“Well, Brainard,” he snapped, “here you are again. What you up to now?” “Going to try the straight game, Chief,” returned Larry. “Don't try to put that old bunk over on me!” “It's not bunk, Chief. It's the real stuff.” “Cut it out, I say! Don't you suppose I had a clever bird like you picked up the minute you landed in the city, and have had you covered ever since? And if you are going straight, what about the session you had with Barney Palmer and Old Jimmie Carlisle the very night you blew in? And I'm on to this bluff of your going to that business institute. So come across, Brainard! I've got your every move covered!” “I've already come across, Chief,” replied Larry, trying to keep his temper in the face of the other's bullying manner. “I told Barney and Old Jimmie that I was through with the old game, and through with them as pals at the old game--that's all there was to that meeting. I'm going to that business institute for the same reason that every other person goes there--to learn. That's all there is to the whole business, Chief: I'm going to go straight.” Chief Barlow, hunched forward, his undershot jaw clenched on a cigar stub, regarded Larry steadily with his beady, autocratic eyes. Barlow was trained to penetrate to the inside of men's minds, and he recognized that Larry was in earnest. “You mean you think you are going to go straight,” Barlow remarked slowly and meaningly. “I know I am going to go straight,” Larry returned evenly, meeting squarely the gaze of the Chief of Detectives. “Do you realize, young man,” Barlow continued in the same measured, significant tone, “that whether you go straight, and how you go straight, depends pretty much on me?” “Mind making that a little clearer, Chief?” “I'll show you part of my hand--just remember that I'm holding back my high cards. I don't believe you're going to go straight, so we'll start with the proposition that you're not going to run straight and work on from there. You're clever, Brainard--I hand you that; and all the classy crooks trust you. That's why I had picked you out for what I wanted long before you left stir. Brainard, you're wise enough to know that some of our best pinches come from tips handed us from the inside. Brainard”--the slow voice had now become incisive, mandatory--“you're not going to go straight. You're going to string along with Barney and Old Jimmie and the rest of the bunch--we'll protect you--and you're going to slip us tips when something big is about to be pulled off.” Larry, experienced with police methods though he was, could hardly believe this thing which was being proposed to him, Larry Brainard. But he controlled himself. “If I get you, Chief, you are suggesting that I become a police stool?” “Exactly. We'll never tip your hand. And any little thing you pull off on your own we'll not bother you about. And, besides, we'll slip you a little dough regular on the quiet.”