Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/82

 "Did you give it to him?"

"No, he hammered it out of me. But you knew he was going to do that. That was part of the plant."

She sat studying her thin white hands for several seconds. Then she looked up at the calm-eyed Copeland.

"How are you going to protect me, if Blake comes back? How are you going to keep your promise?"

The First Deputy sat back in his chair and crossed his thin legs.

"Blake will not come back," he announced. She slewed suddenly round on him again.

"Then it is a plant !" she proclaimed.

"You misunderstand me, Miss Verriner. Blake will not come back as an official. There will be changes in the Department, I imagine; changes for the better which even he and his Tammany Hall friends can't stop, by the time he gets back with Binhart."

The woman gave a little hand gesture of impatience.