The Chief slowly arose, and resting his hands upon the shoulders of the younger man, looked in his face with fatherly pride. "Dick, you're a splendid fellow, and a shrewd detective," he said, "but you have a weakness. You study strangers, but you trust your friends with absolute blindness. Van is ambitious." "So am I." "He loves money." "A little too well, I admit." "If he should accept this offer?" "But he won't." "If he _should_;" persisted the Chief. "If such a thing were possible,--if, without a friendly consultation, and a fair and square send off, he should take up the cudgel against me, then--" "Then, Dick?" Richard Stanhope's eyes flashed, and his mouth set itself in firm lines. "_Then_," he said, "I would measure my strength against his as a detective; but always as a friend, and never to his injury!" "And, Dick, if, in the thick of the strife, Van forgets his friendship for you and becomes your enemy?" "Then, as I am only human, I should be his enemy too. But that will not happen." "I hope not; I hope not, my boy. But--Van Vernet has already accepted the stranger's proposition." Stanhope leaped to his feet. "What!" he cried, "has Van _agreed_ to work against me--without a word to me--and so soon!" His lips trembled now, and his eyes searched those of his Chief with the eager, inquiring look of a grieved child. "It is as I say, Stanhope." [Illustration: "What, has Van _agreed_ to work against me--without a word to me--and so soon!"--page 50.] "Then," and he threw back his head and instantly resumed his usual look of careless indifference, "tell your patron, whoever he may be, that _I am his man_, for one year, or for twenty!" CHAPTER V. "STANHOPE'S FIRST TRICK." Van Vernet and Richard Stanhope had been brother detectives during the entire term of their professional career. Entering the Agency when mere striplings, they had at once formed a friendship that had been strong and lasting. Their very differences of disposition and habits made them the better fellow-workmen, and the _role_ most difficult for one was sure to be found the easier part for the other to play. They had been a strong combination, and the Chief of the detectives wasted some time in pondering the question: what would be the result, when their skill and courage stood arrayed against each other? Meantime, Richard Stanhope, wasting no thought upon the matter, hastened from the presence of his Chief to his own quarters. "It's my last night," he muttered, as he inserted his key in the lock, "and I'll just take one more look at the slums. I don't want to lose one bird from that flock." Half an hour later, there sallied forth from the door where Stanhope had entered, a roughly-dressed, swaggering, villainous-looking fellow, who bore about with him the strongly defined odors of tobacco and bad whiskey.