riends as well as his
enemies. Life, with him, was a concerto of skepticisms.

She was able to watch him, without emotion, as he again bent forward,
took up the 'phone receiver, and this time spoke apparently to another
office.

"I want you to wire Teal to get a man out to cover 381 King Edward
Avenue, in Montreal. Yes, Montreal. Tell him to get a man out there
inside of an hour, and put a night watch on until I relieve 'em."

Then, breathing heavily, he bent over his desk, wrote a short message
on a form pad and pushed the buzzer-button with his thick finger. He
carefully folded up the piece of paper as he waited.

"Get that off to Carpenter in Montreal right away," he said to the
attendant who answered his call. Then he swung about in his chair,
with a throaty grunt of content. He sat for a moment, staring at the
woman with unseeing eyes. Then he stood up. With his hands thrust
deep in his pockets he slowly moved his head back and forth, as though
assenting to some unuttered question.

"Elsie, you 're all right," he acknowledged with his solemn and
unimaginative impassivity. "You 're all right."

Her quiet gaze, with all its reservations, was a tacit question. He
was still a little puzzled by her surrender. He knew she did not
regard him as the great man that he was, that his public career had
made of him.

"You've helped me out of a hole," he acknowledged as he faced her
interrogating eyes with his one-sided smile. "I 'm mighty glad you 've
done it, Elsie--for your sake as well as mine."

"What hole?" asked the woman, wearily drawing on her gloves. There was
neither open contempt nor indifference on her face. Yet something in
her bearing nettled him. The quietness of her question contrasted
strangely with the gruffness of the Second Deputy's voice as he
answered her.

"Oh, they think I 'm a has-been round here," he snorted. "They 've got
the idea I 'm out o' date. And I 'm going to show 'em a thing or two
to wake 'em up."

"How?" asked the woman.

"By doing what their whole kid-glove gang have n't been able to do," he
avowed. And having delivered himself of that ultimatum, he promptly
relaxed into his old-time impassiveness, like a dog snapping from his
kennel and shrinking back into its shadows. At the same moment that
Blake's thick forefinger again prodded the buzzer-button at his desk
end the watching woman could see the relapse into official wariness.
It was as though he had put