Never-Fail Blake

y hound's eyes as the door opened and a wo

he said, without

g at him. Then she advanced tho

he desk end. The rustling of silk suddenly ceased. An aphrodisiac

the undulatory roll of her hat brim. Blake continu

eyes still more shadowy, seemed fortified with a calm sense of power. It was something more than a dormant consciousness of beauty, though the knowledge that men would turn back to a face so wistful as hers, and their j

eyes under the level brows. He could see, as he had seen before, that they were exceptional eyes, with iris rings of deep gray about the ever-widening and ever-narrowing pupils which varied with

straight nose, giving her at first glance the appearance of pouting. Yet the heavier underlip, soft a

daily plaited and treasured and coiled and cared for, the meticulous attentiveness with which morning by morning its hip-reaching abundance was braided and twisted and built up about the small head, an intricate structure of soft wonder which midnight must ever see again in r

m at every turn. Then he had decided on his "plant." To effect this he had whisked a young Italian with a lacerated thumb up from the City Hospital and sent him in to her as an injured elevator-boy looking for first-aid treatment. One glimpse of her work on that thumb showed her

on, and she had smiled at his thunderous grillings and defied his noisy threats. But as she sat there before him, chic and guarded, with her girlishly frail body so arrogantly well gowned, she had in some way touched his lethargic imagination. She showed herself to be of

m whom nearly two hundred thousand dollars had been wrested, put a bullet through his head rather than go home disgraced, and she had straightw

ed and harried her into frantic weariness. He had third-degreed her into cowering and trembling indignation, into hectic mental uncertainties. Then, with the fatigue point well passed, he had marshaled the last of his own animal strength and essayed the final blasphemous Vesuvian onslaught that brought about the nervous breakdown, the ultimate collapse.

l emotional surrender of reluctant love itself to the first aggressive tides of passion. What it was based on, what it arose from, he could not say. But in the flood-tide of his own tumultuous conquest he had watched her abandoned weeping and her tumbled brown hair. And as he watched, a vague and troubling tingle sped like a fuse-sputter along his limbs, and fired something dormant and dangerous in the gr

ldered and unresponsive, as his heavy lips had closed on hers that were still wet and salty with tears. Whe

nce of Sheldon's suicide come to hand. This made Blake's task easier than he had expected. The movement against Elsie Verriner was "smot

been dragged into the things she 'd done without understanding them, at first, and she 'd kept on because there 'd been

and bull-necked, he tried to tell her in his groping Celtic way that he wanted children, that

plain. He could see that she was flattered by what he had said, that his words had m

loud across her abandoned face. It brought about a c

ady, are you?" he had hesitatingl

d promptly and fiercely respon

rry me?" the practical

had stood looking at him out of wistful and unhappy eyes. "I could-if yo

ve her very wan and helpless. And he had found it ineffably sweet to

of devotion, in which she proved so lavish. Morning by jocund morning he built up his airy dreams, as carefully as she built up her nut-brown plaits. He grew heavily light-headed with his plans for the future. When she pleaded with him never to leave her, never

r moodiest moments. When, one day, she suggested that they go away togeth

gation on a series of iron-workers' dynamite outrages. Daily he wrote or wired back to her. But he was kept away longer than he had expected. When he returned to New York she was no longer there. She

oman in his power: there had been no defeat because there had been no actual conquest. And now he could face her without an eye-blink of conscious em

y, the need for great care, in every step. In each lay the power to uncover, at a hand's turn, old mistakes that were best unremembered. Yet there was a certain suave audacity about the woman. She was not really afraid of Blake, and the

me you know where he is." Blake, as he spoke,

carefully as an actress with a r?le to sustain, a

hart," cut out t

drop like a curtain ac

mself on the fact that he could see through her pretenses. At any other time he would have throw

w patience "we know him best r

rd?" she

seven months now, the Blanchard who chloroformed Ezra Newc

gain meditat

room when the rest of the bank was listening to a German ba

at?" demande

a sing-song weariness suggestive of impa

ll last autumn," was th

as though to shoulder away a

nd on the third of December you went to Cherbourg; and on the ninth you landed in New York. I k

er. No move was made; no word was

for the second time. It was onl

full cup of his determination. Some slowly accumulating consciousness of his power s

ou," she slowly asse

" he stubbornly maintai

rogance. It seemed troubled; almost touched with fear. She was not altoget

she repeated. "I'd r

r. He looked at his watch. Then he looked back at the woman. A nervous tug-of-war was takin

He 's been out for seven months, now, and they 're going to put it up to me, to me, personally. Copeland tried to get him without me

I 'm going to die hard, believe me! And if I go down, if they think they

owed again, for she had long since learned, and learned it to he

chair, throwing one thick leg over the other as he did so. "I h

Then she raised her eyes to his. "Can

his chair. But he met h

mix business and-and other things," he

ay," she said. "I hoped we 'd

on friendship in t

in this!" she said. And the artful

n on something nea

tinted oblong of paper. He held it, face out, between

e trick. Take a closer look at

" she asked, wi

allet to his pocket. She would find it imposs

check. I don't want to know. And when you

forged," contended t

r it was," declared

p study. Her intent face showed no fear, no

r her to speak. His attitude was that of a physician at a bedside

e, in any way, if Binhart is rou

e," he a

omise m

answered the

ne on-on the other thin

nowledged. "I 'll see

dicial eyes. Then she dropped her hands into h

in Montreal

e well under control,

find him at 381 King Edward Avenue, in Westmoun

reached quietly down and opened her pocket-book, rummaging through it

is writing?

"Montreal, Que." Then he drew out the inner sheet. On it, written by pen, he read the mess

k out a large reading-glass. Through the lens of this he again studied the

er, "I want to know if there 's

with stolidly reproving eyes. There was no doubt of

ver the wire. "It's one of th

honesty. To be suspicious of all with whom he came in contact was imposed on him by his profession. He was compelled to watch eve

again bent forward, took up the 'phone receiver,

Avenue, in Montreal. Yes, Montreal. Tell him to get a man out the

essage on a form pad and pushed the buzzer-button with his thic

s chair, with a throaty grunt of content. He sat for a moment, staring at the woman with unseeing eyes. Then he stood up. Wit

ledged with his solemn and unimaginat

still a little puzzled by her surrender. He knew she did not regard hi

her interrogating eyes with his one-sided smile. "I 'm might

or indifference on her face. Yet something in her bearing nettled him. The quietness of her qu

ted. "They 've got the idea I 'm out o' date. And I

asked t

that Blake's thick forefinger again prodded the buzzer-button at his desk end the watching woman could see the relapse into official wariness. It was as though he had put the shutters up in front of his soul. She accepted the movement as a signal of dismissal. She rose fro

ote," she reminded him as she paused with he

simulated indifference, as he made

he handed it over to her, she folded it and restored it to her pocket-bo

r reasons for taking back Binhart's scrap of paper. He wondered if she had at any time actually cared for Binhart. He wondered if she

e way or the other. And in the consolatory moments of a sudden new triumph Never-Fail Blake let his thoughts wander pleasant