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 pawn 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 passed 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 assumed such colossal importance, earnestly asking him for his immediate presence and assistance. 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 anticipated. 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 passively, 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 assistance.”

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 pricked 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 attitude; 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.”

When the detective arrived at the club, he was ushered immediately to the small ante-room on the second floor, where he found Anita anxiously awaiting him.

“Miss Lawton,” he began, without further greeting than a quick handclasp, “you told me, the other day, that your girls here were all staunch and faithful to you. Your secretary downstairs had previously informed me that they were trained to hold positions of trust, and that you obtained such positions for them. I want you to obtain four positions for four of the girls in whom you place the most implicit confidence.”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Blaine, if I can. Do you mean that they are to have something to do with your investigation into my father’s affairs?”

“I want them to play detective for me, Miss Lawton. Have you four girls unemployed at the moment? Say, for instance, a filing clerk, a stenographer, a governess and a switchboard operator, who are sufficiently intelligent and proficient in their various occupations, to assume such a trust?”

“Why, yes, I I think we have. I can find out, of course. Where do you wish to place them?”

“That is the most difficult part of all, Miss Lawton. You must obtain the positions for them. These three men who stand in loco parentis toward you, as you say, and your spiritual adviser, Dr. Franklin, who so obviously wishes to ingratiate himself with them, would none of them refuse a request of this sort from you at this stage of the game, particularly if they are really engaged in a conspiracy against you. Go to these four men Mr. Mallowe first and tell them that because of the sudden, complete loss of your fortune, your club must be disorganized, and beg them each to give one of your girls, special protegees of yours, a position. Send your filing clerk to Mr. Mallowe, your most expert stenographer to Mr. Rockamore, your switchboard operator to Mr. Carlis, and your governess into the household of your minister. I have learned that he has three small children, and his wife applied only yesterday at an agency for a nursery governess. The last proposition may be the most difficult for you to handle, but I think if you manage to convey to the Reverend Dr. Franklin the fact that your three self-appointed guardians have each taken one of your girls into their employ, in order to help them, and that his following their benevolent example would bring him into closer rapport with them, no objection will be made provided, of course, the young woman is suitable.”

“I will try, Mr. Blaine, but of course I can do nothing about that until to-morrow, as it is so late in the afternoon. However, I can have a talk with the girls, if they are in now or would you prefer to interview them?”

“No, you talk with them first, Miss Lawton, and to-morrow morning while you are arranging for their positions I will interview them and instruct them in their primary duties. I will leave you now. Remember that the girls must be absolutely trustworthy, and the stenographer who will be placed in the office of Mr. Rockamore must be particularly expert.”

After the detective had taken his departure, Anita Lawton descended quickly to the office of the secretary.

“Emily,” she asked, “is Loretta Murfree in, or Fifine Dechaussee?”

“I think they both are, Miss Lawton. Shall I ring for them?”

“Yes, please, Emily; send them to me one at a time, in the ante-room, and let me know when Agnes Olson and Margaret Hefferman come in. I wish to talk with all four of them, but separately.”

Loretta Murfree was the first to put in an appearance. She was a short, dumpy, black-haired girl of twenty, and she bounced into the room with a flashing, wide-mouthed smile.

“How are you, dear Miss Lawton? We have missed you around here so much lately, but of course we knew that you must be very much occupied

She stopped and a little embarrassed flush spread over her face.

“I have been, Loretta. Thank you so much for your kind note, and for your share in the beautiful wreath you girls sent in memory of my dear father.”

“Sure, we’re all of us your friends, Miss Lawton; why wouldn’t we be, after all you’ve done for us?”

“It is because I feel that, that I wanted to have a talk with you this afternoon. Loretta, if a position were offered to you as filing clerk in the office of a great financier of this city, at a suitable salary, would you accept it, if you could be doing me a great personal service at the same time?”

“Would I, Miss Lawton? Just try me! I’d take it for the experience alone, without the salary, and jump at the chance, even if you weren’t concerned in it at all, but if it would be doing you a service at the same time, I’m more than glad.”

“Thank you, Loretta. The position will be with an associate of my father’s, I think, President Mallowe of the Street Railways. You must attend faithfully to your duties, if I am able to obtain this place for you, but I think the main part of your service to me will consist of keeping your eyes open. To-morrow morning a man will come here and interview you a man in whom you must place implicit confidence and trust, and whose directions you must follow to the letter. He will tell you just what to do for me. This man is my friend; he is working in my interests, and if you care for me you must not fail him.”

“Indeed I won’t, Miss Lawton! I’ll do whatever he tells me.... You said that I was to keep my eyes open. Does that mean that there is something you wish me to find out for you?” she asked shrewdly.

“I cannot tell you exactly what you are to do for me, Loretta. The gentleman whom you are to meet to-morrow morning will give you all the details.” Anita Lawton approached the girl and laid her hand on her shoulder. “I can surely trust you? You will not fail me?”

The quick tears sprang to the Irish girl’s eyes, and for a moment softened their rather hard brilliance.

“You know that you can trust me, Miss Lawton! I’d do anything in the world for you!”

Anita Lawton held a similar conversation with each of the three girls, with a like result. To Fifine Dechaussee, a tall, refined girl, with the colorless, devout face of a religieuse, the probability of entering a minister’s home, as governess for his children, was most welcome. The young French girl, homesick and alone in a strange land, had found in Anita Lawton her one friend, and her gratitude for this first opportunity given her, seemed overwhelming. Margaret Hefferman rejoiced at the possible opportunity of becoming a stenographer to the great promoter, Mr. Rockamore; and demure, fair-haired little Agnes Olson was equally pleased with the prospect of operating a switchboard in the office of Timothy Carlis, the politician.

Meantime, back in his office, Henry Blaine was receiving the personal report of Guy Morrow.

“The old man seems to be strictly on the level,” he was saying. “He attends to his own affairs and seems to be running a legitimate business in his little shop, where he prints and sells maps. I went there, of course, to look it over, but I couldn’t see anything crooked about it. However, when I left, I took a wax impression of the lock, in case you wanted me to have a key made and institute a more thorough investigation, at a time when I would not be disturbed.”

“That’s good, Morrow. We may need to do that later. At present I want you merely to keep an eye on them, and note who their visitors are. You’ve been talking with the girl you say the daughter?”

“Yes, sir ” The young man paused in sudden confusion. “She’s a very quiet, respectable, proud sort of young woman, Mr. Blaine not at all the kind you would expect to find the daughter of an old crook like Jimmy Brunell. And by the way, here’s a funny coincidence! She’s a protegee of Miss Lawton’s, employed in some philanthropic home or club, as she calls it, which Pennington Lawton’s daughter runs.”

“By Jove!” Blaine exclaimed, “I might have known it! I thought there was something familiar about her appearance when I first saw her! No wonder Miss Lawton had promised not to divulge her name. It’s a small world, Morrow. I’ll have to look into this. Go back now and keep your eye on Jimmy.”

“Very well, sir.” Guy Morrow paused at the door and turned toward his chief. “Have you seen the late editions of the evening papers, Mr. Blaine? They’re all slamming you, for refusing to accept the call to Grafton, to investigate those bomb outrages last night.”

Henry Blaine smiled.

“There won’t be any more of them,” he remarked quietly. “That strike will die down as quickly as it arose, Morrow; the whole thing was a plant, and the labor leaders and factory owners themselves were merely tools in the hands of the politicians. That strike was arranged by our friend Timothy Carlis, to get me away from Illington on a false mission.”

“You don’t think, sir, that they suspect

“No, but they are taking no chances on my getting into the game. They don’t suspect yet, but they will soon because the time has come for us to get busy.”