of Blake's tendencies, and he was assigned to those cases
where a "leak" would prove least embarrassing to the Department. He
saw this and resented it. But in the meantime he had been keeping his
eyes open and storing up in his cabinet of silence every unsavory rumor
and fact that might prove of use in the future. He found himself, in
due time, the master of an arsenal of political secrets. And when it
came to a display of power he could merit the attention if not the
respect of a startlingly wide circle of city officials. When a New
York municipal election brought a party turn over, he chose the moment
as the psychological one for a display of his power, cruising up and
down the coasts of officialdom with his grim facts in tow, for all the
world like a flagship followed by its fleet.

It was deemed expedient for the New York authorities to "take care" of
him. A berth was made for him in the Central Office, and after a year
of laborious manipulation he found himself Third Deputy Commissioner
and a power in the land.

If he became a figure of note, and fattened on power, he found it no
longer possible to keep as free as he wished from entangling alliances.
He had by this time learned to give and take, to choose the lesser of
two evils, to pay the ordained price for his triumphs. Occasionally
the forces of evil had to be bribed with a promise of protection. For
the surrender of dangerous plates, for example, a counterfeiter might
receive immunity, or for the turning of State's evidence a guilty man
might have to go scott free. At other times, to squeeze confession out
of a crook, a cruelty as refined as that of the Inquisition had to be
adopted. In one stubborn case the end had been achieved by depriving
the victim of sleep, this Chinese torture being kept up until the
needed nervous collapse. At another time the midnight cell of a
suspected murderer had been "set" like a stage, with all the
accessories of his crime, including even the cadaver, and when suddenly
awakened the frenzied man had shrieked out his confession. But, as a
rule, it was by imposing on his prisoner's better instincts, such as
gang-loyalty or pity for a supposedly threatened "rag," that the point
was won. In resources of this nature Blake became quite
conscienceless, salving his soul with the altogether Jesuitic claim
that illegal means were always justified by the legal end.

By the time he had fought his way up to the office of Second