Never-Fail Blake Part 4

Copeland and the Commissioner looked at each other, for one fraction of a second.

"You know what _my_ feeling is," resumed the latter, "on this Binhart case."

"I know what my feeling is," declared Blake.

"What?"

"That the right method would 've got him six months ago, without all this monkey work!"

"Then why not end the monkey work, as you call it?"

"How?"

"By doing what you say you can do!" was the Commissioner's retort.

"How 'm I going to hold down a chair and hunt a crook at the same time?"

"Then why hold down the chair? Let the chair take care of itself. It could be arranged, you know."

Blake had the stage-juggler's satisfaction of seeing things fall into his hands exactly as he had manoeuvered they should. His reluctance was merely a dissimulation, a stage wait for heightened dramatic effect.

"How 'd you do the arranging?" he calmly inquired.

"I could see the Mayor in the morning. There will be no Departmental difficulty."

"Then where 's the trouble?"

"There is none, if you are willing to go out."

"Well, we can't get Binhart here by pink-tea invitations. Somebody 's got to go out and _get_ him!"

"The bank raised the reward to eight thousand this week," interposed the ruminative Copeland.

"Well, it 'll take money to get him," snapped back the Second Deputy, remembering that he had a nest of his own to feather.

"It will be worth what it costs," admitted the Commissioner.

"Of course," said Copeland, "they 'll have to honor your drafts--in reason."

"There will be no difficulty on the expense side," quietly interposed the Commissioner. "The city wants Binhart. The whole country wants Binhart. And they will be willing to pay for it."

Blake rose heavily to his feet. His ma.s.sive bulk was momentarily stirred by the prospect of the task before him. For one brief moment the antic.i.p.ation of that clamor of approval which would soon be his stirred his lethargic pulse. Then his cynic calmness again came back to him.

"Then what 're we beefing about?" he demanded. "You want Binhart and I 'll get him for you."

The Commissioner, tapping the top of his desk with his gold-banded fountain pen, smiled. It was almost a smile of indulgence.

"You _know_ you will get him?" he inquired.

The inquiry seemed to anger Blake. He was still dimly conscious of the operation of forces which he could not fathom. There were things, vague and insubstantial, which he could not understand. But he nursed to his heavy-breathing bosom the consciousness that he himself was not without his own undivulged powers, his own private tricks, his own inner reserves.

"I say I 'll get him!" he calmly proclaimed. "And I guess that ought to be enough!"

IV

The unpretentious, brownstone-fronted home of Deputy Copeland was visited, late that night, by a woman. She was dressed in black, and heavily veiled. She walked with the stoop of a sorrowful and middle-aged widow.

She came in a taxicab, which she dismissed at the corner. From the house steps she looked first eastward and then westward, as though to make sure she was not being followed. Then she rang the bell.

She gave no name; yet she was at once admitted. Her visit, in fact, seemed to be expected, for without hesitation she was ushered upstairs and into the library of the First Deputy.

He was waiting for her in a room more intimate, more personal, more companionably crowded than his office, for the simple reason that it was not a room of his own fashioning. He stood in the midst of its warm hangings, in fact, as cold and neutral as the marble Diana behind him. He did not even show, as he closed the door and motioned his visitor into a chair, that he had been waiting for her.

The woman, still standing, looked carefully about the room, from side to side, saw that they were alone, made note of the two closed doors, and then with a sigh lifted her black gloved hands and began to remove the widow's cap from her head. She sighed again as she tossed the black crepe on the dark-wooded table beside her. As she sank into the chair the light from the electrolier fell on her shoulders and on the carefully coiled and banded hair, so laboriously built up into a crown that glinted nut-brown above the pale face she turned to the man watching her.

"Well?" she said. And from under her level brows she stared at Copeland, serene in her consciousness of power. It was plain that she neither liked him nor disliked him. It was equally plain that he, too, had his ends remote from her and her being.

"You saw Blake again?" he half asked, half challenged.

"No," she answered.

"Why?"

"I was afraid to."

"Did n't I tell you we 'd take care of your end?"

"I 've had promises like that before. They were n't always remembered."

"But our office never made you that promise before, Miss Verriner."

The woman let her eyes rest on his impa.s.sive face.

"That's true, I admit. But I must also admit I know Jim Blake. We 'd better not come together again, Blake and me, after this week."

She was pulling off her gloves as she spoke. She suddenly threw them down on the table. "There 's just one thing I want to know, and know for certain. I want to know if this is a plant to shoot Blake up?"

The First Deputy smiled. It was not altogether at the mere calmness with which she could suggest such an atrocity.

"Hardly," he said.

"Then what is it?" she demanded.

He was both patient and painstaking with her. His tone was almost paternal in its placativeness.

"It's merely a phase of departmental business," he answered her. "And we 're anxious to see Blake round up Connie Binhart."