesitation. She always tried to impress a client favorably. "I don't
presume to pick and choose when it comes to cases," she informed Craig.
"I'm an All-for-the-good-cause Anne! But I hope--I'm allowed to hope, I
suppose--I do hope that my next one is going to remember some of the
lessons he learned at mother's knee. The last one had forgotten
everything. I was dragged through cafes till at the present time a
red-shaded table lamp and a menu card make me want to bite holes in any
man with a napkin over his arm. I've danced to jazz and listened to
cabaret----"
Mern was trying to say something, but she rattled on: "And that flask on
his hip--he must have done all his breathing while he was asleep; he
never allowed time enough between drinks while he was awake."
"The next one is different," stated Mern.
"Much obliged! But of course it's cafes again and----"
Mern sliced off her complaints, chopping his flat hand to and fro in
the air. "Nothing to it, sis! It's a tall-timber job, this time."
"In the woods--the real woods," supplemented Craig.
"Great!" indorsed Miss Elsham, accustomed to meeting all phases of
action with agility. "I've just seen a movie with that kind of a girl in
it. Leggings and knicks. I can see myself. Great!"
Director Craig surveyed her and nodded approvingly.
"We'll decide on what part you'll play before we measure you for a rig,"
objected the chief, with his official caution. "Listen to the size-up of
your man." He began to read from Miss Kennard's manuscript. "'Ward
Latisan. Young woodsman. Has lived and worked among rough men and has no
particular amount of moral stamina, a fact shown by his desertion of his
father in time of need in order to indulge in orgies in the city.'"
"Oh, it's to go and set my hook and fish him out of the woods, and then
he and I lean on our elbows across from each other--the cafes some
more," said Miss Elsham, pouting.
Mern suspended, for a moment, his reading and addressed Craig. "Miss
Kennard, of course, is sizing up according to what you have said of
Latisan. You're sure about his weakness for dames, are you? We don't
want to give Miss Elsham any wrong tips."
Craig hung tenaciously to his estimate of Latisan, in no mood to uproot
the opinion which gossip had implanted and hatred had watered. And at
the end of his arraignment he attempted an awkward compliment. "And
even if he could have stood out against the Queen of Sheba up till now,
I'll say he'll----" Craig gazed with humid indorsement of Miss Elsham's
attractions and waved his hand in the way of a mute completion of the
sentence.
Miss Elsham smiled broadly and patted together her manicured thumbnails.
"Loud applause!" she cried. "Pardon me if I don't blush, sir. I have
used up my stock. The last case was oozing with flattery--after the
flask had got in its work."
Mern went on with his reading, portraying the character of Latisan as
Miss Kennard had gathered and assimilated data. She had even gone to the
extent of giving Latisan a black mustache and evil eyes.
"Hold on," objected Craig. "Nothing was said about his looks. She's
picking that up because I was strong on how he had acted. He doesn't
look as savage as he is; he fools a lot of folks that way," stated
Craig, in surly tones.
"Well, how will I know when I meet up with him in the woods?"
"You go to the Adonia tavern and make your headquarters, and you won't
miss him. How does the thing look to you as a proposition?" demanded
Craig, solicitously. "You ought to know pretty well what you can do with
men, by this time."
Miss Elsham tossed away her cigarette butt and referred mutely to Mern
by a wave of her hand.
"She always gets 'em--gets the better of the best of 'em. Rest easy,"
said the chief.
"And it must be worked easy," warned Craig, catching at the word.
"That's why you're in it, Miss Elsham, instead of its being a man's
fight up there. We can't afford to let Latisan slam that drive down
through our logs, as he threatens to do. If he does it--if we turn on
Flagg and sue for damages, as we can do, of course--court action will
only bring out a lot of stuff that better be kept covered. I want the
agency to understand fully, Mern!"
"We're on."
"I'm achieving results without showing all the details to the home
office. And I'm not a pirate. You spoke of kicking a cripple, Mern.
We'll take over Flagg's logs as soon as he gets reasonable. His fight is
only an old notion about the independents sticking on. Sawmills are in
our way these days. Flagg is done, anyway. He ought to be saved from
himself. I'm after Latisan. He's ready to fight and to ruin Flagg,"
declared Mr. Craig, with a fine assumption of righteous desire to aid a
fallen foe, "just to carry out his grudge against me--using Flagg's
property as his tool. It'll be too bad. So get busy, Miss Elsham--and
keep him busy--off the drive."
"Read on, Chief," she implored Mern. "I'm seeing as quick as this just
how I'll do it."
The conference continued.
When Miss Elsham departed she stopped in the main office on her way out.
"Good-by, girls! I'm off for the big sticks. I'll bring each of you a
tree."
She went to a mirror, taking out her vanity case. Beside the mirror were
hooks for hats and outer garments. "Perfect dream!" she commented,
examining a hat. "Whose?"
"Mine," said Miss Leigh.
Miss Elsham took the hat in admiring hands, dislodging a green toque,
which fell upon the floor. She did not notice the mishap to the toque
and left it where it had fallen. She touched up her countenance and went
away.
"Your hat is on the floor," Miss Leigh informed Miss Kennard. The girl
did not reply; she was looking down upon the keys of her typewriter, and
her demeanor suggested that her heart was on the floor, too.
When Lida sat by the open window of her room that evening her depression
had become doleful to the point of despair.
The night was unseasonably warm with enervating humidity; in that
atmosphere the dormant germs of the girl's general disgust with the
metropolis and all its affairs were incubated. Breathing the heavy air
which sulked at the window, she pondered on the hale refreshment of the
northern forests. But it seemed to her that there was no honesty in the
woods any more. That day, fate searching her out at last, she had been
dragged in as a party in a plot against her stricken grandfather. She
indulged her repugnance to her employment; it had become hateful beyond
all endurance. Her association with the cynical business of the agency
and her knowledge of the ethics of Mern had been undermining the
foundations of her own innate sense of what was inherently right, she
reflected, taking account of stock.
Dispassionately considered, it was not right for her to use her acquired
knowledge of the plot against Echford Flagg in order to circumvent the
plans of an employer who trusted her. But after a while she resolutely
broke away from the petty business of weighing the right and the wrong
against each other; she was bold enough to term it petty business in her
thoughts and realized fully, when she did so, that her Vose-Mern
occupation had damaged her natural rectitude more than she had
apprehended.
But there was something more subtle, on that miasmatic metropolitan
night, something farther back than the new determination to break away
from Mern and all his works of mischief. It was not merely a call of
family loyalty, a resolve to stand by the grandfather who had disowned
his kin. She was not sure how much she did care for the hard old man of
the woods. But right then, without her complete realization of what the
subtle feeling was, the avatar of the spirit of the Open Places was
rising in her. She longed avidly for the sight and the sound of many
soughing trees. She was urged to go to her own in some far place where
her feet could touch the honest earth instead of being insulated by the
pavements which were stropped glossy by the hurry of the multitude.
That urge really was just as insistent as consideration of the personal
elements involved, though she did not admit it, not being able to
analyze her emotions very keenly right then. Family affection needs
propinquity and service to develop it. Her sentiments in regard to
Echford Flagg were vague. This Latisan, whoever he was, was plainly a
rough character with doubtful morals who was loyal to a grudge instead
of to her grandfather. She knew what the Elsham girl had been able to
with other men, in the blase city; it stood to reason that in the woods,
having no rivals to divert the attentions of a victim, Elsham would be
still more effective.
At last, having kept her thoughts away from an especial topic because of
the shame that still dwelt with her, Lida faced what she knew was the
real and greater reason for her growing determination to step between
Echford Flagg and his enemies. Alfred Kennard had stolen money from
Echford Flagg. Sylvia Kennard had grieved her heart out over the thing.
There were the bitter letters which Lida had found among her mother's
papers after Sylvia died. The mother had torn the name from the bottoms
of those letters; it was as if she had endeavored to shield Echford
Flagg from the signed proof of utter heartlessness.
The debt to Echford Flagg had not been canceled. Could the daughter of
Alfred Kennard repay in some degree for the sake of the father? That
sense of duty surmounted all qualms involved in the betrayal of an
employer, if it could be called betrayal, considering the ethics that
had been adopted and preached by Mern.
It was midnight when she reached her firm decision. She would go to the
north country. She would do her best, single-handed, as opportunity
might present itself. She would fight without allowing her grandfather
to know her identity. Perhaps she might tell him when it was all over,
if she won. The debt was owed by the father; it might help if it was
known that the daughter had paid. Then she would go away; it was not in
her mind to gain any favor for herself. If she merely ran to him,
tattling an exposure of the plot, Echford Flagg, if her well-grounded
estimate of his character were correct, might repudiate her as a mere
tale-bearer; she remembered enough to know that he was a square fighter.
She felt that she had some of the Flagg spirit of that sort in her. She
had been fighting her battle with the world without asking odds of
anybody or seeking favors from her only kin.
She would go north and do her best, for her own, according to the code
she had laid down.
She was conscious then, having made up her mind, of the subtle longing
that was back of the fierce impatience to repay her father's debt: the
woods of the north and the hale spirit of the Open Places were calling
her home again.
She would not admit to herself that she was engaged in a quixotic
enterprise, and in order to keep herself from making that admission she
resolutely turned her thoughts away from plans. To ponder on plans would
surely sap her courage. She could not foresee what would confront her in
the north country and she was glad because her ideas on that point were
hazy. It was not in her mind to hide herself from the other operatives
of the Vose-Mern agency when she was at the scene; her experience had
acquainted her with the efficacy of guile in working with human nature,
and she was well aware that her bold presence where the operatives were
making their campaign would prove such a mixture of honesty and guile
that Miss Elsham and Crowley, and even Mern, himself, when he learned,
would be obliged to expend a portion of their energy on guessing.
She did not know how or whether one girl could prevail against the
organization threatening her grandfather and Latisan, but she was fully
determined to find out.
She served the agency dutifully for one more day. She learned that the
two operatives had started for the north.
A day later she departed from New York on their trail. She did not
inform Chief Mern that she was leaving.