Joan of Arc of the North Woods Part 11

Miss Lida Kennard, as confidential stenographer, was deep into the methods of Mern. It was Mern's unvarying custom to have Miss Kennard in to listen to and take down all that a client had to state. She was extremely shocked in the first stages of her a.s.sociation with the Vose-Mern agency by the nature of the commissions undertaken. But it was the best position she had secured, after climbing the ladder through the offices of more or less impecunious attorneys. She needed the good pay because her mother was an invalid; she continued to need the pay after her mother died. There were bills to be settled. She had grown used to setting the installments on those bills ahead of new hats, and the cameo ring which had been her mother's keepsake was for the sake of memory, not adornment.

By dint of usage, the Vose-Mern business had come to seem to her like a real business. Certainly some big men came and solicited Mern's aid and appeared to think that his methods were proper. In course of time, listening to Mern's ethics, she came to accept matters at their practical value and ceased to a.n.a.lyze them for the sake of seeking for nice balances of right and wrong. She was in and of the Vose-Mern organization! She sat in on conferences, wrote down placidly plots for doing up men who had not had the foresight to hire Mern--Vose had been merely an old detective, and he was dead--and she sometimes entertained a vague ambition to be an operative herself. She liked pretty hats and handsome rings--though she was scornfully averse to the Leigh-Javotte system as she was acquainted with it by the chance remarks the a.s.sociates dropped. As to operatives--Miss Kennard had heard--well, she had heard Miss Elsham, for instance, a crack operative, reveal what the rewards of the regular work were; and, the way Miss Elsham looked at it, a girl did not have to lower her self-respect.

In the midst of these thoughts, getting a side glance at the new hat which Miss Leigh was showing to Miss Javotte, Miss Kennard was called to conference; the buzzer summoned her.

Mern introduced her to the client of the day; the chief made that his custom; it always seemed to put the client more at his ease because an introduction made her an important member of the party--and Mern stressed the "confidential secretary" thing.

The client was Director Craig of the Comas company.

He rose with a haste which betrayed a natural susceptibility to the charms of pretty women. He cooed at her rather than spoke, altering his natural tone, smoothing out all the harshness; it was that clumsy gallantry by which coa.r.s.e men strive to pay court to charm.

The girl warranted the approving gaze which Mr. Craig gave to her. He looked from her frank eyes to her copper-bronze hair, which seemed to have a glint of suns.h.i.+ne in its waves. He liked the uplift of that round chin--he remembered that it had seemed to indicate spirit--and he liked s.p.u.n.k in a girl. He had enjoyed the conferences of the days of the strike-breaking when he could survey her profile as she busied herself with her writing, admiring the beauty curve of her lips.

Now he was thrilled by her manner of recognition; he had not expected that much.

"I remember you, Mr. Craig," she a.s.sured the big man, her fingers as firm in the grip as were his. "You were in here so much on the strike matter two years ago."

"That's a long time for a New York young lady to remember a man from the north woods."

"To save myself from seeming like a flatterer, I must say it's because of the woods feature that I remember you so well. The forest interests me. I'm afraid I'm inclined to be very foolish about the woods. Why, in a cafeteria--last fall--there was----"

But she checked herself and flushed. She turned to Mern. "I beg your pardon. I'm ready." She sat down and opened her notebook.

"But what about it?" quizzed Craig.

"A mere chance meeting with a man from the north country. I really don't understand why I mentioned it. My interest in the woods--the thought of the woods--tripped my tongue." She nodded to the stolid Mern as if to remind him of the business in hand, and Mern ducked his square head at Craig.

It was the habit of Mern to go thoroughly over a case with a client before calling in Miss Kennard. At the second going-over in her presence the topic was better shaken down, was in a more solidified form for her notebook. The Comas director had already told his story once to the chief.

Craig leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling, again collecting his data in his mind. He had dictated before to Miss Kennard and knew how Mern wanted his names and his facts. "Subject, the spring drives on the Noda water. Object, hanging up or blocking the independent drive of Echford Flagg and----"

Miss Kennard's pencil slipped somehow. It fell from her fingers, bounced from the floor on its rubber tip, and ticked off the sharpened lead when it hit the floor again.

Lida darted for it, picked it up, and ran out of the room. "I'm going for another," she explained.

She was gone for some time. Craig glanced out of the window into the slaty sky, from which rain was falling. It was a day unseasonably warm and humid for early spring. "I hope it's raining in the Noda. But it's just as liable to be snow. Latisan can't do much yet awhile." He looked at his watch as if starting the Noda drives was a matter of minutes. He was showing some impatience when Miss Kennard returned. She went to the window, and sat in a chair there, her face turned from them. "If you don't mind," she apologized. "It's on account of the light. I can hear perfectly from here."

She heard then that the Comas wanted to put Echford Flagg down and out as an operator, now that paralysis had stricken him. She had Craig's a.s.surance delivered to Mern that, without a certain Ward Latisan old Flagg would not be able to bring his drive down. The Comas director declared that an ordinary boss could never get along with the devils who made up the crew. He declared further that Latisan was of a sort to suit desperadoes and had put into the crew some kind of fire which made the men dangerous to vested interests on the river. He devoted himself to Latisan with subdued profanity, despite the presence of the young woman.

He averred that Latisan himself had no love for Flagg--n.o.body up-country gave a tinker's hoot for Flagg, anyway. He insisted, desperate in spite of certain modifying private convictions, that Latisan could be pried off the job if some kind of a tricky influence could be brought to bear or if his interest in the fight, as just a fight, could be dulled or s.h.i.+fted to something else or side-tracked by a ruse. He pictured Flagg as a man for whom n.o.body would stand up in his present state, now that he was sick and out of the game.

"I hate to kick a cripple, even in my business," demurred Mern. "I have flashes of decency," he continued, dryly. "You seem to be particularly set on getting to the lumberjack, Latisan. Can't you do him up, and then let Flagg have half a show for this season--probably his last?"

"Now you're talking of violence to Latisan, aren't you?"

"Let the plug-ugly have what he seems to be looking for," advised Mern.

"That is, if I get it straight from you what his nature is."

"He's all of that--what I have said," reaffirmed Craig, venomously. "But look here, Mern, you can't go up into that region, where everything is wide open to all men, and kill a man or abduct him. I'm obliged to gum-shoe. I have to keep my own executive details away from the home office, even. We're waiting on the courts for law and on the legislature for more favors." Craig was sweating copiously, and he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "It's touchy business. If I can pull old Flagg into camp, it's my biggest stroke outside of nailing the Latisans in the Tomah. A monopoly will give us settled prices and control of the flowage. But I insist on doing the job through Latisan.

I'm after him! Now do some thinking for me. No violence, however--nothing which can be traced to the Three C's."

In the silence Miss Kennard asked, "How do you spell Latisan, Mr.

Craig?"

He told her. "First name Ward. He's the grandson of old John of the Tomah."

"I'm trying to get the facts straight for Mr. Mern. Do I understand you to say that the Latisans have failed in their business?"

"They're down and out. I gave the young fool a good tip to save the remnants, but he wouldn't take it. The only thing I'll give him after this is poison--if it can't be traced to me or my company."

Mern had swung about in his chair, his vacant stare on the murky sky, doing the thinking to which he had been exhorted by his client. "Suppose I slip a picked crowd of my operatives into his crew?"

"He's too wise to take on strangers. And while he's on the job with the crew the men are so full of that h.e.l.l-whoop spirit that they can't be tampered with. Mern, he's got to be cut out of the herd."

"What's his particular failing?"

Craig, if his sour rage against Latisan had been less intense, might have been less ready to believe that Latisan had taken several months off as a prodigal son. But Craig wanted to believe that the young man had been doing what scandal said he had done. That belief strengthened Craig's hopes. He affected to believe in the reports. He told Mern that Latisan had been leading a sporting life in the city until the family money gave out.

"How about b.u.mping him on his soft spot?"

Craig asked questions with his eyes, blinking away the perspiration.

"With a girl," Mern explained. "With one who looks as if she had been picked right out of the rosy middle of the big bouquet he was attracted by in the city. With the background of the woods, a single bloomer will surely hold his attention."

Craig showed interest; he had been obliged to pa.s.s up violence, bribery, bl.u.s.ter. This new plan promised subtlety and subterfuge that would let out the Three C's. "Got her?"

"Call Miss Elsham on the phone, Miss Kennard! You may do it from the other room. Ask her to hurry down."

The girl, her face hidden from them, paused at the door. "Are there more notes? Shall I come back?" She was having difficulty with her voice, but the men were now talking eagerly about the new plan, and her discomposure was not remarked.

"I think not," said Mern. "Write out what you have. Make especially full characterizations of Flagg and Latisan as you have gathered facts about them from our talk." He had found Miss Kennard to be especially apt in that work. Not only did she deduce character from descriptions, but she worked in many valuable suggestions as to how men of a certain nature should be handled. She seemed to understand the vagaries of men's dispositions very well indeed.

"What's the matter with Ken?" muttered Miss Javotte, nudging the bookkeeper.

Lida had flung her arms across the frame of her typewriter and had hidden her face in her hands.

"Headache," returned Miss Leigh, sapiently. "That toque has struck into the brain. No girl ought to take chances that way."

CHAPTER TEN

However, by the time Miss Marguerite Elsham--having given full attention to her person and attire--arrived at the office, Miss Kennard had completed her ma.n.u.script and the sheets were lying at Mern's elbow on his desk.

In order to bridge a part of the gap of waiting Mern had given his client some information about Miss Elsham and her ability.

"Very competent on the coax, Mr. Craig. Last job was a paying teller. He had twenty thousand in his jeans when he stepped out of the taxi that had taken him and Elsham to the steamer dock. Tickets for Rio! Crowley, our pinch artist, nabbed him and bawled out Elsham, who was weeping in the cab. Crowley and Elsham work well together. You understand that if she goes to the woods Crowley must go along on the side. They won't appear as knowing each other. But Crowley may be called on to shove his mitt between Elsham and trouble."