ad heard aplenty, so he informed himself; he had followed
them all the way from the big house down to the tavern, treading close
behind, depending on their absorption in each other, his shoes in his
hand, not minding the ledges and the mud; and he was in his mental
stocking feet, too, treading on the bedrock of the obvious, as he
figured on the proposition.

He had been told many times, Mr. Crowley had, that he possessed a
single-track mind and was not fitted to deal with the subtleties of
criminal investigation and had not the expansive wit to comprehend the
roundabout ways of steering victims to their doom. But Mr. Crowley was
indubitably fitted by training to write a handbook on the art of
double-crossing--and he reckoned he knew an out-and-out job of that sort
after what he had heard that evening. For his own peace of mind, and to
save himself from going crazy by reason of any more puzzlement over Miss
Kennard's alleged mysterious methods in her work, he kept insisting to
himself that she was merely double-crossing the Vose-Mern agency in the
good old-fashioned way. Not his the task to wonder why!

He rushed up to his room and started in on his report. It had stuck
in Crowley's crop--seemed humiliating--to be made a subaltern in the
case of women operatives. He believed that at last he was in right
and proper on the grand opportunity of his career; he would come down
from the bush with the bacon; Elsham had fallen down and Kennard was
double-crossing--and Crowley, good old reliable Crowley, would show
Chief Mern where the credit should go! He set his little, cheap
typewriter on his sturdy knees and pecked away stolidly with his
forefingers.

Latisan remained outdoors a long time, for the night matched the gloom
of his thoughts. And once more, in spite of himself, his dark ponderings
concerned themselves with suspicions as to what and who this girl really
was.

In his early deference to her he had been ready and willing to believe
all she said about herself, and his suspicion had seemed to be
extinguished; he realized that it merely had been smoldering. Why would
not a waitress marry him, one of the Latisans of the Tomah? Was he what
old Flagg had so inelegantly stated--a sapgag where a girl was
concerned? He began to distrust his strength as a man; he had wasted a
day in New York; he was ready to give up his man's job on the Noda
because he could not get his thoughts away from her and on his work. His
last stay