“That’s exactly how they feel, miss,” said the old man. “They’re on their way. They can’t be stopped.”

But the declaration depressed rather than cheered her. Those men had taken up her cause valiantly and with single-hearted purpose, and she was obliged to assume responsibility for what they had done and what they would do to force the situation at Skulltree. In the rush of the drive, with the logs running free, the river was open to all and Latisan’s task was in the course of fulfillment and the Flagg fortunes were having fair opportunity in the competition. But now competition must become warfare, so it seemed. She shrank from that responsibility, but she could not evade it—could not command those devoted men to stop with the job half finished.

The priest’s promise to find Latisan had been living with her, consoling the hours of her waiting. Her load had become so heavy that her yearning for Latisan’s return had become desperate and anguished.

The slow drag of the logs in the deadwater gave her time for pondering and she was afraid of her thoughts.

She was not accusing Latisan of being an inexcusable recreant where duty was concerned; she was understanding in better fashion the men and the manners of the north country and she realized the full force of the reasons for his flight and why the situation had overwhelmed him. Her pity and remorse had been feeding her love.

But the priest had promised. Latisan must know. Why did he not come to her and lift the dreadful burden in her extremity?

Old Vittum, sitting on a bleached trunk among the dry kye stranded on the shore, plucked slowly the spills of a pine tassel, staring down between his knees. “You’ve seen how they have worked, miss, for every ounce that’s in ’em. But I don’t know how they’ll fight if they don’t have a real captain—a single head to plan—the right man to lead off. Latisan’s that! Half of ’em came north because they figured on him. I’ve been hoping. But I’m sort of giving up.”

“I don’t like to hear you say that,” she cried. “As soon as he knows the truth he will come to us. Father Leroque promised to carry that truth to him.”

“Providing the priest can find him in the Tomah country—yes, you have said that to me and I’ve been cal’lating to see Latisan come tearing around a bend in the river most any minute ever since you told me. But Miah Sprague, the fire warden, went through to-day. I’ve been hating to report to you, miss, for I’m knowing to it how you feel these days; your looks tell me, and I’m sorry. But Sprague has come from the Tomah and he tells me that Ward Latisan hasn’t been home—hasn’t been heard from. Nobody knows where he is. That is straight from Garry Latisan, because Garry is starting a hue and a cry and asked Miah to comb the north country for news.”

She did not reply. She was not sure that there was a touch of rebuke in the old man’s mournful tones, but she felt that any sort of reproach would be justified. She had never made a calm analysis of the affair between herself and Latisan, to determine what onus of the blame rested on her and how much was due to the plots and the falsehoods of Crowley. She clung to her sense of fault in order to spur herself to make good; that same sense, a heritage from a father, had served vicariously in rousing her spirit to battle for her grandfather.

“I hope you’re going to keep up your grit, miss,” urged Vittum. “We’ll do our best for you—but I ain’t lotting much on Latisan’s showing up again. It’s too bad! It’ll break his heart when he finds out at last what he has been left out of and what a chance he has missed.”

Like many another, she had, at times, dreamed vividly of falling from great heights. That was her sensation then, awake, when she heard that Ward Latisan was not to be found. Despair left her numb and quivering. Till then she had not realized how greatly her hope and confidence in his final coming had counted with her. She had not dared to think that his anger would persist; it had seemed to be too violent to last. However, it was plain that rage had overmastered the love he had proclaimed. Lida was very much woman and felt the feminine conviction that a lover would be able to find her if his heart were set on the quest. There was only a flicker of a thought along that line; it was mere irritation that was immediately swept away by her pity for him. She was able to comprehend man’s talk then—she knew what Vittum meant when he spoke of the chance that was missed—and she understood how Ward Latisan would mourn if he heard too late what the struggle that year on the Noda waters signified in the case of the girl for whom he had professed love.

She could not talk with the old man; she stumbled across the dry kye, threw herself on her couch of boughs, and pressed her palms over her ears to keep out the threat in the song of the men who toiled around and around the capstan post, drawing the Flagg logs in their slow, relentless passage to the scene of the promised conflict at Skulltree.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“But what has become of Kennard?”

“I don’t know. Lynched, maybe. They were threatening to do it to Buck and me before we got away.”

One thing seemed to be true—Mern had a wire from Brophy in reply to an inquiry: Ward Latisan had gone away and was staying away.

And Rufus Craig, arriving in the city, telephoned the same information to the chief and promised to call around and settle.

Crowley was informed of that confirmation, and grinned and again patted his breast and claimed the credit.

“All right,” allowed the chief, “you’re in for your slice of the fee. But if you’re lying about Kennard I’ll make you suffer for deserting her.”

“I stand by what I have said. She was double-crossing us.”

Later, Crowley began to inquire casually from time to time whether Miss Kennard had sent in any word. He was not good at concealing his thoughts, and he was manifestly worried by the prospect of possible developments, but Mern was not able to pin him down to anything specific. As a matter of fact, Crowley had not fathomed the mystery of Miss Kennard’s actions in Adonia and was not in a way to do so by any processes of his limited intelligence; he admitted as much to himself.

He was clumsy in his efforts to extract from the chief something in regard to the report which supposedly had been sent in by Miss Kennard, and Mern’s suspicions were stirred afresh. He gave Crowley no information on that point; one excellent reason why he did not do so was this: Miss Kennard had not sent in any report. Mern was still waiting to hear from her as to certain details; he wanted to talk with her. Crowley ventured to state that she had left Adonia, and he suggested that she was on the trail of Latisan. The operative, pressed for reasons why she was still pursuing Latisan, if the drive master had been separated from his job by Crowley, averred that, according to his best judgment, the girl had gone crazy. That statement did not satisfy Mern, but it enabled Crowley to avoid tripping too often over inconsistencies.

Under those circumstances the uneasy feeling persisted in Chief Mern that the Latisan case was not finished, in spite of Craig’s compliments and Crowley’s boasts and Miss Elsham’s bland agreement as to facts as stated, though with avoidance of details.

Mern usually shut down the cover on a case as soon as the point had been won; he had found in too many instances that memory nagged; he had assured Craig that having to do what a detective chief was called on to do in his business had not given him the spirit of a buccaneer.

But in this case the lack of candor in his operatives disturbed him, though he did not presume to arraign them; he could not do that consistently; in the interests of his peace of mind he had always assured his workers that they need not trouble him with details after a job had been done.

Crowley, mystified, had said nothing about the amazing love affair. It occurred to him that the protestations of Miss Kennard might have been a part of her campaign of subtlety, interrupted by his smashing in; he was more than ever convinced that his was not the kind of mind that could deal with subtlety.

Miss Elsham never mentioned Latisan’s apparent infatuation; she had been sent north in the rôle of a charmer and did not propose to confess to Mern that she had failed utterly to interest the woodsman.

Undoubtedly the reticence of both of them was merciful; to heap this crowning burden upon Chief Mern’s bewilderment in regard to the actions of a trusted employee would have disqualified him mentally for other cases which were coming along.

Crowley loafed diligently at the Vose-Mern offices when he was not out on duty; there was no knowing when he might be able to turn a trick for the good of the concern by being on hand, he told himself, and for one of his bovine nature all waiting around was easy and all stalls were alike.

Therefore, one day he was on hand to rush a quick tip to the chief. Crowley turned his back on a caller who entered the main office; the bulletin bearer hurried into Mern’s presence.

“It’s the big boy from the bush—Latisan!”

“Ugly?”

“I didn’t wait to see.”

“You have told me straight, have you, about his being a bad actor when he’s riled?”

“That’s the real dope on him, Chief. Don’t let him in to see you—that’s my advice.”

Mern took a little time for thought, inspecting his operative narrowly.

“I ain’t intending to butt in, you understand,” apologized Crowley, reddening.

“I think that’s good advice, speaking from the standpoint of prudence.”

“There’s no good in hashing the thing over with him; he’s off the job and I claim the credit and——”

“But from the standpoint of curiosity,” broke in Mern, relentlessly, “I’ll be almighty glad to have a talk with him. I’ll probably get some facts now. Shut up! If you have come back and told me all the truth I wouldn’t be taking a chance with this man. You’re to blame! Remember that another time. Beat it!” He jabbed his thumb in the direction of a door which enabled clients to leave without going back through the main office.

“A man named Latisan,” reported the door boy.

“Tell him to come in.”

Crowley turned the knob of the catch lock and dodged out into the corridor.

Mern stood up to receive the caller.

He was not inspired by politeness. He was putting himself in an attitude of defense and was depending on the brawn of a man who had been a tough proposition when he swung his police club on a New York beat. He even moved a chair which might get underfoot in a rough-and-tumble. But his muscles relaxed when he looked at the man who entered.

Latisan was deprecatory, if his manners were revealing his feelings. He was apologetic in his mien before he spoke; he gave Mern the impression of a man whose spirit was broken and whose estimate of himself had gone far toward condemnation. And Mern read aright! The bitter dregs of days and nights of doleful meditation were in Latisan—the memory of aimless venturings into this or that corner where he could hide away, the latest memory of the stale little room in a cheap New York hotel persisting most vividly in his shamed thoughts because he had penned himself there day after day, trying to make up his mind to do this or that—and, especially at the nadir of what he felt was his utter degradation, had he dwelt on the plan of ending it all, and from time to time had turned on a gas jet and sniffed at the evil fumes, wondering of what sort would be death by that means. To think that he would descend to that depth of cowardice! Nevertheless, he was not especially surprised by this weakness, even while he hated himself for entertaining such a base resolve. One after the other, right and left, the blows in his business affairs had crashed down on him. He understood those attacks, and he was still able to fight on. But the enemy that had ambuscaded him behind the guise of the first honest love of his experience had killed faith and pride and every tender emotion that enables a man to fight the ordinary battles of life.

Therefore, he ventured into the presence of Mern with down-hunched shoulders under the sagging folds of a ready-made coat, bought from the pile in an up-country village.

“Well, what can I do for you, sir?” demanded Mern, relieved of apprehension, seeing his advantage and more coldly curt than usual in his dealings with men whom he could bully.

“I had this address,” faltered Latisan; he pulled from his pocket a sheet of paper which had been crumpled into a mass and then folded back into its original creases. “I was thinking—I’ve been sort of planning—I thought I’d come around and ask you——” It was one of the things, this errand, for which he had been trying to summon resolution while he sat in the stuffy room, glancing up at the gas jet.

Mern jerked away the paper, noting that its letterhead was his own. It was his epistle to one “Miss Patsy Jones, Adonia,” demanding from her information as to just what she was doing as an operative for the Vose-Mern agency.

“It’s about Miss Jones. I thought I’d step in——”

“Well?” demanded Mern when Latisan paused.

“That’s her real name, is it? I know how detectives——”

“It’s her real name,” stated Mern, of a mind to protect her until he was convinced that she did not deserve protection by him.

“She works for you?”

“She does.”

“Could I see her for a few minutes—for a few words——”

“I don’t think so,” hedged the chief. “Just why do you want to see Miss Jones?”

“I’ve been thinking matters over. I did a terrible thing when I was sort of out of my mind. She had something to say to me and I didn’t wait to hear it. Perhaps I have made a mistake. Now I’d like to talk with her and find out about something.”

“Just what?” probed Mern.

“I can’t say right now. It’s between us two, Miss Jones and myself—at least I thought it was. I’m going to have a talk with her before I tell anything to anybody else.” He declared that stubbornly.

“How do I know what your scheme is? You’re probably holding a grudge against one of my operatives. I can’t turn her over to you to be harmed.”

Latisan straightened. “I shall not harm her by a word or a touch.”

“I suppose you hold a grudge against this agency, don’t you?”

“The Comas company—Craig, rather—hired you to do a thing, and it has been done. Craig is the one with a grudge; it’s against me. I trigged him. I reckon he has a right to get even, as he looks at it, if his money can buy what you have to sell.”

“We don’t like to do some of the things that are put up to us, Latisan. But I may as well be out and open with you. Craig paid us a lot of money when we broke the strike for him. We have to consider business. That’s why we went ahead and got you, as we did. If you had been able to turn around and get us, I would not have held any hard feelings. It’s all in the game.” There was no especial sympathy in Mern’s tone; he was treating a victim with a patronizing air.

“I’m afraid I’m not up to tricks enough to play that game,” retorted Latisan. “We’ll have to let it stand as it is. I’m sort of trying to clear up my mind about the whole matter, so as to put it behind me. I don’t want to feel that there’s any mistake about Miss Jones. That’s why I’d like to see her once more.”

He was showing nervous anxiety.

It came to Mern that here was offered an opportunity to go even farther with Latisan than the contract had demanded. Now that the man had been pulled off the drive, a little shrewd maneuvering would hold him in New York, away from the Flagg interests, until the Comas folks could have their way. No doubt Craig would consider that the extra service was an acceptable bonus, over and above what the agency had done.

“I’ll tell you.” Mern was affable. “Miss Jones is away on another case. She is likely to report ’most any time. The best way for you is to drop in each day, say around three o’clock in the afternoon. I think she will be glad to explain anything you’re now puzzled about. You still think, do you, you’d better not tell me?” The chief’s curiosity, his desire to dig into the doings of his operatives, urged him to solicit Latisan again. “My advice——”

“I don’t want it. I don’t take any stock in a man who does the kind of work you’re up to,” declared Latisan, bluntly. “I don’t take much stock in anybody, any more. I may be a fool for wanting to see that young lady again—but I’ll call in to-morrow.”

“About three!” Mern reminded him, having an object in setting that hour.

Latisan nodded and went away.

The chief called the Comas corporation offices and got Director Craig on the telephone. When Mern announced his identity, Craig evidently supposed that it was a matter of a dun and broke in, chuckling: “I’ll bring the check in to-morrow. I’d have done so, anyway, for I plan to start north right away. What’s the matter, Mern? Grabbing for the coin because you are afraid the job isn’t going to stay put?”

“That isn’t the idea at all. I simply want to show you something which will prove that the money has been well earned. I’ll show you Latisan.”

“I don’t care to meet that gentleman right now. Oh no!”

“I’ll plant you where you won’t be seen. You can view Exhibit A. I think I’ll be able to promise that Latisan is going to stay here in New York. That ought to make you feel safer when you go back north into the jungle. No tiger behind a tree!”

“Say, I’ll hand you that check like daddy giving a stick of candy to the baby!” said Craig with hearty emphasis. “I’ll own up that I have been killing time here in the city, waiting to get a line on Latisan—where he is. I have found that he’s a lunatic when he’s ugly—and there’s no telling how far a grudge will drive a man in the big woods. So he’s here in town?”

“Yes, and I’m rigging hopples to keep him here, I tell you. Come in at two forty-five. See the tame tiger!”

Then Mern called in Crowley, who was very ill at ease, but was obstinately and manifestly at bay. “Let’s see. Didn’t I understand you to say, Buck, that Miss Kennard had gone chasing Latisan?”

“That’s the way I figured it.”

“You’re wrong. He’s chasing her. That’s why he came in here.”

The chief had snarled, “You’re wrong,” in a peculiarly offensive tone. Mr. Crowley, after his proclaimed success in the Latisan case, had come up a number of notches in self-esteem and was inclined to dispute an allegation that he was wrong in that matter or in anything else. He was provoked into disclosures by sudden resentment. “She stood out there in the public street and said she was in love with him and would marry him after the drive was down, and she grabbed up his cap and coat when he ran away, and if it ain’t natural to suppose that she was going to chase him up and hand ’em over, then what?”

“Look here, Crowley, what kind of a yarn is this?”

“It’s true.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“It didn’t have anything to do with the case, as I was working it. It was a side issue!” Crowley raised his voice, insisting on his own prowess. “The idea was to get him off the job—and I did it. I claim——”

“You infernal, damnation lunkhead, get out of my office till I calm down,” raged the chief.

He yelped at Crowley when the operative was at the door: “Go hunt up Elsham and bring her here. It looks to me as if Kennard was foxier than the dame I sent, and has turned the trick in her own way.”

“I ain’t afraid of questions,” declared the operative. “They’ll only bring out that I’m right when I claim the credit.”

He hastened to shut the door behind him. Mern acted as if he were looking for a missile.

“But where is she? Why in the blue blazes doesn’t she report in?” muttered the chief, worriment wrinkling his forehead. On the face of things, it seemed that, valuable as Miss Kennard had been as confidential secretary, she was still more valuable as a skillful operative—and Chief Mern was earnestly desirous of having her back on the job.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“She wouldn’t offer to marry him, standing there in public,” stormed Mern. “I know Kennard. She isn’t that sort. I’ll go to the bottom of this thing, even if it means a trip for me to that God-forsaken tank town. I’d give a thousand dollars to see Lida Kennard walk in through that door. I was never so worried about anything in all my life,” he lamented. “Crowley, you deserted the most valuable person I have ever had in my office—and God knows what has happened to her.” He sent them away.

“What does it get anybody to tell the truth?” grumbled Crowley.

“Nothing, when it sounds so ridiculous as the truth in this case,” averred Miss Elsham. “Everybody seems to go crazy up in the tall timbers. Give me the tall buildings for mine after this.”

In high good humor Rufus Craig appeared to Mern that afternoon a little before three o’clock. He sat down, pulled out the slide leaf of Mern’s desk, and produced a check book. “No need my seeing Exhibit A before settling. Tell me the expense account. I’ll include everything in one check.”

With pen poised, waiting until the figures were brought in, the Comas man expressed his satisfaction. “There were three on the job, so I was told in Adonia when I came through. That’s all right, Mern. I expected you to use your own judgment. I didn’t have much time in Adonia—grabbed what information I could while waiting for the train to start—but it’s a sure bet that Latisan is off for good. From what I heard it was your Miss Jones who really put it over—gave Latisan what they call up there the Big Laugh. Now who the blazes is this Miss Jones?”

“An operative of ours,” the chief replied, with repression of enthusiasm decidedly in contrast with Craig’s indorsement of her. Mern did not dare to be other than vague, leaving Lida Kennard’s identity concealed until he could understand something about the inside affairs in his agency. The reflection that he was still in the dark—could not talk out to a client as a detective should—was stirring his sour indignation more and more.

“I’d like to meet her,” urged the director. “She must be a wonder. A great actress, I should judge, from what I was told in Adonia.”

“She’s having her vacation just now.”

“Look here, Mern! I’m going to stick a couple of hundred more onto this check. Send it along to her and tell her to have an extra week or a new dress at my expense. I’ve made a side-line clean-up on the Tomah this season and money is easy with me.” That was as explicit as Craig cared to be in regard to the deal with the Walpole heir. Still poising his pen, the director turned expectant gaze on the door when the knob was turned; a flurried, fat girl whose manner showed that she was new to the place had received Mern’s orders about the figures; now she came bringing them.

Craig frowned while he wrote the check after the girl had retired.

He was a bit pettish when he snapped his check book shut. “Say, Mern, I always like to see that Kennard girl when I come into your office. I like her looks. I like the way she puts out her hand to a man.”

“I’m sorry she isn’t here. But she’s—she’s out—sick.”

“Good gad! I hope it’s nothing serious.” Craig showed real concern.

“Oh no! Just a—a rather severe cold.” The chief was having hard work to conceal his mental state—being obliged to lie that way, like a fool, in order to hide the mystery in his own office!

“Give me her street number. I’ll send up a bunch of flowers.”

“She is out with some friends in the country to get clean air. I don’t know the address.”

Mern perceived that more questions were coming. Craig was frankly revealing his interest in Miss Kennard.

The chief pulled out his watch; he had a good excuse for changing an embarrassing subject. “Latisan is about due. Of course, you don’t want to be seen. I’ll post you in one of the side consulting rooms.”

“It seems rather silly, this spying,” remonstrated Craig. “I’m taking your word about Latisan. I’m getting ready to start north, and have a lot of matters to look after.”

“Humor my notion,” urged the chief. “He has been tamed down and I want you to see him. You’ll understand why I believe I can keep him hanging around here till you have nailed things to the cross up-country.”

Craig showed no alacrity, but he allowed Mern to lead him to a small room that was separated from the main office by a ground-glass partition; there was a peephole at one corner of a panel. The director promised to wait there until the interview with Latisan was over. The chief said he would make it short.

Latisan walked in exactly on the stroke of three; after he came up in the elevator he had waited in the corridor, humbly obedient to Mern’s directions as to the hour.

“Nothing doing in that matter to-day, Latisan,” stated the chief, affecting to be busily engaged with papers on his desk. “Try me to-morrow, same time.”

“Very well, sir,” agreed the young man, somberly. In prospect, another twenty-four hours filled with lagging minutes! He had grown to know the hideous torture of such hours in the case of a man who before-time had found the days too short for his needs.

“By the way,” said Mern, still hanging grimly to the desire to find out more about what the matter was with the office’s internal affairs, “did anybody tell you that Miss Jones had returned to New York?”

“I wired to Brophy a few days ago. He said she had come back here, according to what he knew of her movements.”

“You fell in love with her, didn’t you?” The chief’s tone was crisp with the vigor of third-degree abruptness.

“Yes,” admitted Latisan, showing no resentment; he had promulgated that fact widely enough in the north.

“Just why did she urge you so strongly to go back to the drive?” The young man’s meekness had drawn the overeager chief along to an incautious question.

“You ought to know better than I, sir. I take it that she was obeying your orders about how to work the trick on me, though it isn’t clear in my mind as yet; but I’m not a detective.”

“Did she promise to marry you as soon as the Flagg drive was down?” Still Mern was boldly taking advantage of the young man’s docility.

“That’s true. I must admit it because it was said in public.”

Mern scratched his ear. The thing was clearing somewhat in Crowley’s direction; the blunderer had not lied on one point at least—the point that Mern found most blindly puzzling. What in the mischief had happened to the nature of Lida Kennard, as Mern knew that nature, so he thought!

“You remember Operative Crowley, do you?”

“Naturally.”

“Are you holding an especial grudge against him?”

“I don’t know why I should, sir. It’s a dirty business he’s in, but he gave me that letter which I turned over to you yesterday, and for some reason he exposed the trick that was being put upon me by the girl. If I can get at the bottom of the thing, for my own peace of mind, I’ll be glad.”

Chief Mern sympathized with that sentiment!

Then he took a little time for reflection. Perhaps a meeting between Latisan and Crowley might strike a few sparks to illuminate a situation that was very much in the dark.

“If Crowley is around the office I’m going to ask him to step in here. The talk will be all friendly, I take it?”

“I have nothing against Crowley, as matters stand.”

Latisan did not greet Crowley when the operative replied to the summons and walked into the private office; on the other hand, Latisan showed no animosity. He merely surveyed Crowley with an expression of mingled pity and wonderment, as if he were sorry for an able-bodied man who earned a living by the means which the operative employed.

Crowley, at first, was not as serene as the man whom he had injured.

“Latisan tells me that he holds no grudge,” stated Mern, encouragingly.

“I’m glad of that, Latisan. We have to play the game in this business. And I’m not laying it up against you, how you made a monkey of me in that dining room and nigh twisted my head off. Both of us know now who it was that rubbed our ears and sicked us at each other.”

The victim of the operations nodded, no especial emotion visible in his countenance.

“Right here between us three I’ll come out all frank and free,” continued Crowley. “I’m making a claim to the chief in this thing, Latisan, and I believe you’ll back me up. She jumped in on me and Elsham—one day later from the agency than we were—and she wouldn’t talk to me, and I’ll admit I didn’t have her play sized from the start. But she wasn’t the one that turned the trick.” Mr. Crowley was venturing rather far with the victim, but he was encouraged by Latisan’s continued mildness and by a firm determination to set himself right with Mern, who had been doubting his efficiency.

“As I have been looking at it, she was the one who did it,” insisted the young man.

“Now see here! Wake up!” Crowley was blustering as he grew bolder. “You were letting the girl wind you around her finger. What woke you up? What made you sore on the whole proposition up there? It was my tip to you! You can’t deny it.”

“Yes, it might have been your tip,” admitted Latisan, knotting his brows, staring at the floor, confused in his memories and puzzling over the mystery. “I had promised to bring down the logs because she asked me to keep on and do it.”

“There you have it!” indorsed Crowley, swinging his arm and flattening his thick palm in front of the chief. “I claim the credit.”

Crowley had become defiantly intrepid, facing that manner of man who was so manifestly cowed and muddled. The operative was back in his encouraging environment of the city; he remembered the thrust of those prongs of fingers on his head when he was obliged to dissemble and was shamed in the north country. He was holding his grudge. And he was assiduously backing up the claims he had made to his chief. “The girl you’re talking about had nothing to do with pulling you off the job. She was double-crossing our agency.”

“Think so?” queried Latisan.

“I know it. But I don’t know what fool notion got into her up there. I have told Mr. Mern all about it. I’m the boy who woke you up!”

“Do you agree, Latisan?” asked Mern, brusquely.

“I’m not thinking clearly, sir. But if this man is right, I ought to apologize to her.”

“She is no longer employed by us, but we’ll try to locate her.” Mern was willing to come out in front of Crowley with that information; the situation did seem to have cleared up! “Hang around town. Come in again.”

Latisan dragged himself up from his chair.

Then Crowley of the single-track mind—bull-headed blunderer—went on to his undoing. “I’m sorry it has come about that you’ve got to fire her, Chief. I know what a lot she was worth to you here, as long as she kept to her own job.”

“We’ll let it rest,” said Mern, warningly. He remembered that he had not posted Crowley on the fact that the sobriquet “Miss Patsy Jones” still hid the identity of the girl where Latisan was concerned.

“All right! That suits me, Chief, so long as I get the credit. I’ll shut up, saying only that I’m sorry for Miss Lida Kennard.”

Latisan had been moving slowly toward the door, aware that the conversation between the two pertained to their own affairs and that he was excluded.

He halted and swung around when he heard the name of Lida Kennard. The torpor of idleness and woeful ponderings had numbed his wits. The name of Lida seemed to have been dragged into the affair by Crowley. Ward did not understand how she could be involved in the matter. He put that thought into a question which he stammered.

Mern, knowing nothing about his secretary’s lineage, resenting her secrecy and methods which he had not been able to penetrate, was not in a mood to shield her any longer. “It’s the same girl, Latisan. She called herself Jones up your way. Her right name is Lida Kennard.”

Latisan blinked like one who had emerged from darkness into blazing light. He swayed slowly, breasting that deluge of the truth which suddenly swept through him.

He walked to the window, turning his back on them, and gazed squarely into the quivering sun that was westering between lofty buildings. His eyes were enduring the unveiled sun with more fortitude than his soul endured the truth which had just been unveiled.

This—this was the heart of the mystery!

He was not meditating while he stood there; he was beholding!

He saw in the white light the spirit of her sacrifice—a sacrifice which embraced even her submission to him; in his desolate denial of any worthy attributes in himself he was not admitting that she loved him. He realized what she had sought to achieve in the north country, why she could not declare herself. And he had allowed a trick to make a fool of him, make him a traitor to her, send him off, sneaking in byways, idling in dark corners, in the time of her most desperate need!

Right then there was in him the awful conviction that he could not go and face her, wherever she was, so utterly a renegade had he shown himself.

He was taking all the blame on himself. He had run away from a laugh—a fool obsessed by a silly notion of the north country—in this new light it seemed silly. He had not waited like a man to hear the truth from her! He had betrayed all the cause; he could not go back to the drive.

He had listened to a lying sneak from a detective agency and had rebuffed, insulted, abused horribly Lida Kennard! Lida Kennard! The name seemed to be hammering at his eardrums. The granddaughter of Echford Flagg! A lone girl trying to save a cause! In her anguished desperation she had been willing to give herself in the way of sacrifice even to such a recreant as Ward Latisan must have appeared in his boyish and selfish resentment! Oh, the sun was cool in comparison with the fires which raged in him.

The fatuous Crowley moved toward the window. “Well, what say, old boy?”

When the young man turned slowly the operative stuck out his hand. “I’m agreeing with you—no grudges! Let’s shake!”

“Yes, you did it,” said Latisan. He did not raise his voice. He was talking as much to himself as to Crowley. “A tip to me, you called it.”

“We have to do those things to get quick results,” Crowley agreed, patronizingly. “Give us your hand, boy!”

Crowley got what he asked for. He was not prepared for the amazing suddenness of the open-handed blow that fell on the side of his head and sent him staggering into a corner.

Mern grabbed up the telephone. Latisan leaped and tore the instrument from the chief’s grasp, ripped it loose from its fastenings, and hurled it through the ground-glass door.

Mern was a big man; he had been invincible as a police officer. But when he leaped and struck at Latisan, the latter countered with his toil-hardened fist and knocked Mern down. Crowley had also served with the police. But he was no match for the berserker rage which had transformed the man from the woods. Latisan whirled again to Crowley, beat him to his knees, set his foot against the antagonist’s breast and drove him violently backward, and he fell across Mern.

But Latisan was not through. Men who had viewed John Latisan in the old days when he came roaring down to town, had they been present in the Vose-Mern offices that day, would have recognized in the grandson the Latisan temperament operating in its old form and would not have been surprised. The avenger picked up Mern’s desk chair. He swung it about him, smashing everything in the room which could be smashed. He flung away the fragments of the chair and rushed into the outer office.

The fat girl was calling for central, for police.

“Hand it over!” he commanded. “And you’d all better step outside,” he suggested, after he had torn loose the wires. “I’m using the office right now.”

He picked up the chair from which she fled. It was heavy and he used it to smash other furniture. Then he began to beat out the glass which shut off the other private rooms which adjoined the main office. In that process he brought the terrified Craig into view. He dropped the chair, reached in, and dragged Craig over the sill of the compartment. “This has been coming to you on the Noda waters! I’m glad you’re here now to get it!” He held the Three C’s director helpless in utter dismay, at the full length of a left arm, and pummeled him senseless with a right fist. Then he dragged him to the door of the chief’s office and flung him across the two men who were stirring.

“It’s a fifty-fifty wreck—this office and me—pretty nigh total!”

He walked out. Youth, strength, and an incentive which did not animate the others, had enabled him to prevail.

Mern and Crowley struggled weakly from under the man who was pinning them down.

“I’ll get word to the cops,” stuttered Crowley, holding his hand to his battered and bleeding lips.

“Wait till Craig comes to!” protested Mern. “He may want us to hush the thing. He has been hollering for soft pedal all the time. He seems bad! Get a doctor!”

The physician who came confirmed Mern’s opinion as to the condition of the field director; Craig himself was querulously emphatic on the point when he had been brought to consciousness. But he insisted on postponing consideration of the proper action to take in Latisan’s case until he had time to forget his aches and compose his thoughts.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

He was roused from his ponderings by the crunching of feet on broken glass, and looked up and beheld Latisan. Halted just inside the door of the main office was a policeman in uniform. And the officer, well known by Mern, caught the chief’s eye and winked.

Mern jumped to his feet; he was much astonished and glanced to see whether Latisan’s fists were doubled.

“Good morning, sir!” said the caller, politely. “I have come around early to let you know that I’m not the kind of a man who does a thing and runs away from the responsibility of it.”

With prolonged scrutiny—stares which crossed like fencing blades—the two principals mutely questioned each other. Latisan displayed the most composure. He had not the same reason as had Mern to be surprised; it was immediately made plain that Latisan had devoted some thought to preparations for the interview. He stepped closer. Even though his smile seemed to be meant as an assurance of amity, Mern flinched; he remembered that the woodsman had begun the battle the day before after a remark in a most placid tone.

Latisan tipped his head to indicate the waiting policeman. “I brought him along. I asked him to come up from the street. He doesn’t know what for.”

“Nor I, either!” blurted Mern.

“I thought you might want me arrested on sight, and I remember what I did to your telephones, and I figured I’d save you the trouble of sending out.”

There was no mistaking the drive master’s new mood. He was polite; he was contrite. The picturesque touch furnished by supplying a policeman suggested the Vose-Mern “anticipatory system” and appealed to the chief’s grim sense of humor. Also, Mern was moved by that consciousness which warms real men, when it’s a mutual acknowledgment, “He’s a good sport.”

Mern waved his hand to the policeman, putting into that gesture a meaning which the officer understood; the officer started for the outer door.

“Just a second!” called Latisan. He pulled out a roll of money and gave the policeman a bill. “You can use that to pay your fare down in the elevator.”

Latisan held the roll in sight until he and Mern were alone. “While the cash is out, I may as well inquire what the bill is.”

“For what?”

“For this.” The woodsman swung the hand which held the money, making a wide sweep to take in all the wreck.

“No bill, Latisan! You can’t pay a cent. I think we’ll call it natural wear and tear in the course of business.”

The chief was sitting in the chair which had escaped damage. He insisted on the caller taking that chair; Mern sat on a carpenter’s sawhorse.

“Perhaps I had you going yesterday, Chief Mern, but to-day it’s you who have got me going!” admitted Latisan, frankly mystified by this forbearance.

“I’m only backing up the talk I have always made about giving the other fellow his innings if he wants to take ’em and has the grit to put it over. Look here, Latisan, two men are never really well acquainted till they’ve had a good run-in with their fists. You and I have been standing each other off on facts. Let’s get down to cases. How did it happen that you fell for Lida Kennard so suddenly?”

Ward flushed. It was a sacred subject, but he resolved to be frank with Mern, searching for the truth. “It was not sudden. I met her here in the city by accident months ago—and I must have fallen in love with her then. I’ve been admitting that I did, though I did not know her real name till yesterday. And I did not know she was a detective, set on my trail. And even now——”

“You don’t believe it, eh? Let me say it to you, Latisan—and get me right! You’re a square chap and I can afford to be square, now that the job is done and paid for. The girl never was an operative. She was my confidential secretary, and the best one I ever had. Working hard here to pay up the debts she had incurred on account of her mother. As clean as a whistle, Latisan! She never told me she was going north. That letter you brought is one I wrote after Crowley reported that she was there—and I wanted to know why she was there.”

“I can tell you why. She is Echford Flagg’s granddaughter.”

Mern leaped up and kicked the carpenter’s bench away from him. Latisan rose, too, as if prepared to resent any detracting speech.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” snapped Mern. “I’m not saying a word against her for what she was doing up there. I trained her myself in what she called the ethics of this business, and she had been practicing what I have preached. It’s all right, Latisan.”

“The thing cleared itself up pretty quickly for me yesterday when I found out her name. But now that I know who she is I’m in hell. I ran away! I have left that drive——”

“Aw, to blazes with your drive!” yelped Mern, with scorn. “Only logs! But what I want to know is this, does the girl love you?”

“She told me so, but how can she have any affection for such a man as I have shown myself to be? I think she was sacrificing herself because she believed I was the one who could bring down the Flagg drive.”

Mern surveyed him cynically. “Say, Latisan, I hope you’re not the kind who would bite a gold coin stolen from a dead man’s eye. You woods fellows have too much time for joint debates with your own selves. Go find that girl and square yourself. I want her to have what she wants, if she is in love with you. That’s the kind of a friend I am to her. I can’t tell you where she is. I haven’t heard from her since she walked out of this office. But let me say something to you! My kind of work has wised me up to what folks are likely to do! I’ll bet a thousand dollars the girl hasn’t run very far away from the north country, even if you did think it was too hot to hold you.”

Latisan shook his head slowly. Confidence was still chilled in him; the memory of what had happened was a forbidding barrier; in her case, at the thought of thrusting himself back into her presence, he was as timid to an extreme as he had been fearless in his dealings with men in the Vose-Mern offices.

While he was wrestling with his thoughts, delivery men were wrestling with furniture, bringing it in through the door from the corridor, blocking the passage.

Mern snapped his attention from Latisan, then he pushed the latter out of the range of vision from the corridor door.

Craig was out in the corridor, cursing the furniture and the men who were obstructing the doorway. Craig was in a hurry and in a state of mind; his language revealed his feelings.

“It won’t do—it won’t do!” insisted Mern when Latisan protested at being shoved behind the partition. “He mustn’t see you. Hear him rave! I’m not staging another fight to-day. Stay in there! Crouch down! Keep out of sight.”

When Craig won his way past the blocking furniture he stormed to Mern, stamping across the glass-strewn floor, shaking his fists and jabbering.

He was in a horrible state of rage. His face was so apoplectically purple that the bruises on his patched-up countenance were subdued somewhat by lack of contrast.

“Look at me! Called down to the home office just now, looking like this. Lying like blazes about an automobile accident! That’s what your invitation to view the tame tiger has done for me. But that isn’t what I’m here for, you damnation, four-flushing double-crosser.” He continued to berate the chief.

“Say, you hold on there!” barked Mern, managing a few oaths of his own after struggling out of the amazement stirred by this ferocious attack. “If you’re here to do business or to complain about the business that has been done, you’ll have to be decent, or I’ll run you out.” Mern jutted his jaw and took two steps in Craig’s direction—and Craig had suffered violence too recently to persist in inviting more.

But he was still as acrimonious as he dared to be. Behind his rage there was the bitterness of a man who had been tricked out of money—betrayed shamefully—but Craig was so precipitate, breathless, violent, so provokingly vague with his tumbling words and his broken sentences, that Mern ceased to be angry in return and was merely bewildered.

The Comas field director shook under Mern’s nose a sheet of paper. He kept referring to the writing on the paper and vouchsafed information that the writing was made up of notes of a long-distance conversation between the woods and the New York offices of the Comas company.

After a time Mern suggested with acerbity that Craig was incoherent.

“I don’t doubt it. I feel that way,” yelped Craig. “But this message has come over three or four hundred miles of wire—relayed, at that, and I think the man who started the word from a fire-outpost station wasn’t entirely right in his head. There’s no other way of accounting for the statement that Ward Latisan’s cap and Eck Flagg’s cant dog are bossing the Flagg drive.”

“Don’t get wrought up by crazy guff!”

“But here are some statements that I am wrought up over,” declared the director, brandishing the paper. “I’ve got to believe ’em. They sound straight. Three of our new hold dams in streams that feed the Noda have been blown. The water has been used to sweep the Flagg logs in ahead of ours. The lip of the Tougas Lake has been blown, too, and if we lose that water it’s apt to leave us high and dry; our Tougas operation is a long way in from the main river. They’ve shot blue blazes out of Carron Gorge and have taken the water along with ’em. Merry hell is to pay all up and down that river, Mern.”

The agency chief did not relish Craig’s bellicose manner, nor the glare in his one eye that showed, nor the imputation of vindictive rebuke in his rasping tones.

“Craig, I never saw a log in a river. I know nothing about your drives. Why are you pitching into me?”

“Why? Why? Because this message says that the girl you sent north—the girl who was paid by our money—this report says that she has gone up there and has put the very devil into Flagg’s men; is making ’em do things that the worst pirates on the river never dared to do before. What kind of a she wildcat did you hand me, anyway? Mern, a thousand tons of liquid fire poured into the valley of the Noda couldn’t hurt us like that girl is hurting us. Who is she? What is she? Get your word to her! Call her off!”

That was no time for equivocation. Craig’s frenzy demanded candor and threatened reprisal if the truth were not forthcoming. Mern told part of the truth.

“She has called her own self off, Craig, so far as this agency is concerned. I have no further control over her actions.”

Chief Mern was not conscious of any especial surprise after Craig had reported that section of his news which could be understood. The granddaughter of Flagg could not be expected to do other than she was doing. In his honest regard for the helper who had served him so long and efficiently, the chief was wondering whether he ought to reveal her identity to the Comas man, trying to estimate the danger of such a revelation. Craig was not stating that his news hinted who she was.

As to the details of the drive, he was more explicit. He raged on while Mern pondered. “The Flagg drive is a week ahead of time. It must be near Skulltree dam. I ought to have been up there and I don’t understand why the infernal fools have been so slow in getting word to me.”

He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Look here, Mern, I never ought to do another stroke of business with you, but I’m in too much of a hurry to go anywhere else.”

The business instincts of the head of the agency were stirred; the Comas money had been good picking in the past. “I don’t think I should be held responsible for an operative who has severed connections. Craig, you have probably made your own mistakes in depending on helpers.”

“Don’t you make any mistake this time, Mern! I want a dozen or fifteen men—gunmen. Can you furnish ’em?”

“Sure thing! Within an hour.”

“I have promised results to my folks this season. I’ve got to deliver. My job depends on it, after all the talk I’ve made at headquarters.”

“Will your headquarters back up my operatives?”

“I’ll do that! I’m playing this game on my own hook. There’ll be no fight. The bluff will be enough, if I have the men. And if I have to—well, there’s a fight between lumberjacks every season on that river, and there’s a big wall of woods between Skulltree dam and New York, Mern! I’ll take my chances up behind that wall. Get the men for me.”

“When are you leaving?”

“One o’clock this afternoon—Grand Central.”

“I’ll deliver the men to you there.”

Craig stamped away across the glass-littered floor and disappeared.

“Well,” averred the chief when Latisan came out from behind the partition, “it looks as if somebody had been attending to your job for you, son! Also looks as if there might be considerable more doing right away!”

“So that’s more of your devilish business, is it, sending gunmen to fight honest workers?” demanded the drive master, with venom.

“Business is still business with me in spite of the looks of this office,” returned Mern, unruffled. “Latisan, you can’t beef about not getting a square deal—and I’ve put you in the way of getting a tip. It looks to me——”

“Just the same as it looks to me!” cried the young man. “We’re fully agreed as to all the looks! Good day!”

He stood very straight and shot Mern through with a stare from hard gray eyes. There was no longer any of the faltering uncertainty that he had displayed. Grim determination radiated from him.

“Good day to you, also!” Mern called after Latisan when he strode toward the door, then adding suggestively. “If any mail happens to come here for you, I’m to forward it along to that Skulltree dam, so I take it!”

The irony did not provoke any retort from the drive master. He went away with a rush, but his demeanor showed that he was not running away from anything or anybody. He was hastening toward something.