Out of the Air

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

“Dead sure!” responded O’Hearn. “The regular bulls ain’t touching mining operations just now. It’s up to the Secret Service. In two weeks more they’ll be all cleaned up on the war, and then they’ll be reorganizing their little committee on high finance. That there Inspector Laughlin will take charge. He knows you, Boss. Then”—O’Hearn spread his hands with a gesture of finality—“about a week more and they’ll get round to us. Three weeks is all we’re safe to go. They stop our mail and then—the pinch maybe. The tip’s straight from you-know-who. The pinch—see!”

At the repetition of that word “pinch,” Byan’s countenance changed subtly. It was as though he had winced within. But he spoke in his usual velvety tone.

“Less than three weeks—h’m! How much is Cowler good for?”

“About a hundred thou’—big or nothing,” replied Warner. He was drawing stars and circles on the desk blotter. “He can’t be landed without the girl. If he’d tumbled for the Lizzies you shook at him—but he didn’t—it’s this red-headed doll in our office or nothing. And I’ve told you—”

Here O’Hearn threw himself abruptly into the conversation.

“Lave out th’ girrul,” he said. Usually O’Hearn’s Irish showed in his speech only by a slight twist at the turn of his tongue. Now it reverted to a thick brogue. “I’ll not have anythin’ to do—”

“We’ll leave in or take out exactly what I say,” put in Warner smoothly. “Exactly what I say,” he repeated. At this direct thrust, Byan lifted his somewhat dreamy eyes. He dropped them again. Then Warner, his gaze directly on O’Hearn’s face, made a swift, sinister gesture. He drew a forefinger round his own throat, and completed the motion by pointing directly upward. O’Hearn, his face suddenly going a little pale, subsided. Warner broke into the sweet, Christian smile of his office manner. Subtly, he seemed to take command. His personality filled the room as he leaned forward over the table and summed everything up.

“As for your noise about quitting six weeks ago,” he said, “how was I to know that the suckers were going to stop running? We looked good for three months then. We’ve got three weeks to go. All right. As for the pinch, they won’t get us unless the wad gives out. Every stage of this game has been submitted to a lawyer. We’re just a hair inside—but inside all the same. But if we can’t come through liberally to him when we’re really in trouble, we might as well measure ourselves for stripes. He’s that kind of lawyer. With a hundred thousand dollars—” he seemed to roll that phrase under his tongue—“we can stay and make snoots at the Secret Service or beat it elsewhere, just as we please. Ozias Cowler can furnish the hundred thou’. But he’ll take only one bait. I’ve tried ’em all—flies, worms, beetles, and grasshoppers—and there’s only one. And that one is trying to wriggle off the hook. I thought last night when I sent her out with him that maybe she would fall for him. The rest would have been easy. But she only worked up a case of this here maidenly virtue. On top of that, she reads this letter. Of course, she has read it, though she don’t know I know. I squeezed that out of her.

“There,” concluded Warner, “that’s the layout, isn’t it?” He turned to Byan; and his smiling, office manner came over his expression. “What would you say, Joe? You’re by way of being an expert on this kind of bait.” In the Carbonado Mining Company, Warner ruled partly through his quality of personal force, but partly through fear, the cement of underworld society. Just as he shook at O’Hearn from time to time the threat conveyed by that sinister gesture, he held over Byan the knowledge of that trade and traffic, shameful even among criminals, from which Byan had risen to be a pander of low finance. At this thrust, however, Byan did not pale, as had O’Hearn. His expression became only the more inscrutable.