“To save myself from seeming like a flatterer, I must say it’s because of the woods feature that I remember you so well. The forest interests me. I’m afraid I’m inclined to be very foolish about the woods. Why, in a cafeteria—last fall—there was——”
But she checked herself and flushed. She turned to Mern. “I beg your pardon. I’m ready.” She sat down and opened her notebook.
“But what about it?” quizzed Craig.
“A mere chance meeting with a man from the north country. I really don’t understand why I mentioned it. My interest in the woods—the thought of the woods—tripped my tongue.” She nodded to the stolid Mern as if to remind him of the business in hand, and Mern ducked his square head at Craig.
It was the habit of Mern to go thoroughly over a case with a client before calling in Miss Kennard. At the second going-over in her presence the topic was better shaken down, was in a more solidified form for her notebook. The Comas director had already told his story once to the chief.
Craig leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling, again collecting his data in his mind. He had dictated before to Miss Kennard and knew how Mern wanted his names and his facts. “Subject, the spring drives on the Noda water. Object, hanging up or blocking the independent drive of Echford Flagg and——”
Miss Kennard’s pencil slipped somehow. It fell from her fingers, bounced from the floor on its rubber tip, and ticked off the sharpened lead when it hit the floor again.
Lida darted for it, picked it up, and ran out of the room. “I’m going for another,” she explained.
She was gone for some time. Craig glanced out of the window into the slaty sky, from which rain was falling. It was a day unseasonably warm and humid for early spring. “I hope it’s raining in the Noda. But it’s just as liable to be snow. Latisan can’t do much yet awhile.” He looked at his watch as if starting the Noda drives was a matter of minutes. He was showing some impatience when Miss Kennard returned. She went to the window, and sat in a chair there, her face turned from them. “If you don’t mind,” she apologized. “It’s on account of the light. I can hear perfectly from here.”
She heard then that the Comas wanted to put Echford Flagg down and out as an operator, now that paralysis had stricken him. She had Craig’s assurance delivered to Mern that, without a certain Ward Latisan old Flagg would not be able to bring his drive down. The Comas director declared that an ordinary boss could never get along with the devils who made up the crew. He declared further that Latisan was of a sort to suit desperadoes and had put into the crew some kind of fire which made the men dangerous to vested interests on the river. He devoted himself to Latisan with subdued profanity, despite the presence of the young woman. He averred that Latisan himself had no love for Flagg—nobody up-country gave a tinker’s hoot for Flagg, anyway. He insisted, desperate in spite of certain modifying private convictions, that Latisan could be pried off the job if some kind of a tricky influence could be brought to bear or if his interest in the fight, as just a fight, could be dulled or shifted to something else or side-tracked by a ruse. He pictured Flagg as a man for whom nobody would stand up in his present state, now that he was sick and out of the game.