each lay the power to uncover, at a hand's turn, old mistakes that were
best unremembered. Yet there was a certain suave audacity about the
woman. She was not really afraid of Blake, and the Second Deputy had
to recognize that fact. This self-assurance of hers he attributed to
the recollection that she had once brought about his personal
subjugation, "got his goat," as he had phrased it. She, woman-like,
would never forget it.

"There 's a man I want. And Schmittenberg tells me you know where he
is." Blake, as he spoke, continued to look heavily down at his desk
top.

"Yes?" she answered cautiously, watching herself as carefully as an
actress with a rôle to sustain, a rôle in which she could never quite
letter-perfect.

"It's Connie Binhart," cut out the Second Deputy.

He could see discretion drop like a curtain across her watching face.

"Connie Binhart!" she temporized. Blake, as his heavy side glance
slewed about to her, prided himself on the fact that he could see
through her pretenses. At any other time he would have thrown open the
flood-gates of that ever-inundating anger of his and swept away all
such obliquities.

"I guess," he went on with slow patience "we know him best round here
as Charles Blanchard."

"Blanchard?" she echoed.