Never-Fail Blake Part 5

"That's not true," she answered with neither heat nor resentment, "or you would never have started him off on this blind lead. You 'd never have had me go to him with that King Edward note and had it work out to fit a street in Montreal. You 've got a wooden decoy up there in Canada, and when Blake gets there he 'll be told his man slipped away the day before. Then another decoy will bob up, and Blake will go after that. And when you 've fooled him two or three times he 'll sail back to New York and break me for giving him a false tip."

"Did you give it to him?"

"No, he hammered it out of me. But you knew he was going to do that.

That was part of the plant."

She sat studying her thin white hands for several seconds. Then she looked up at the calm-eyed Copeland.

"How are you going to protect me, if Blake comes back? How are you going to keep your promise?"

The First Deputy sat back in his chair and crossed his thin legs.

"Blake will not come back," he announced. She slewed suddenly round on him again.

"Then it _is_ a plant!" she proclaimed.

"You misunderstand me, Miss Verriner. Blake will not come back as an official. There will be changes in the Department, I imagine; changes for the better which even he and his Tammany Hall friends can't stop, by the time he gets back with Binhart."

The woman gave a little hand gesture of impatience.

"But don't you see," she protested, "supposing he gives up Binhart?

Supposing he suspects something and hurries back to hold down his place?"

"They call him Never-Fail Blake," commented the unmoved and dry-lipped official. He met her wide stare with his gently satiric smile.

"I see," she finally said, "you 're not going to shoot him up. You 're merely going to wipe him out."

"You are quite wrong there," began the man across the table from her.

"Administration changes may happen, and in--"

"In other words, you 're getting Jim Blake out of the way, off on this Binhart trail, while you work him out of the Department."

"No competent officer is ever worked out of this Department," parried the First Deputy.

She sat for a silent and studious moment or two, without looking at Copeland. Then she sighed, with mock plaintiveness. Her wistfulness seemed to leave her doubly dangerous.

"Mr. Copeland, are n't you afraid some one might find it worth while to tip Blake off?" she softly inquired.

"What would you gain?" was his pointed and elliptical interrogation.

She leaned forward in the fulcrum of light, and looked at him soberly.

"What is your idea of me?" she asked.

He looked back at the thick-lashed eyes with their iris rings of deep gray. There was something alert and yet unpartic.i.p.ating in their steady gaze. They held no trace of abashment. They were no longer veiled. There was even something disconcerting in their lucid and level stare.

"I think you are a very intelligent woman," Copeland finally confessed.

"I think I am, too," she retorted. "Although I have n't used that intelligence in the right way. Don't smile! I 'm not going to turn mawkish. I 'm not good. I don't know whether I want to be. But I know one thing: I 've got to keep busy--I 've got to be active. I 've _got_ to be!"

"And?" prompted the First Deputy, as she came to a stop.

"We all know, now, exactly where we 're at. We all know what we want, each one of us. We know what Blake wants. We know what you want. And I want something more than I 'm getting, just as you want something more than writing reports and rounding up push-cart peddlers. I want my end, as much as you want yours."

"And?" again prompted the First Deputy.

"I 've got to the end of my ropes; and I want to swing around. It's no reform bee, mind! It's not what other women like me think it is. But I can't go on. It doesn't lead to anything. It does n't pay. I want to be safe. I 've _got_ to be safe!"

He looked up suddenly, as though a new truth had just struck home with him. For the first time, all that evening, his face was ingenuous.

"I know what's behind me," went on the woman. "There 's no use digging that up. And there 's no use digging up excuses for it. But there _are_ excuses--good excuses, or I 'd never have gone through what I have, because I feel I was n't made for it. I 'm too big a coward to face what it leads to. I can look ahead and see through things. I can understand too easily." She came to a stop, and sat back, with one white hand on either arm of the chair. "And I 'm afraid to go on. I want to begin over. And I want to begin on the right side!"

He sat pondering just how much of this he could believe. But she disregarded his veiled impa.s.sivity.

"I want you to take Picture 3,970 out of the Identification Bureau, the picture and the Bertillon measurements. And then I want you to give me the chance I asked for."

"But that does not rest with me, Miss Verriner!"

"It will rest with you. I could n't stool with my own people here.

But Wilkie knows my value. He knows what I can do for the service if I 'm on their side. He could let me begin with the Ellis Island spotting. I could stop that Stockholm white-slave work in two months.

And when you see Wilkie to-morrow you can swing me one way or the other!"

Copeland, with his chin on his bony breast, looked up to smile into her intent and staring eyes.

"You are a very clever woman," he said. "And what is more, you know a great deal!"

"I know a great deal!" she slowly repeated, and her steady gaze succeeded in taking the ironic smile out of the corners of his eyes.

"Your knowledge," he said with a deliberation equal to her own, "will prove of great value to you--as an agent with Wilkie."

"That's as you say!" she quietly amended as she rose to her feet.

There was no actual threat in her words, just as there was no actual mockery in his. But each was keenly conscious of the wheels that revolved within wheels, of the intricacies through which each was threading a way to certain remote ends. She picked up her black gloves from the desk top. She stood there, waiting.

"You can count on me," he finally said, as he rose from his chair. "I 'll attend to the picture. And I 'll say the right thing to Wilkie!"

"Then let's shake hands on it!" she quietly concluded. And as they shook hands her gray-irised eyes gazed intently and interrogatively into his.

V (a)

When Never-Fail Blake alighted from his sleeper in Montreal he found one of Teal's men awaiting him at Bonaventure Station. There had been a hitch or a leak somewhere, this man reported. Binhart, in some way, had slipped through their fingers.

All they knew was that the man they were tailing had bought a ticket for Winnipeg, that he was not in Montreal, and that, beyond the railway ticket, they had no trace of him.

Blake, at this news, had a moment when he saw red. He felt, during that moment, like a drum-major who had "m.u.f.fed" his baton on parade.

Then recovering himself, he promptly confirmed the Teal operative's report by telephone, accepted its confirmation as authentic, consulted a timetable, and made a dash for Windsor Station. There he caught the Winnipeg express, took possession of a stateroom and indited carefully worded telegrams to Trimble in Vancouver, that all out-going Pacific steamers should be watched, and to Menzler in Chicago, that the American city might be covered in case of Binhart's doubling southward on him. Still another telegram he sent to New York, requesting the Police Department to send on to him at once a photograph of Binhart.