Then he took a little time for reflection. Perhaps a meeting between Latisan and Crowley might strike a few sparks to illuminate a situation that was very much in the dark. "If Crowley is around the office I'm going to ask him to step in here. The talk will be all friendly, I take it?" "I have nothing against Crowley, as matters stand." Latisan did not greet Crowley when the operative replied to the summons and walked into the private office; on the other hand, Latisan showed no animosity. He merely surveyed Crowley with an expression of mingled pity and wonderment, as if he were sorry for an able-bodied man who earned a living by the means which the operative employed. Crowley, at first, was not as serene as the man whom he had injured. "Latisan tells me that he holds no grudge," stated Mern, encouragingly. "I'm glad of that, Latisan. We have to play the game in this business. And I'm not laying it up against you, how you made a monkey of me in that dining room and nigh twisted my head off. Both of us know now who it was that rubbed our ears and sicked us at each other." The victim of the operations nodded, no especial emotion visible in his countenance. "Right here between us three I'll come out all frank and free," continued Crowley. "I'm making a claim to the chief in this thing, Latisan, and I believe you'll back me up. She jumped in on me and Elsham--one day later from the agency than we were--and she wouldn't talk to me, and I'll admit I didn't have her play sized from the start. But she wasn't the one that turned the trick." Mr. Crowley was venturing rather far with the victim, but he was encouraged by Latisan's continued mildness and by a firm determination to set himself right with Mern, who had been doubting his efficiency. "As I have been looking at it, she was the one who did it," insisted the young man. "Now see here! Wake up!" Crowley was blustering as he grew bolder. "You were letting the girl wind you around her finger. What woke you up? What made you sore on the whole proposition up there? It was my tip to you! You can't deny it." "Yes, it might have been your tip," admitted Latisan, knotting his brows, staring at the floor, confused in his memories and puzzling over the mystery. "I had promised to bring down the logs because she asked me to keep on and do it." "There you have it!" indorsed Crowley, swinging his arm and flattening his thick palm in front of the chief. "I claim the credit." Crowley had become defiantly intrepid, facing that manner of man who was so manifestly cowed and muddled. The operative was back in his encouraging environment of the city; he remembered the thrust of those prongs of fingers on his head when he was obliged to dissemble and was shamed in the north country. He was holding his grudge. And he was assiduously backing up the claims he had made to his chief. "The girl you're talking about had nothing to do with pulling you off the job. She was double-crossing our agency."