"There," concluded Warner, "that's the layout, isn't it?" He turned to Byan; and his smiling, office manner came over his expression. "What would you say, Joe? You're by way of being an expert on this kind of bait." In the Carbonado Mining Company, Warner ruled partly through his quality of personal force, but partly through fear, the cement of underworld society. Just as he shook at O'Hearn from time to time the threat conveyed by that sinister gesture, he held over Byan the knowledge of that trade and traffic, shameful even among criminals, from which Byan had risen to be a pander of low finance. At this thrust, however, Byan did not pale, as had O'Hearn. His expression became only the more inscrutable.

"You should have let me break her in when I wanted to, months ago," he said. "I'd 'a' had her ready now. He won't fall for anyone else. I've offered those other Molls to him, but he's crushed on her and won't look at anybody else. So we've got to put the screws on her. They're all cowards inside--yellow every one."

"Meaning?" inquired Warner.

"She's in it up to her neck with us," said Byan. "We saw to that. All right. If we should go up against it, she'd have a h.e.l.l of a time proving to a jury that she didn't know what her letters to customers were all about. Now wouldn't she? Ask yourself. Looked like hard luck to me when she saw that letter just when she'd slapped the face of this Cowler. But maybe it's a regular G.o.dsend. Put it to her straight that this business is a graft, that we're due to go up against it in three weeks unless something nice happens, and that she's in it as deep as any of us. When she's so scared she can't see, let her know that she has got one way out--fall for Cowler and help us touch him for his hundred thousand. Make her think that it's the stir sure if she don't, and a clean getaway if she does."

"Suppose," continued Warner in the manner of one weighing every chance, "she goes with her troubles to some wise guy?"

"She's got no friends here," said Byan. "I looked into that. Runs around with one fluff, but she don't count. If she's scared enough, I tell you, she'll never dare peep--and she'll come round."

"Suppose she beats it?" suggested Warner.

"Well, Mike and I can shadow her, can't we?" replied Byan. "If she tries to get out by rail, we can stop her and put on the screws right away.

The screws!" repeated Byan, as one who liked the idea. "And if she does hold out a while, nothin's lost. You've got the old dope worked up to the idea she's interested in him, haven't you? Well, if she don't fall right away, you can take a little time explaining to him why she acted that way last night. Maybe best to dangle her a while, anyway--get him so anxious to see her that he'll fall for anything when you bring her round. I'll be tightening up the screws, and when he's ripe I'll deliver her."

"The screws," repeated O'Hearn. "Meanin'--?"

"Leave that to me," said Byan. "I know how."

Warner smiled; but it was not the genial beam of his office manner. For when the corners of his drooping mouth lifted, they showed merely a gleam of canine teeth, which lay on his lip like fangs.

"I suppose, when it's over, she's your personal property," he concluded.

"Oh, sure!" responded Byan carelessly.

"You'll not--" began O'Hearn; but this time it was Warner who interrupted.

"Mickey," he said, "any arrangements between this lady and Byan are their own private affair--after the touch-off, which may stand you twenty-five thousand shiners. Besides--" He did not make his threatening gesture now, but merely flashed that smile of fangs and sinister suggestion. Then he rose.

"All right," he said. "Come on--all of you--and I'll give her that little business talk, before she's had time to think and work up another notion. Maybe she'll fall for it right away."

"Not right away, she won't," Byan promulgated from the depths of his experience, "but before I'm through, she will."

The three men came filing into the room where Susannah sat, her elbows on the desk, her chin on her hands. She rose abruptly and faced them, eyes wide, lips parted. Mr. Warner wore his office manner; his smile was now benevolent.

"I have been telling Mr. Byan and Mr. O'Hearn about your experience and your decision, Miss Ayer," began Mr. Warner.

Susannah blushed deeply; and for an instant her lashes swept over a sudden stern flame in her eyes. Then she lifted them and looked with a noncommittal openness from one face to the other. "I think I have nothing to add," she said.

"Yes, but perhaps we have," Mr. Warner informed her gently. "Sit down, Miss Ayer. Sit down, boys."

The three men seated themselves. "Thank you," said Susannah; but she continued to stand. Byan rose thereupon, and stood lolling in the corner, his vague smile floating on his lips. O'Hearn dropped his chin almost to that point on his chest where his folded arms rested. His lips drooped. Occasionally he studied the situation from under his protuberant forehead.

"Miss Ayer," Warner went on after a pause, "you read that letter--the one you handed to me this morning?"

Susannah hesitated for an almost imperceptible moment. "Yes," she admitted, "entirely by mistake."

"I am going to tell you something that it will surprise you to hear, Miss Ayer. What this fellow says is all true. Carbonado is merely a--a convenient name, let us say. In other words, we are engaged in selling fake stocks to suckers. To be still more explicit, we are conducting a criminal business. We could be arrested at any moment and sent to jail.

To the Federal penitentiary, in fact. I suppose that is a great surprise to you?"

Though she had guessed something of this ever since she recalled the contents of the letter, the cold-blooded statement came indeed with all the force of a surprise. Susannah's figure stiffened as though she had touched a live wire. The crimson flush drained out of her face. And she heard herself saying, as though in another's voice and far away, the inadequate words: "How perfectly terrible!"

"Exactly so!" agreed Warner. "Only you haven't the remotest idea how terrible. Miss Ayer, this company--you as well as the rest of us--needs money and needs it right away. Ozias Cowler has money--a great deal of money. Somebody's bound to get it--and why not we? We use various means to get money out of suckers. There's only one way with Cowler. He's stuck on you. You can get it from him. We want you to do that--we expect you to do that."

Susannah stared at him. "Mr. Warner, I think you are crazy. I could no more do that ... I couldn't ... I wouldn't even know how ... my resignation goes into effect immediately. I couldn't possibly stay here another minute." She turned to leave the office.

"Just one moment!" Mr. Warner's words purled on. His tone was low, his accent bland--but his voice stopped her instantly. "Miss Ayer, you don't understand yet. Unless we get some money--a great deal of money--we shan't last another two weeks. The situation is--but I won't take the time to explain that. Unless we clean up that aforesaid money, we go to jail--for a good long term. If we get the money--we don't. Never mind the details. I a.s.sure you it's true."

"I'm sorry," said Susannah, her lips scarcely moving as she spoke, "but I fail to see what I have to do with that--"

"I was about to go on to say, Miss Ayer, that you have everything to do with it. You must be aware, if you look back over your service with us, that you are as much involved as anyone. Your name is on our letterhead.

You have signed hundreds and perhaps thousands of letters to woman investors. Putting a disagreeable fact rather baldly, what happens to us happens to you. If it's the stir--if it's jail--for us, it's jail for you."

Susannah stared at him. She grew rigid. But she roused herself to a trembling weak defense.

"I'll tell them, if they arrest me ... all that has gone on here ..."

she began.

"If you do," put in Mr. Warner smoothly, "you only create for yourself an unfavorable impression. You put yourself in the position of going back on your pals, and it will not get you immunity. If Mr. Cowler comes through, you are ent.i.tled to a share of the proceeds. Whether you take it or no is a matter for your private feelings. But the main point is that with Cowler in, this thing will be fixed, and without him in, you are in jail or a fugitive from justice."

He paused now and looked at Susannah--paused not as one who pities but as one who asks himself if he has said enough. Susannah's face proved that he had.

"Now of course you won't feel like working this morning. And I don't blame you. Go home and think it over. Your first instinct, probably, will be to see a lawyer. For your own sake, I advise you not to do that.

For ours, I hope you do. If he tells you the truth, he will show you how deeply involved you are in this thing. No lawyer whom you can command will handle your case. What you'd better do is lie down and take a nap.

Then at about five o'clock this afternoon, send for hot coffee and doll yourself up--Mr. Cowler will call for you at seven."

Susannah took part of Mr. Warner's advice. She went home immediately.

But she did not take a nap. Instead, she walked up and down her bedroom for an hour, thinking hard. She could think now; in her pa.s.sage home on the Subway, her first wild panic had beaten its desperate black wings to quiet. What Warner had told her she now believed implicitly. She was as much caught in the trap as any one of the three crooks with whom she had been a.s.sociated. The only difference was that she did not mean to stay in the trap. She meant to escape. Also she did not mean to let it drive her from the city in which she was challenging success. She meant to stay in New York. She meant to escape. But how?

If there were only somebody to whom she could go! She had in New York a few acquaintances--but no real friends. Besides, she didn't want anybody to know; all she wanted was to get away from--to vanish from their sight. But where could she go--when--how?

Fortunately she had plenty of money on hand, plenty at least for her immediate purposes. She owned a few p.a.w.nable things, though only a few.

But at present what she needed, more even than money, was time. She must get away at once. But again where? For a moment resurgent panic tore her. Then common sense seemed to offer a solution. Here she was in the biggest city in the country; the biggest in the world. She had heard somewhere that a big city was the best place in the world to hide in.

She would hide in New York. Then--

She had forgotten one terrifying fact. Byan boarded in the same house.

She realized why now. A fortnight before--shortly after Mr. Cowler appeared in the office--he had come to her for advice. He had given up one bachelor apartment, he said, and was taking another. Repairs had become inevitable in the new apartment. He did not want to go to a hotel. Did she know of a good boarding-house in which to spend a month?

She did, of course--her own. Byan came there the next day; although, curiously enough, she saw but little of him. They had separate tables, and his meal-hours and hers were different.

Byan usually came in at about six o'clock. But today he might follow her. She must work quickly.

She pulled her trunk out from under the bed and began in frenzied haste to pack it. Down came all the pictures from her walls. Into the trunk went most of her clothes; some of her toilet articles; her half-dozen books; her stationery; all her slender Lares and Penates. When she had finished with her trunk, she packed her suitcase. As many thin dresses as she could crush in--inconsequent necessities--her storm boots; her tooth-brush--