she spoke. She suddenly threw them
down on the table. "There 's just one thing I want to know, and know
for certain. I want to know if this is a plant to shoot Blake up?"

The First Deputy smiled. It was not altogether at the mere calmness
with which she could suggest such an atrocity.

"Hardly," he said.

"Then what is it?" she demanded.

He was both patient and painstaking with her. His tone was almost
paternal in its placativeness.

"It's merely a phase of departmental business," he answered her. "And
we 're anxious to see Blake round up Connie Binhart."

"That's not true," she answered with neither heat nor resentment, "or
you would never have started him off on this blind lead. You 'd never
have had me go to him with that King Edward note and had it work out to
fit a street in Montreal. You 've got a wooden decoy up there in
Canada, and when Blake gets there he 'll be told his man slipped away
the day before. Then another decoy will bob up, and Blake will go
after that. And when you 've fooled him two or three times he 'll sail
back to New York and break me for giving him a false tip."

"Did you give it to him?"

"No, he hammered it out of me. But you knew he was going to do that.
That was part of the plant."

She sat studying her thin white hands for several seconds. Then she
looked up at the calm-eyed Copeland.

"How are you going to protect me, if Blake comes back? How are you
going to keep your promise?"

The First Deputy sat back in his chair and crossed his thin legs.

"Blake will not come back," he announced. She slewed suddenly round on
him again.

"Then it _is_ a plant!" she proclaimed.

"You misunderstand me, Miss Verriner. Blake will not come back as an
official. There will be changes in the Department, I imagine; changes
for the better which even he and his Tammany Hall friends can't stop,
by the time he gets back with Binhart."

The woman gave a little hand gesture of impatience.

"But don't you see," she protested, "supposing he gives up Binhart?
Supposing he suspects something and hurries back to hold down his
place?"

"They call him Never-Fail Blake," commented the unmoved and dry-lipped
official. He met her wide stare with his gently satiric smile.

"I see," she finally said, "you 're not going to shoot him up. You 're
merely going to wipe him out."

"You are quite wrong there," began the man across the table from her.
"Administration changes may happen, a