"Has he delegated to you any authority to compromise?"
"No, sir!"
"There ought to be an opportunity to compromise, now that he"s down and out."
"I just left Mr. Flagg sitting in his chair, and he says he intends to keep sitting there. Therefore, he isn"t down."
"Is his mind clear for business?"
"I should say so--yes!"
Craig tipped his hat and scratched the side of his head. "Then I"m afraid there isn"t much use in my going to him to talk compromise," he confessed.
"That"s your affair, Mr. Craig."
"And your affair--where he"s concerned----"
"Is to bring down his drive."
"He has threatened a big fight at Skulltree. You heard him."
"Yes."
"And if he gives his orders to blow h.e.l.l out of the bottom of the river, I suppose you"ll obey, eh?"
"He has ordered me to bring his logs into the hold-boom here at Adonia.
I have promised to do so. I see no need of going into details of how I"m to do it." Latisan raised the shield of his newspaper in front of his face.
But Craig persisted. He had promised the Noda to his superiors; he had not been sure how he could maneuver to deliver, but his past success had impelled him to go on with his c.o.c.ksure pledges of performance; he was spurred by a hint of a raise in salary, a gift of Comas common stock; he had depended on the situation at Skulltree as his princ.i.p.al weapon, if bravado backed the special legislative act. But that act had been juggled, just as Echford Flagg had a.s.serted. The thing was ticklish, and Craig knew it. Anger and apprehensiveness were working twin leverage on the Comas executive.
"Latisan, by coming over here into the Noda and grabbing in where you have no timber interests of your own, you have shown your animus. You have made it a personal matter between you and me."
"There"s a lot of truth in what you say," admitted Ward, lowering his shield. "Let"s exchange accusations! You held that Walpole heir up your sleeve till we had our cut on the landings. If you had worked such a trick on my grandfather he wouldn"t be sitting on this chair, as I"m doing. He"d be kicking you around this tavern. I"ll save my strength for the Flagg drive."
"I"ve got some frankness of my own, Latisan. I"m at a point where my future with the Comas is in the balance, and I"m going to fight for that future. I"m not asking you to lie down. But you have it in your power--the circ.u.mstances being as they are--to swing the Flagg interests in with ours to mutual advantage. Why isn"t that better than a fight?"
"It would be better!"
Craig brightened.
But Latisan added: "For your interests! You"re afraid of a fight--at Skulltree!"
"Yes, I am," blurted Craig, trying candor. "Let"s arrange a hitch-up!"
"Now the trouble with that plan is this," returned Latisan, quietly, slowly. "It can"t be done, not with a man like you"ve shown yourself to be. Hold in your temper, Mr. Craig! You"re coming round now to ask square men to deal with you. You can"t appeal on the ground of friendship--you haven"t tried to make any friends up here. You have played too many tricks. We"re all doubtful in regard to your good faith, no matter what the proposition may be. We can"t deal with you. It"s all your own doing. You are paying the penalty."
"Much obliged for the sermon!"
"I could say a lot more, but it wouldn"t amount to anything in your case."
"Then it has settled into a personal fight between you and me, has it?"
"Bluntly speaking, yes!"
"You have accused me of playing tricks!" Craig"s rage burst bounds. "You young hick, you have never seen real tricks yet! You don"t think I"m coming after you with fists or a cant dog, do you?"
"I wish you were younger and would try it!"
"I"m from the city. In the city we use our brains. Latisan, I have tried to show you in the past that the Comas means business. If you"ll go back to the Toban, where you belong, I"ll do something for you on that Walpole matter, now that I"ve taught you a lesson."
"The Latisans are not out after charity, Mr. Craig."
"You"re out after punishment--a d.a.m.nation good smashing, personally, and you"re going to get it!"
Latisan leaped from his chair and slammed the door suddenly and violently; expecting an attack. Craig leaped back and saved his fingers from a jamming.
From behind his curtain in the morning he saw Latisan drive the Flagg team into the tavern yard.
"I"ll be coming down often, Brophy, to see Mr. Flagg. I"ll depend on you to save out a room for me."
"Number Ten is yours if it suits."
Craig grunted with the satisfaction of one who had received interesting information; knowledge that Latisan would be regularly in Adonia helped some plans which the director had been revolving.
Latisan lashed his horses away toward the north.
Craig took the forenoon train down over the narrow-gauge, headed for New York. He was seeking that aid of which he had boasted--city brains. In handling certain affairs of his in the past he had found the Vose-Mern Detective Agency both crafty and active--and the roundabout method of craft, he decided, was the proper way to get at Latisan, without involving the Comas folks in any scandal.
CHAPTER NINE
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 antic.i.p.atory 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 "antic.i.p.atory" 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 a.s.sured 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 att.i.tude--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.