Chapter 3

He preferred the "outdoor" work, both because he was more at home in it and because it was more spectacular. He relished the bigger cases. He liked to step in where an underling had failed, get his teeth into the situation, shake the mystery out of it, and then obliterate the underling with a half hour of blasphemous abuse. He had scant patience with what he called the "high-collar cops." He consistently opposed the new-fangled methods, such as the _Portrait Parle_, and pin-maps for recording crime, and the graphic-system boards for marking the movements of criminals. All anthropometric nonsense such as Bertillon's he openly sneered at, just as he scoffed at card indexes and finger prints and other academic innovations which were debilitating the force. He had gathered his own data, at great pains, he nursed his own personal knowledge as to habitual offenders and their aliases, their methods, their convictions and records, their associates and hang outs. He carried his own gallery under his own hat, and he was proud of it. His memory was good, and he claimed always to know his man. His intuitions were strong, and if he disliked a captive, that captive was in some way guilty--and he saw to it that his man did not escape. He was relentless, once his professional pride was involved. Being without imagination, he was without pity. It was, at best, a case of dog eat dog, and the Law, the Law for which he had such reverence, happened to keep him the upper dog.

Yet he was a comparatively stupid man, an amazingly self-satisfied toiler who had chanced to specialize on crime. And even as he became more and more assured of his personal ability, more and more entrenched in his tradition of greatness, he was becoming less and less elastic, less receptive, less adaptive. Much as he tried to blink the fact, he was compelled to depend more and more on the office behind him. His personal gallery, the gallery under his hat, showed a tendency to become both obsolete and inadequate. That endless catacomb of lost souls grew too intricate for one human mind to compass. New faces, new names, new tricks tended to bewilder him. He had to depend more and more on the clerical staff and the finger-print bureau records. His position became that of a villager with a department store on his hands, of a country shopkeeper trying to operate an urban emporium. He was averse to deputizing his official labors. He was ignorant of system and science. He took on the pathos of a man who is out of his time, touched with the added poignancy of a passionate incredulity as to his predicament. He felt, at times, that there was something wrong, that the rest of the Department did not look on life and work as he did. But he could not decide just where the trouble lay. And in his uncertainty he made it a point to entrench himself by means of "politics." It became an open secret that he had a pull, that his position was impregnable. This in turn tended to coarsen his methods. It lifted him beyond the domain of competitive effort. It touched his carelessness with arrogance. It also tinged his arrogance with occasional cruelty.

He redoubled his efforts to sustain the myth which had grown up about him, the myth of his vast cleverness and personal courage. He showed a tendency for the more turbulent centers. He went among murderers without a gun. He dropped into dives, protected by nothing more than the tradition of his office. He pushed his way in through thugs, picked out his man, and told him to come to Headquarters in an hour's time--and the man usually came. His appetite for the spectacular increased. He preferred to head his own gambling raids, ax in hand. But more even than his authority he liked to parade his knowledge. He liked to be able to say: "This is Sheeny Chi's coup!" or, "That's a job that only Soup-Can Charlie could do!" When a police surgeon hit on the idea of etherizing an obdurate "dummy chucker," to determine if the prisoner could talk or not, Blake appropriated the suggestion as his own. And when the "press boys" trooped in for their daily gist of news, he asked them, as usual, not to couple his name with the incident; and they, as usual, made him the hero of the occasion.

For Never-Fail Blake had made it a point to be good to the press boys. He acquired an ability to "jolly" them without too obvious loss of dignity. He took them into his confidences, apparently, and made his disclosures personal matters, individual favors. He kept careful note of their names, their characteristics, their interests. He cultivated them, keeping as careful track of them from city to city as he did of the "big" criminals themselves. They got into the habit of going to him for their special stories. He always exacted secrecy, pretended reluctance, yet parceled out to one reporter and another those dicta to which his name could be most appropriately attached. He even surrendered a clue or two as to how his own activities and triumphs might be worked into a given story. When he perceived that those worldly wise young men of the press saw through the dodge, he became more adept, more adroit, more delicate in method. But the end was the same.

It was about this time that he invested in his first scrap-book. Into this secret granary went every seed of his printed personal history. Then came the higher records of the magazines, the illustrated articles written about "Blake, the Hamard of America," as one of them expressed it, and "Never-Fail Blake," as another put it. He was very proud of those magazine articles, he even made ponderous and painstaking efforts for their repetition, at considerable loss of dignity. Yet he adopted the pose of disclaiming responsibility, of disliking such things, of being ready to oppose them if some effective method could only be thought out. He even hinted to those about him at Headquarters that this seeming garrulity was serving a good end, claiming it to be harmless pother to "cover" more immediate trails on which he pretended to be engaged.

But the scrap-books grew in number and size. It became a task to keep up with his clippings. He developed into a personage, as much a personage as a grand-opera prima donna on tour. His successes were talked over in clubs. His name came to be known to the men in the street. His "camera eye" was now and then mentioned by the scientists. His unblemished record was referred to in an occasional editorial. When an ex-police reporter came to him, asking him to father a macaronic volume bearing the title "Criminals of America," Blake not only added his name to the title page, but advanced three hundred dollars to assist towards its launching.

The result of all this was a subtle yet unmistakable shifting of values, an achievement of public glory at the loss of official confidence. He excused his waning popularity among his co-workers on the ground of envy. It was, he held, merely the inevitable penalty for supreme success in any field. But a hint would come, now and then, that troubled him. "You think you 're a big gun, Blake," one of his underworld victims once had the temerity to cry out at him. "You think you 're the king of the Hawkshaws! But if you were on _my_ side of the fence, you 'd last about as long as a snowball on a crownsheet!"

III

It was not until the advent of Copeland, the new First Deputy, that Blake began to suspect his own position. Copeland was an out-and-out "office" man, anything but a "flat foot." Weak looking and pallid, with the sedentary air of a junior desk clerk, vibratingly restless with no actual promise of being penetrating, he was of that indeterminate type which never seems to acquire a personality of its own. The small and bony and steel-blue face was as neutral as the spare and reticent figure that sat before a bald table in a bald room as inexpressive and reticent as its occupant. Copeland was not only unknown outside the Department; he was, in a way, unknown in his own official circles.

And then Blake woke up to the fact that some one on the inside was working against him, was blocking his moves, was actually using him as a "blind." While he was given the "cold" trails, younger men went out on the "hot" ones. There were times when the Second Deputy suspected that his enemy was Copeland. Not that he could be sure of this, for Copeland himself gave no inkling of his attitude. He gave no inkling of anything, in fact, personal or impersonal. But more and more Blake was given the talking parts, the rôle of spokesman to the press. He was more and more posted in the background, like artillery, to intimidate with his remote thunder and cover the advance of more agile columns. He was encouraged to tell the public what he knew, but he was not allowed to know too much. And, ironically enough, he bitterly resented this rôle of "mouthpiece" for the Department.

"You call yourself a gun!" a patrolman who had been shaken down for insubordination broke out at him. "A gun! why, you 're only a _park_ gun! That's all you are, a broken-down bluff, an ornamental has-been, a park gun for kids to play 'round!"

Blake raged at that, impotently, pathetically, like an old lion with its teeth drawn. He prowled moodily around, looking for an enemy on whom to vent his anger. But he could find no tangible force that opposed him. He could see nothing on which to centralize his activity. Yet something or somebody was working against him. To fight that opposition was like fighting a fog. It was as bad as trying to shoulder back a shadow.

He had his own "spots" and "finders" on the force. When he had been tipped off that the powers above were about to send him out on the Binhart case, he passed the word along to his underlings, without loss of time, for he felt that he was about to be put on trial, that they were making the Binhart capture a test case. And he had rejoiced mightily when his dragnet had brought up the unexpected tip that Elsie Verriner had been in recent communication with Binhart, and with pressure from the right quarter could be made to talk.

This tip had been a secret one. Blake, on his part, kept it well muffled, for he intended that his capture of Binhart should be not only a personal triumph for the Second Deputy, but a vindication of that Second Deputy's methods.

So when the Commissioner called him and Copeland into conference, the day after his talk with Elsie Verriner, Blake prided himself on being secretly prepared for any advances that might be made.

It was the Commissioner who did the talking. Copeland, as usual, lapsed into the background, cracking his dry knuckles and blinking his pale-blue eyes about the room as the voices of the two larger men boomed back and forth.

"We 've been going over this Binhart case," began the Commissioner. "It's seven months now--and nothing done!"

Blake looked sideways at Copeland. There was muffled and meditative belligerency in the look. There was also gratification, for it was the move he had been expecting.

"I always said McCooey was n't the man to go out on that case," said the Second Deputy, still watching Copeland.

"Then who _is_ the man?" asked the Commissioner.

Blake took out a cigar, bit the end off, and struck a match. It was out of place; but it was a sign of his independence. He had long since given up plug and fine-cut and taken to fat Havanas, which he smoked audibly, in plethoric wheezes. Good living had left his body stout and his breathing slightly asthmatic. He sat looking down at his massive knees; his oblique study of Copeland, apparently, had yielded him scant satisfaction. Copeland, in fact, was making paper fans out of the official note-paper in front of him.

"What's the matter with Washington and Wilkie?" inquired Blake, attentively regarding his cigar.

"They 're just where we are--at a standstill," acknowledged the Commissioner.

"And that's where we 'll stay!" heavily contended the Second Deputy.

The entire situation was an insidiously flattering one to Blake. Every one else had failed. They were compelled to come to him, their final resource.

"Why?" demanded his superior.

"Because we have n't got a man who can turn the trick! We have n't got a man who can go out and round up Binhart inside o' seven years!"

"Then what is your suggestion?" It was Copeland who spoke, mild and hesitating.

"D'you want my suggestion?" demanded Blake, warm with the wine-like knowledge which, he knew, made him master of the situation.

"Of course," was the Commissioner's curt response.

"Well, you 've got to have a man who knows Binhart, who knows him and his tricks and his hang outs!"

"Well, who does?"

"I do," declared Blake.

The Commissioner indulged in his wintry smile.

"You mean if you were n't tied down to your Second Deputy's chair you could go out and get him!"

"I could!"

"Within a reasonable length of time?"

"I don't know about the time! But I could get him, all right."

"If you were still on the outside work?" interposed Copeland.

"I certainly would n't expect to dig him out o' my stamp drawer," was Blake's heavily facetious retort.

Copeland and the Commissioner looked at each other, for one fraction of a second.

"You know what _my_ feeling is," resumed the latter, "on this Binhart case."

"I know what my feeling is," declared Blake.

"What?"

"That the right method would 've got him six months ago, without all this monkey work!"

"Then why not end the monkey work, as you call it?"

"How?"

"By doing what you say you can do!" was the Commissioner's retort.

"How 'm I going to hold down a chair and hunt a crook at the same time?"

"Then why hold down the chair? Let the chair take care of itself. It could be arranged, you know."

Blake had the stage-juggler's satisfaction of seeing things fall into his hands exactly as he had manoeuvered they should. His reluctance was merely a dissimulation, a stage wait for heightened dramatic effect.

"How 'd you do the arranging?" he calmly inquired.

"I could see the Mayor in the morning. There will be no Departmental difficulty."

"Then where 's the trouble?"

"There is none, if you are willing to go out."

"Well, we can't get Binhart here by pink-tea invitations. Somebody 's got to go out and _get_ him!"

"The bank raised the reward to eight thousand this week," interposed the ruminative Copeland.

"Well, it 'll take money to get him," snapped back the Second Deputy, remembering that he had a nest of his own to feather.

"It will be worth what it costs," admitted the Commissioner.

"Of course," said Copeland, "they 'll have to honor your drafts--in reason."

"There will be no difficulty on the expense side," quietly interposed the Commissioner. "The city wants Binhart. The whole country wants Binhart. And they will be willing to pay for it."

Blake rose heavily to his feet. His massive bulk was momentarily stirred by the prospect of the task before him. For one brief moment the anticipation of that clamor of approval which would soon be his stirred his lethargic pulse. Then his cynic calmness again came back to him.

"Then what 're we beefing about?" he demanded. "You want Binhart and I 'll get him for you."

The Commissioner, tapping the top of his desk with his gold-banded fountain pen, smiled. It was almost a smile of indulgence.

"You _know_ you will get him?" he inquired.

The inquiry seemed to anger Blake. He was still dimly conscious of the operation of forces which he could not fathom. There were things, vague and insubstantial, which he could not understand. But he nursed to his heavy-breathing bosom the consciousness that he himself was not without his own undivulged powers, his own private tricks, his own inner reserves.

"I say I 'll get him!" he calmly proclaimed. "And I guess that ought to be enough!"

IV

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

"You saw Blake again?" he half asked, half challenged.

"No," she answered.

"Why?"

"I was afraid to."

"Did n't I tell you we 'd take care of your end?"

"I 've had promises like that before. They were n't always remembered."

"But our office never made you that promise before, Miss Verriner."

The woman let her eyes rest on his impassive face.

"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."

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?"

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, and in--"

"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."

"No competent officer is ever worked out of this Department," parried the First Deputy.

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.

"Mr. Copeland, are n't you afraid some one might find it worth while to tip Blake off?" she softly inquired.

"What would you gain?" was his pointed and elliptical interrogation.

She leaned forward in the fulcrum of light, and looked at him soberly.

"What is your idea of me?" she asked.

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.

"I think you are a very intelligent woman," Copeland finally confessed.

"I think I am, too," she retorted. "Although I have n'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 _got_ to be!"

"And?" prompted the First Deputy, as she came to a stop.

"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."

"And?" again prompted the First Deputy.

"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 does n't pay. I want to be safe. I 've _got_ to be safe!"

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.

"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 _are_ excuses--good excuses, or I 'd never have gone through what I have, because I feel I was n'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!"

He sat pondering just how much of this he could believe. But she disregarded his veiled impassivity.

"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."

"But that does not rest with me, Miss Verriner!"