“That's one of them,” said the secretary. “I daren't show you the other.”
“Oh, please!” she said, holding out her hand, while the Reverend Billy considerately turned his back.
Jastrow weighed the chances of detection. It was little enough he could do to lay her under obligations to him, and he was willing to do that little as he could. “I guess I can trust you,” he said, and gave her the second square of press-damp paper.
Like the first, it was addressed to the superintendent at Carbonate. But this time the brown eyes flashed and her breath came quickly as she read the vice-president's cold-blooded after-thought:
“Town-Marshal Biggin will arrive in Carbonate on Number 201 this
A.M. with a prisoner. Have our attorneys see to it that the man is
promptly jailed in default of bond. If he is set at liberty, as he
is likely to be, I shall trust you to arrange for his rearrest and
detention at all hazards.
“D.”
V. THE LANDSLIDE
Virginia took the first step in the perilous path of the strategist when she handed the incendiary telegram back to Jastrow.
“Poor Mr. Winton!” she said, with the real sympathy in the words made most obviously perfunctory by the tone. “What a world of possibilities there is masquerading behind that little word 'arrange.' Tell me more about it, Mr. Jastrow. How will they 'arrange' it?”
“Winton's rearrest? Nothing easier in a tough mining-camp like Carbonate, I should say.”