Here was this fellow sweeping into my office every day, demanding every detail of my operations on Mrs. Winslow, even intimating that I should consult with him as to every move to be made, and submit to his consideration even the character of the men employed, the color of their clothing and the quality, and every item or act concerning or included in the work. He had, in some unexplainable way that is common to brazen assurance or unmitigated ignorance, fastened himself upon the weak old man as a sort of confidential agent, or what-not, worked upon his fears, his superstitions, and his foolish half-faith in a system of religion that has never yet made other than male and female prostitutes, adventurers, or lunatics, until the old man, standing alone and almost friendless, had learned to cling to him, and almost rely upon his consummate bravado to extricate him from the meshes of the web his own vileness and a vile woman had woven about him; so that in one sense he stood in the relation of principal to me, and I found it impossible to shake him off, or relieve myself to any great extent of his impudent presence and foolish suggestions.
I knew that he was utterly without principle, and was only making a show of this extraordinary energy in order to appear to more than earn whatever he got from Lyon, and continue in the latter's mind the feeling that he was utterly indispensable to him. I also knew him to be as mean an adventurer as Mrs. Winslow was an adventuress; that he was the villain who had first unloosed this vast flood of vileness and lechery upon society, and who, as the shameless Christian minister of Detroit, had put the fire-brand from hell in this woman's hand, to ever after continue her moral incendiarism wherever she might go, until thrust from life and infamous memory, and it annoyed me that this sort of a man should dictate to me.
I could have disposed of him at one stroke, and I am satisfied that had I on only one occasion addressed him as the Rev. Mr. Bland, and casually inquired concerning his old Detroit friends, including Mother Blake, he would have slunk away without a word or a protest of any kind whatever; and had I gone farther, and showed him what he himself did not know, that this woman, whom he was so anxious to have brought down with some startling development, was none other than the one whom he had led into a life of sin from the pleasant Nettleton farm-house by the winding river, and that he was now playing guardian to a man that would have probably been free from the curse that was hanging over him, had it not been for Harcout's earlier and more rascally villainy, he would have disappeared altogether, but I realized that this would not do. It would have had the effect of putting Lyon at the mercy of a horde of new ghouls, while the existing one frightened all others away and was in a measure a protection to Lyon, for he was now only bled by one, where he would otherwise have been bled by twenty.
Aside from this, it would have probably resulted in Mrs. Winslow's being put on her guard, giving her time, not only to cover her tracks in many criminal instances we had already discovered against her, but also cause her to prevent witnesses from giving depositions, or, where depositions had already been taken, give her an opportunity to secure affidavits from the parties who gave them that they were mistaken as to the identity of the person named in those instruments, and in other particulars greatly destroy the effect of the work already done and that which I had planned; and I was consequently obliged to bear the fellow's dictatorial manner and suggestions, as he insisted on doing the work this way or that way, and urged that I was not "pushing things" fast enough.
"Why, Mr. Pinkerton," said he one day, his eyebrows elevated and the corners of his mouth drawn down, his whole face expressive of lofty condescension and gentle, though firm reproof, "things are going rather slow—rather slow. Hem! When we brought this case to you, we depended upon expedition—depended on expedition, Mr. Pinkerton."
"And have you any cause to complain?" I asked pleasantly.
"Well, I don't know as we should exactly call it 'complain.' No, I don't know as we exactly complain; but, if we might be allowed the privilege—hem!—we would beg to suggest, without giving offence—beg to suggest, mind you, without giving offence," he repeated, in the most offensive way possible, "that, if I might be allowed the expression, things are not pushed quite enough!"
"On the contrary," I continued good-naturedly, "we have secured what any good lawyer would consider an overwhelming amount of evidence, and are letting the woman take her own course, in order to allow her to completely unwind herself."
"But you see, Pinkerton, we supposed when we brought the case to you that you would, so to speak, smash things—break her all up and scatter her, as it were—hem!—disperse her, you know."
He said this as though he had taken a contract with Lyon to compel me to avenge them both on the woman, and it heated my blood to be considered in the light of any person's hired assassin; but I controlled myself, and explained the matter to him.