<h2 id="c4">IV</h2>
<p>The unpretentious, brownstone-fronted
home of Deputy Copeland was visited,
late that night, by a woman. She was dressed
in black, and heavily veiled. She walked with
the stoop of a sorrowful and middle-aged
widow.</p>
<p>She came in a taxicab, which she dismissed
at the corner. From the house steps she looked
first eastward and then westward, as though to
make sure she was not being followed. Then
she rang the bell.</p>
<p>She gave no name; yet she was at once admitted.
Her visit, in fact, seemed to be expected,
for without hesitation she was ushered
upstairs and into the library of the First Deputy.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_69">[69]</div>
<p>He was waiting for her in a room more intimate,
more personal, more companionably
crowded than his office, for the simple reason
that it was not a room of his own fashioning.
He stood in the midst of its warm hangings,
in fact, as cold and neutral as the marble Diana
behind him. He did not even show, as he
closed the door and motioned his visitor into a
chair, that he had been waiting for her.</p>
<p>The woman, still standing, looked carefully
about the room, from side to side, saw that they
were alone, made note of the two closed doors,
and then with a sigh lifted her black gloved
hands and began to remove the widow’s cap
from her head. She sighed again as she tossed
the black crepe on the dark-wooded table beside
her. As she sank into the chair the light
from the electrolier fell on her shoulders and on
the carefully coiled and banded hair, so laboriously
built up into a crown that glinted nut-brown
above the pale face she turned to the
man watching her.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_70">[70]</div>
<p>“Well?” she said. And from under her
level brows she stared at Copeland, serene in
her consciousness of power. It was plain that
she neither liked him nor disliked him. It was
equally plain that he, too, had his ends remote
from her and her being.</p>
<p>“You saw Blake again?” he half asked, half
challenged.</p>
<p>“No,” she answered.</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“I was afraid to.”</p>
<p>“Didn’t I tell you we’d take care of your
end?”</p>
<p>“I’ve had promises like that before. They
weren’t always remembered.”</p>
<p>“But our office never made you that promise
before, Miss Verriner.”</p>
<p>The woman let her eyes rest on his impassive
face.</p>
<p>“That’s true, I admit. But I must also admit
I know Jim Blake. We’d better not
come together again, Blake and me, after this
week.”</p>
<p>She was pulling off her gloves as 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?”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_71">[71]</div>
<p>The First Deputy smiled. It was not altogether
at the mere calmness with which she
could suggest such an atrocity.</p>
<p>“Hardly,” he said.</p>
<p>“Then what is it?” she demanded.</p>
<p>He was both patient and painstaking with
her. His tone was almost paternal in its placativeness.</p>
<p>“It’s merely a phase of departmental business,”
he answered her. “And we’re anxious
to see Blake round up Connie Binhart.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_72">[72]</div>
<p>“Did you give it to him?”</p>
<p>“No, he hammered it out of me. But you
knew he was going to do that. That was part
of the plant.”</p>
<p>She sat studying her thin white hands for
several seconds. Then she looked up at the
calm-eyed Copeland.</p>
<p>“How are you going to protect me, if Blake
comes back? How are you going to keep your
promise?”</p>
<p>The First Deputy sat back in his chair and
crossed his thin legs.</p>
<p>“Blake will not come back,” he announced.
She slewed suddenly round on him again.</p>
<p>“Then it <i>is</i> a plant!” she proclaimed.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>The woman gave a little hand gesture of impatience.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_73">[73]</div>
<p>“But don’t you see,” she protested, “supposing
he gives up Binhart? Supposing he suspects
something and hurries back to hold down
his place?”</p>
<p>“They call him Never-Fail Blake,” commented
the unmoved and dry-lipped official.
He met her wide stare with his gently satiric
smile.</p>
<p>“I see,” she finally said, “you’re not going
to shoot him up. You’re merely going to
wipe him out.”</p>
<p>“You are quite wrong there,” began the man
across the table from her. “Administration
changes may happen, and in—”</p>
<p>“In other words, you’re getting Jim Blake
out of the way, off on this Binhart trail, while
you work him out of the Department.”</p>
<p>“No competent officer is ever worked out of
this Department,” parried the First Deputy.</p>
<p>She sat for a silent and studious moment or
two, without looking at Copeland. Then she
sighed, with mock plaintiveness. Her wistfulness
seemed to leave her doubly dangerous.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_74">[74]</div>
<p>“Mr. Copeland, aren’t you afraid some one
might find it worth while to tip Blake off?” she
softly inquired.</p>
<p>“What would you gain?” was his pointed and
elliptical interrogation.</p>
<p>She leaned forward in the fulcrum of light,
and looked at him soberly.</p>
<p>“What is your idea of me?” she asked.</p>
<p>He looked back at the thick-lashed eyes with
their iris rings of deep gray. There was something
alert and yet unparticipating in their
steady gaze. They held no trace of abashment.
They were no longer veiled. There
was even something disconcerting in their lucid
and level stare.</p>
<p>“I think you are a very intelligent woman,”
Copeland finally confessed.</p>
<p>“I think I am, too,” she retorted. “Although
I haven’t used that intelligence in the
right way. Don’t smile! I’m not going to
turn mawkish. I’m not good. I don’t know
whether I want to be. But I know one thing:
I’ve got to keep busy—I’ve got to be active.
I’ve <i>got</i> to be!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_75">[75]</div>
<p>“And?” prompted the First Deputy, as she
came to a stop.</p>
<p>“We all know, now, exactly where we’re at.
We all know what we want, each one of us.
We know what Blake wants. We know what
you want. And I want something more than
I’m getting, just as you want something more
than writing reports and rounding up push-cart
peddlers. I want my end, as much as you
want yours.”</p>
<p>“And?” again prompted the First Deputy.</p>
<p>“I’ve got to the end of my ropes; and I
want to swing around. It’s no reform bee,
mind! It’s not what other women like me
think it is. But I can’t go on. It doesn’t
lead to anything. It doesn’t pay. I want to
be safe. I’ve <i>got</i> to be safe!”</p>
<p>He looked up suddenly, as though a new
truth had just struck home with him. For the
first time, all that evening, his face was ingenuous.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_76">[76]</div>
<p>“I know what’s behind me,” went on the
woman. “There’s no use digging that up.
And there’s no use digging up excuses for it.
But there <i>are</i> excuses—good excuses, or I’d
never have gone through what I have, because
I feel I wasn’t made for it. I’m too big a
coward to face what it leads to. I can look
ahead and see through things. I can understand
too easily.” She came to a stop, and sat
back, with one white hand on either arm of
the chair. “And I’m afraid to go on. I want
to begin over. And I want to begin on the
right side!”</p>
<p>He sat pondering just how much of this he
could believe. But she disregarded his veiled
impassivity.</p>
<p>“I want you to take Picture 3,970 out of the
Identification Bureau, the picture and the Bertillon
measurements. And then I want you
to give me the chance I asked for.”</p>
<p>“But that does not rest with me, Miss Verriner!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_77">[77]</div>
<p>“It will rest with you. I couldn’t stool with
my own people here. But Wilkie knows my
value. He knows what I can do for the service
if I’m on their side. He could let me
begin with the Ellis Island spotting. I could
stop that Stockholm white-slave work in two
months. And when you see Wilkie to-morrow
you can swing me one way or the other!”</p>
<p>Copeland, with his chin on his bony breast,
looked up to smile into her intent and staring
eyes.</p>
<p>“You are a very clever woman,” he said.
“And what is more, you know a great deal!”</p>
<p>“I know a great deal!” she slowly repeated,
and her steady gaze succeeded in taking the
ironic smile out of the corners of his eyes.</p>
<p>“Your knowledge,” he said with a deliberation
equal to her own, “will prove of great
value to you—as an agent with Wilkie.”</p>
<p>“That’s as you say!” she quietly amended
as she rose to her feet. There was no actual
threat in her words, just as there was no actual
mockery in his. But each was keenly conscious
of the wheels that revolved within wheels,
of the intricacies through which each was
threading a way to certain remote ends. She
picked up her black gloves from the desk top.
She stood there, waiting.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_78">[78]</div>
<p>“You can count on me,” he finally said, as
he rose from his chair. “I’ll attend to the
picture. And I’ll say the right thing to Wilkie!”</p>
<p>“Then let’s shake hands on it!” she quietly
concluded. And as they shook hands her gray-irised
eyes gazed intently and interrogatively
into his.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_79">[79]</div>
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