Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 12

"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 ma.n.u.script.

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 ma.n.u.script. "'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 indors.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.similated 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 b.u.t.t 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sociation 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.

Dispa.s.sionately considered, it was not right for her to use her acquired knowledge of the plot against Echford Flagg in order to circ.u.mvent 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 rect.i.tude 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 mult.i.tude.

That urge really was just as insistent as consideration of the personal elements involved, though she did not admit it, not being able to a.n.a.lyze 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 ident.i.ty. 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.