Morrow rose with unfeigned alacrity and crossing the road, opened the little gate without ceremony and mounted the steps of the porch.

"I beg your pardon," he said blandly. "Is this your kitten?

It--er--wandered across the street to me and fell asleep under my coat. I board just over the way, you know, with Mrs. Quinlan. My name is Morrow."

The girl gave a little cry of relieved anxiety, and caught the kitten in her arms.

"Oh, I am so glad! I was afraid it was lost, and it is so tiny and defenseless to be out all alone in the cold and darkness. Thank you so much, Mr. Morrow. I suppose it was waiting for me, as it usually does, and grew restless at my delay, poor little thing! It was kind of you to comfort it!"

Feeling like an utter brute, Morrow stammered a humble disclaimer of her undeserved grat.i.tude, and moved toward the steps.

"Oh, but it was really kind of you; most men hate cats, although my father loves them. I should have been home much earlier but I was detained by some extra work at the club where I am employed."

"The club?" he repeated stupidly.

"Yes," replied the girl, quietly, cuddling the kitten beneath her chin. "The Anita Lawton Club for Working Girls."

She caught herself up sharply, even as she spoke, and a look almost of apprehension crossed her ingenuous face for a moment, and was gone.

"Thank you again for protecting my kitten for me," she said softly.

"Good-night."

Guy Morrow walked down the steps and across to his own lodgings with his brain awhirl. The investigation, through the medium of a small black kitten, had indeed taken an amazing turn. Jimmy Brunell's daughter was a protegee of the daughter of Pennington Lawton!

CHAPTER VI

THE FIRST COUNTER-MOVE

The little paragraph in the newspaper, which, irrelevant as it would seem, had caught the keenly discerning eye of Henry Blaine, grew in length and importance from day to day until it reached a position on the first page, and then spread in huge headlines over the entire sheet. Instead of relating merely the incidents of a labor strike in a manufacturing city--and that city a far-distant one--it became speedily a sociological question of almost national import. The yellow journals were quick to seize upon it at the psychological moment of civic unrest, and throw out hints, vague but vast in their significance, of the mighty interests behind the mere fact of the strike, the great financial question involved, the crisis between capital and labor, the trusts and the common people, the workers and the wasters, in the land of the free.

Henry Blaine, seated in his office, read the scare-heads and smiled his slow, inscrutable, illuminating smile--the smile which, without menace or rancor, had struck terror to the hearts of the greatest malefactors of his generation--which, without flattery or ingratiation, had won for him the friendship of the greatest men in the country. He knew every move in the gigantic game which was being played solely for his attention, long before a p.a.w.n was lifted from its place, a single counter changed; he had known it, from the moment that the seemingly unimportant paragraph had met his eyes; and he also knew the men who sat in the game, whose hands pa.s.sed over the great chessboard of current events, whose brains directed the moves.

And the stakes? Not the welfare of the workingmen in that distant city, not the lifting of the grinding heel of temporal power from the supine bodies of the humble--but the peace of mind, the honorable, untarnished name, the earthly riches of the slender girl who sat in that great darkened house on Belleair Avenue.

Hence Blaine sat back quietly, and waited for the decisive move which he knew to be forthcoming--waited, and not in vain. The spectacular play to the gallery of one was dramatically accomplished; it was heralded by extras bawled through the midnight streets, and full-page display headlines in the papers the next morning.

Promptly on the stroke of nine, Henry Blaine arrived at his office, and as he expected, found awaiting him an urgent telegram from the chief of police of the city where the strike had a.s.sumed such colossal importance, earnestly asking him for his immediate presence and a.s.sistance. He sent a tentative refusal--and waited. Still more insistent messages followed in rapid succession, from the mayor of that city, the governor of that state, even its representative in the Senate at Washington, to all of which he replied in the same emphatic, negative strain. Then, late in the afternoon, there eventuated that which he had antic.i.p.ated. Mohammed came to the mountain.

Blaine read the card which his confidential secretary presented, and laid it down upon the desk before him.

"Show him in," he directed, shortly. He did not rise from his chair, nor indeed change his position an iota, but merely glanced up from beneath slightly raised eyebrows, when the door opened again and a bulky, pompous figure stood almost obsequiously before him.

"Come in, Mr. Carlis," he invited coolly. "Take this chair. What can I do for you?"

It was significant that neither man made any move toward shaking hands, although it was obvious that they were acquainted, at least.

The great detective's tone when he greeted his visitor was as distinctly ironical as the latter's was uneasy, although he replied with a mirthless chuckle, which was intended to be airily nonchalant.

"Nothing for me, Mr. Blaine--that is, not to-day. One can never tell in this period of sudden changes and revolt, when our city may be stricken as another was just a few hours ago. There is no better, cleaner, more honestly prosperous metropolis in these United States to-day, than Illington, but--" Mr. Carlis, the political boss who had ruled for more than a decade in almost undisputed sway, paused and gulped, as if his oratorical eloquence stuck suddenly in his throat.

The detective watched him pa.s.sively, a disconcerting look of inquiring interest on his mobile face. "It is because of our stricken sister city that I am here," went on the visitor. "I know I will not be in great favor with you as an advocate, Mr. Blaine. We have had our little tilts in the past, when you--er--disapproved of my methods of conducting my civic office and I distrusted your motives, but that is forgotten now, and I come to you merely as one public-spirited citizen to another. The mayor of Grafton has wired me, as has the chief of police, to urge you to proceed there at once and take charge of the investigation into last night's bomb outrages in connection with the great strike. They inform me that you have repeatedly refused to-day to come to their a.s.sistance."

Blaine nodded.

"That is quite true, Mr. Carlis. I did decline the offers extended to me."

"But surely you cannot refuse! Good heavens, man, do you realize what it means if you do? It isn't only that there is a fortune in it for you, your reputation stands or falls on your decision! This is a public charge! The people rely upon you! If you won't, for some reason of your own, come to the rescue now, when you are publicly called upon, you'll be a ruined man!" The voice of the Boss ascended in a shrill falsetto of remonstrance.

"There may be two opinions as to that, Mr. Carlis," Blaine returned quietly. "As far as the financial argument goes, I think you discovered long ago that its appeal to me is based upon a different point of view than your own. You forget that I am not a servant of the public, but a private citizen, free to accept or decline such offers as are made to me in my line of business, as I choose. This affair is not a public charge, but a business proposition, which I decline. As to my reputation depending upon it, I differ with you. My reputation will stand, I think, upon my record in the past, even if every yellow newspaper in the city is paid to revile me."

Carlis rested his plump hands upon his widespread knees, and leaned as far forward, in his eager anxiety, as his obese figure would permit.

"But why?" he fairly wailed, his carefully rounded, oratorical tones forgotten. "Why on earth do you decline this offer, Blaine? You've nothing big on hand now--nothing your operatives can't attend to.

There isn't a case big enough for your attention on the calendar! You know as well as I do that Illington is clean and that the lid is on for keeps! The police are taking care of the petty crimes, and there's absolutely nothing doing in your line here at the moment. This is the chance of your career! Why on earth do you refuse it?"

"Well, Mr. Carlis, let us say, for instance, that my health is not quite as good as it was, and I find the air of Illington agrees with it better just now than that of Grafton." Blaine leaned back easily in his chair, and after a slight pause he added speculatively, with deliberate intent, "I didn't know you had interests there!"

The Boss purpled.

"Look here, Blaine!" he bellowed. "What d'you mean by that?"

"Merely following a train of thought, Mr. Carlis," returned the detective imperturbably. "I was trying to figure out why you were so desperately anxious to have me go to Grafton--"

"I tell you I am here at the urgent request of the mayor and the chief of police!" the fat man protested, but faintly, as if the unexpected attack had temporarily winded him. "Why in h--ll should I want you to go to Grafton?"

"Presumably because Grafton is some fourteen hundred miles from Illington," remarked Blaine, his quietly unemotional tones hardening suddenly like tempered steel. "Going to try to pull off something here in town which you think could be more easily done if I were away?

Cards on the table, Mr. Carlis! You tried to bribe me in a case once, and you failed. Then you tried bullying me and you found that didn't work, either. Now you've come again with your hook baited with patriotism, public spirit, the cry of the people and all the rest of the guff the newspapers you control have been handing out to their readers since you took them over. What's the idea?"

The Boss rose, with what was intended for an air of injured dignity, but his fat face all at once seemed sagged and wrinkled, like a p.r.i.c.ked balloon.

"I did not come here to be insulted!" he announced in his most impressive manner. "I came, as I told you, as a public-spirited citizen, because the officials of another city called upon me to urge you to aid them. I have failed in my mission, and I will go. I am surprised, Blaine, at your att.i.tude; I thought you were too big a man to permit your personal antagonism to me to interfere with your duty--"

For the first time during their interview Blaine smiled slightly.

"Have you ever known me, Mr. Carlis, to permit my personal antagonism to you or any other man to interfere with what I conceive to be my duty?"

Before he replied, the politician produced a voluminous silk handkerchief, and mopped his brow. For some reason he did not feel called upon to make a direct answer.

"Well, what reason am I to give to the Mayor of Grafton and its political leaders, for your refusal? That talk about me trying to get you out of Illington, Blaine, is all bosh, and you know it. _I'm_ running Illington just as I've run it for the last ten years, in spite of your interference or any other man's, and I'm going to stay right on the job! If you won't give any other reason for declining the call to Grafton, than your preference for the air of Illington, then the bets go as they lay!"

He jammed his hat upon his head, and strode from the room with all the ferocity his rotund figure could express. The first decisive move in the game had failed.

The door was scarcely closed behind him, when Blaine turned to the telephone and called up Anita Lawton on the private wire.

"Can you arrange to meet me at once, at your Working Girls' Club?" he asked. "I wish to suggest a plan to be put into immediate operation."

"Very well. I can be there in fifteen minutes."