"What?" cried Luke. The veins stood out, big and blue, on his gripping hands.
"Of course the Heney man was really working with the detectives," moaned Venable; "but that won't help. They had a dictaphone in the hotel room——"
"In what hotel room?"
"The one that Jarvie was to meet the Heney man in. I thought he'd be more careful. I told him——"
Luke stood erect. He folded his arms. Venable's confession shook him, but he exerted all his strength of will to command himself.
"What are you telling me?" he asked. "Are you telling me that the League has been going in for rotten work of that sort? Are you telling me that you—you of all people—have been engineering it?"
Venable's terror gave quick place to amazement.
"You don't mean to say you didn't understand that?" he countered. "How do you suppose politics are run, anyway? Where have you been all these years under Leighton?" Anger came to his aid; his loose jaw wagged. "Don't try to get out of this trouble by pretending you didn't know about it. What we do, we do for the best ends, but I have always said—always—that the only way to beat the devil is to fight him with fire."
"Wait, please," said Luke. "I want to get this thing straight. You say that all your reform movements have had some of this element in them?"
"I say we have always fought the devil with fire."