l--with mental reservations. He has no confidence in
either of them. Half his schemes he keeps from them; the other half he
tells them--part of. He's for ever afraid that the Syndicate of which
he's the head will fall to pieces and become another Syndicate of which
he won't be head.

It all makes him an unhappy, restless little beast; but it helped me
to-day. If it'd been any question of safe combinations and tangled
things like that, the game would have been all up for Nancy O. But in
his official safe Tausig keeps only such papers as he wants Braun and
Lowenthal to see. And in his private desk in his private office he
keeps--

I stole past Mason, sleeping with his forehead on the type-writer
keys--he'll be lettered like the obelisk when he wakes up--and crept
into the next room to see just what Tausig keeps in that private desk
of his.

Oh, yes, it was locked. But hadn't I been carrying the key to it every
minute for the last forty-eight hours? There must be a mine of stuff
in that desk of Tausig's, Mag. The touch of every paper in it is slimy
with some dirty trick, some bad secret, some mean action. It's a pity
that I hadn't time to go through 'em all; it would have been
interesting; but under a bundle of women's letters, which that old fox
keeps for no good reason, I'll bet, I lit on a paper that made my heart
go bumping like a cart over cobbles.

Yes, there it was, just as Obermuller had vowed it was, with Tausig's
cramped little signature followed by Heffelfinger's, Dixon's and
Weinstock's; a scheme to crush the business life out of men by the
cleverest, up-to-date Trust deviltry; a thing that our Uncle Sammy just
won't stand for.

And neither will Nancy Olden, Miss Monahan.

She grabbed that precious paper with a gasp of delight and closed the
desk.

But she bungled a bit there, for Mason lifted his head and blinked
dazedly at her for a moment, recognized her and shook his head.

"No--work to-day," he said.

"No--I know. I'll just look over what we've done, Mr. Mason," she
answered cheerfully.

His poor head went down again with a bob, and she caught up the
type-written sheets of Obermuller's play. She waited a minute longer;
half because she wanted to make sure Mason was asleep again before she
tore the sheets across and crammed them down into the waste-basket;
half because she pitied the old fellow and was sorry to take advantage
of his condition. But she knew a cure for this last sor