LITMIR.BIZ

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mother was Irish."

      "And your father?"

      "Search me!"

      The dew-lapped head moved slowly up and down. Then came still another moment of silence.

      "Now, Sadie, there's a door you're keeping shut between the two of us."

      "A door?" echoed the girl.

      "Yes, a door that you don't seem willing to open; a door that seems to lead out on other days." He raised a heavy hand at the flash of alarm in her wide-open young eyes. "But I'm going to let that door stay shut, my girl; for as long as it stays that way it needn't count with either one of us."

      "I don't quite get yuh," murmured the not altogether tranquil young woman. "And what's the game, anyway, wit' all this third-degree stuff?"

      "Have I seemed too inquisitive?"

      "No-o-o-o! But when yuh get me thumb-prints ​and me weight, tub-side, yuh'll just about have me record, won't yuh ?"

      The chief smiled as he bent over the papers in front of him.

      "My dear girl, we've had your record here for the last five years. That's part of our business."

      "Hully gee!" said the girl, stiffening in the chair where she sat. Then, furrowing her young brow, she craned apprehensively about at the intimidating sheets of closely-written script.

      "But that's not the point, Sadie," pursued her inquisitor. "The point is that you're a remarkably clever young woman."

      Sadie Wimpel, under her rice-powder, turned promptly and visibly pink.

      "Aw, Chief, cut out the con!"

      "But I mean it." The girl shook her head.

      "I'm a mutt and I know it. And I've been as nervous as a cat since I breezed in here, for when yuh swivel-chair boys throw a scare into me I flop straight back to me Eight' Ward talk. But plant me outside wit' the hotel broads and I can pull the s'ciety stuff so's Ida Vernon'd look like an also-ran!"

      "You're not only clever, Sadie, but you're ​attractive. You're young and you're good to look at. And the fact that you're a distinct deviation from type makes you especially valuable for the work we're going to lay out for you."

      A secretarial-looking young man in glasses entered the room and stepped softly to the chief's desk. There he murmured a discreet word or two and as softly left the room. Chief Blynn's hand went out and touched a buzzer-button on his desk-end. Insignificant as that movement was, the girl's quick eye detected a valedictory note in it.

      "Then yuh're goin' to gimme that work?" she asked as she rose to her feet.

      "That depends on your friend Kestner."

      "Where does Kestner come in?"

      "He comes in through that door in two minutes. He and Wilsnach, in fact, are waiting out there to talk this case over with me."

      "So Wilsnach's there too?" said the girl, staring at the door.

      "Yes, Sadie; but I've got to deny you the pleasure of seeing him. I want you to step out this other way, and go straight back to your room at the Raleigh. Then I want you to wait there until I call you up. And to-night after dinner either Shrubb or ​Brubacher will come and explain just what has to be done !"

      The heavy-bodied man was on his feet by this time, piloting her toward the door on the far side of the room. But the girl hung back for a moment.

      "There's just one thing, Chief," she ventured, with a hand-movement toward the written sheets on the desk-top. "Have yuh gotta put Wilsnach wise to all that dope there?"

      "What dope?"

      "About me black velvet past!"

      The chief laughed.

      "That's an operative's report on the Warren pearl-smuggling case," he explained. "But in the matter of that door I happened to mention, I said it would stay shut, Sadie, and shut it stays!"

      "I get yuh!" she announced, as she passed out of the room. But flippant as her words were, there remained in them a tremulous note of gratitude.

      Chief Blynn swung about, still smiling, as the door on the opposite side of the room opened. The next moment he was shaking hands with Kestner and Wilsnach of the Paris office.

      "Kestner," the head of the Service said as he sank into his swivel-chair, "I want you to come back."

      ​"My fighting days are over," announced the man who had said good-by to the Service. Yet he looked with no unfriendly glance at the ponderous face in which was set the shrewdest pair of eyes he had ever stared into.

      "Then make this your last fight," almost pleaded the official, who plainly was not greatly given to petitioning for favors.

      "Try the younger men," Kestner smilingly suggested. "Give Wilsnach here a chance on the case."

      The man from the Paris office shifted a little uneasily.

      "Wilsnach was on the case for a week," explained the chief, "and yesterday he asked me to wire for you."

      There was open reproof in Kestner's glance at his colleague of other days.

      "Wilsnach knows I came to America for quite another purpose," he explained; "for the somewhat personal, though trifling, purpose of getting married."

      "My dear fellow, by all means get married," began the man at the desk. "But—"

      "But at once tear off on a beagle-chase around the world after some verminous criminal with a ​weakness for ten-cent bed-houses and traveling steerage!"

      "This chase will not take you out of America," corrected Chief Blynn. "That much I can guarantee."

      "But it will take me out of my club and my newer way of looking at things," explained the patient-eyed Kestner. "You see, I seem to be developing a sort of philosophic sense of humor, and that leads to self-criticism, and that in turn keeps whispering to me that gum-shoeing and gray hairs don't always go well together!"

      "So what you want is peace with honor, the same as the rest of this country that's sleeping on a volcano!"

      "I've had enough of the volcano, at any rate."

      "Well, for a family man who's tired of eruptions, I should think an embassy secretaryship, say Rome for ten months, then London for a year, and then one of the quieter Continental Embassies itself, would be just about the right thing to keep the rust off."

      Kestner turned and eyed the older man; but that older man disregarded his stare.

      "This isn't loose talk, Kestner. We can't expect ​you to come back without making it worth while for you. But you know the way things stand with the Administration. You know the Navy people can't afford to let much more of their stuff get out. And when you land your people you'll get your post. That's as sure as taxes and death!"

      "You could do it inside of a month," prompted the bland-eyed Wilsnach.

      "There are occasions," said the solemn-eyed Kestner, "when a month may seem a very long space of time."

      "Isn't an ambassadorship sometimes worth three or four weeks of waiting?" inquired the man at the desk. "I know a few guys who've worked twenty years for 'em!"

      "But I'm not working for ambassadorships."

      "D' you mean you don't even want one?" was the somewhat acidulated inquiry.

      "It's a great honor, and a great opportunity," acknowledged Kestner. "But when I work for my country I don't do it with one hand in the pork-barrel!"

      The chief's gesture was one of heavy impatience.

      "This thing's already been thought over and talked over. Foreign posts aren't passed around ​like trading-stamps. They go to the men equipped for them—and from this year those men are going to need greater equipment

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