LITMIR.BIZ

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under that audacity a touch of restiveness.

      "Have you ever been in Europe?"

      "Sure!"

      ​"Where?"

      "About all over the lot," was the languid response.

      "I asked you "where?"

      "Well, Odessa, Budapest, Palermo, Petersburg, Rome, the Riviera, Paris, Ostend, Amsterdam, the——"

      "That'll do!" cut in the man at the desk.

      "Quite some little pilgrim, ain't I? the trim-figured young woman in the Bendel hat had the effrontery to ask.

      The man at the desk fingered a paper-weight fashioned from an old coin-die of the Philadelphia Mint.

      "Supposing you tell me what you know about this Fletcher report leak," he quietly suggested.

      There was a rustle of silk as Sadie Wimpel crossed her knees.

      "Admir'l Fletcher roped out a Navy report showin' how and why a foreign fleet could land in the United States. Sen'tor Lodge s'bmitted that report to the Senate. But before doin' it he told 'em the report ought 'o be printed in confidence, as they put it, and the motion was carried. Secret'ry Daniels, yuh see, didn't want any foreign guy gettin' ​next to the data in that report. It'd be LIke advertisin' your safe-combination to——"

      "I know all that."

      "Well, there was a certain foreign guy got hold o' that report."

      "Who was it?"

      "A capper for Keudell."

      "But who?"

      "The same capper that got hold of our secret signal code book from the destroyer Hull last summer."

      "How do you know that?"

      "B'cause I'm a friend of a friend of a friend of the boob of an ensign who gave up the book and faced a court-martial for it, a few weeks ago, on the Oregon."

      "Where was the Oregon when that court-martial was held?"

      "Anchored in San Francisco Bay," was the girl's answer.

      For a moment or two Chief Blynn of the Secret Service stared out of the broad window of the Treasury Building. Just beyond that window was the Washington Monument, and behind that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where the electric elevators were rising and dipping with their ​afternoon crowds, and into B Street was swarming a motley throng of designers and engravers and plate-printers, side by side with stitchers and counters and sizers, with steel-press men and bull-gangers and oil-burners from the Ink Mill, all hurrying homeward after the day's work. They were part of a machinery which took on a touch of nobility because of its labyrinthine intricateness, because of its sheer unguessed complexities. Yet they were a mere company in that vast army which Chief Blynn and his agents were appointed both to appraise and protect. And they brought home to the haggard-eyed official so meditatively watching them a hint of the more immediate complications confronting him.

      "You said you'd done Secret Service work before?" he asked, as he turned back to the girl.

      "Yes."

      "Where?"

      "In Europe."

      "Anywhere else?"

      "Right here in America."

      "For whom?"

      "For yuh!"

      The chief looked ponderously up from the papers ​in which he had pretended to be so pertinaciously interested. It was an old trick of the chief's, that of masking his mental batteries behind an escarpment of manuscripts.

      "Then why haven't I a record of that work?"

      "I guess you didn't know I was doin' it."

      "Why?"

      "Because I was actin' for Kestner."

      "Of the Paris office?"

      "Yes."

      "And with anybody else?"

      The girl hesitated.

      "Yes; with young Wilsnach as well."

      The chief glanced down at his pages of script.

      "On what case?"

      "The Lambert counterfeitin' case."

      "Then why aren't you still acting with Kestner?"

      "Because he's quittin' the Service."

      "Who told you that?"

      "Wilsnach."

      "Does Wilsnach tell you everything he knows?"

      Sadie Wimpel uncrossed her knees.

      "Not by a long shot!"

      "But working together that way, the two of you naturally became more or less confidential?"

      ​A slight flush showed under the rice-powder on the woman's sophisticated young face.

      "I was wise to Kestner's duckin' the buggy long before Wilsnach ever opened his peep about it."

      "How did that happen?"

      "Because I knew the skirt who was cannin' his purfession'l chances by marryin' him."

      "Does marriage always do that?"

      "When a slooth settles down it ain't wise to stack too high on him stayin' the curly wolf o' the singed-cat crib."

      The chief puzzled for a moment or two over this apparently enigmatic statement.

      "Then it's Wilsnach you want to swing in with on this new work?"

      "Not if I have to crowbar me way into it."

      "But why are you so sure you can help the Service out in this case?"

      "I never said I wanted to help the Service out."

      "Then what do you want to do?"

      "I want 'o see Wilsnach make good."

      For just a moment a smile flickered about the face of the pendulous-jowled man at the desk. It made the watching girl think of heat-lightning along an August sky-line.

      ​"But how do you know Wilsnach is going to be put on this case?"

      "Because he's the only man yuh've got who can round up that gang."

      Again a meditative silence fell over the man at the desk. Then he threw aside his pose of hostility, as a man makes ready for work by throwing off his coat.

      "Sadie, how old are you?" he quickly inquired.

      "Good night!" was the girl's grimly evasive answer.

      "You said your name was Wimpel. Have you any other?"

      "None worth mentionin'."

      "You mean you're not a married woman?"

      "Not on your life!"

      "And never were?"

      A shadow crossed the pert young face under the Bendel hat.

      "Me for the single harness!" she announced, with a shrug.

      He sat pondering her for a silent moment or two.

      "What nationality are you?"

      "Come again," said the puzzled girl.

      "Are you a good American?"

      ​"I won't gamble on the 'good.' But ain't bein' just Amurican about enough in times like these?"

      "It's enough!" acknowledged the man at the desk, with a sigh.

      "But what I wanted to get at is, where did your parents come from?"

      "Me

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