nd held ironic views of human nature; he had invented an anticipatory
system, so he called it, by which he "hothoused" criminal proclivities
in a person in order to show the person's latent possibilities up to an
employer before damage had been wrought to the employer's business or
funds. That is to say--and this for the proper understanding of Mr.
Mern's code in his operations as he moved in the special matters of
which this tale treats--his agency deliberately set women of the type
well hit off by the name "vamps"; "sicked" those women onto bank clerks
and others who could get a hand into a till, and if the women were able
to cajole the victim to the point of stealing or of grabbing in order to
make a get-away to foreign parts with the temptress, the trick was
considered legitimate work of the "anticipatory" sort. The operative
would order the treasure _cached_, would appoint the day and hour for
the get-away--and a plain-clothes man would be waiting at the _cache_!
The Vose-Mern system thus nabbed the culprit, who had revealed his lack
of moral fiber by reason of the hothouse forcing of the situation; Mern
insisted that if the germ were there it should be forced. By his plan
the loot was pulled back and returned to the owner.

Mern had broken the big paper-mill strike for the Comas Consolidated;
he calmly assured his clients that he could furnish a thousand men as
well as one. When he did a thing it was expensive--for he had bands of
picked men always on call, and the men must be paid during their loafing
intervals, waiting for other strikes.

Craig had been close to Mern during the strike. Mern stated that the
ethics of the law allowed a lawyer to defend and extricate, if he could,
a criminal whom he knew was hideously guilty; the lawyer's smartness was
applauded if he won by law against justice. Mern excused on the same
lines his willingness to accept any sort of a commission. It was a
heartless attitude--Mern admitted that it was and said that he didn't
pose as a demon. He seemed to get a lot of comfort out of declaring that
if the fellow he was chasing had the grit and smartness to turn around
and do Mern up, Mern would heartily give the fellow three cheers. Thus
did Mern put his remarkable business on the plane of a man-to-man fight
by his argument, not admitting that there was any baseness in his plots
and his persecution.

Miss Lida Kennard, as confidential stenographer, was deep into the
methods of Mern. It