Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/25

. Yet it was good to remember that Connie Binhart was going to be ground in the wheels of the law, and ground fine, and ground to a finish.

"What did you want me for, Jim?" the woman was again asking him. She spoke with an intimate directness, and yet in her attitude were subtle reservations, a consciousness of the thin ice on which they both stood. Each saw, only too plainly, the need for great care, in every step. In 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.