She had not been able to "dredge" Miss Kennard. That young lady waited on Miss Elsham, but not with a tray. After a talk with Brophy, who agreed with her absolutely and placatingly, begging her to suit herself in all her acts provided she would stay on, Miss Kennard went into the parlor, closed the door carefully, and told Miss Elsham where that young woman got off as an exacting lady of leisure. "Mr. Mern would not allow it--one operative doing menial work for another. If you choose to come into the dining room, that's different." Miss Kennard then turned and walked out. She refused to stay with Miss Elsham and have a talk. "We are ordered to be very careful up here," she reminded the operative. Miss Elsham was impressed. It was as if Mern were sending new cautions by this latest arrival. Miss Kennard, in her dabblings in psychoanalysis, had secured some concrete aids for action in addition to the vague abstractions which had come into her mind when Latisan had so naively confessed on the cliff above the cataract. She understood fully the potency of a suggestion which left a lot to the imagination of the other party; only a bit of a suggestion is needed--and it must be left to itself, like yeast, to induce fermentation. For that reason Miss Kennard abruptly walked out and left Miss Elsham alone to reflect--not running away, but retiring with the air of one who had said a sufficient number of words to the wise. Miss Elsham, in her conference at the window with Crowley that evening, revealed how actively her batch of ponderings had been set to working by that bit of suggestion. Crowley, listening, wished privately that he could call back that report to Mern; Mern had repeatedly warned him to keep to his place as a strong-arm operative, bluntly bearing down on the fact that Crowley's brains were not suited for the finer points of machination. According to Miss Elsham's figuring--and Crowley acknowledged her innate brightness--the plot had thickened and Kennard, known to all operatives as Mern's close confidant, was up there as chief performer. Several days elapsed before Crowley--perspiring whenever his worries assailed him--got any word from Mern. The chief wrote guardedly, and Crowley read the letter over a dozen times without being exactly sure just what course he was to pursue. The truth was, Mr. Mern himself was doing so much guessing as to Miss Kennard that he was in no state of mind to give clean-cut commands. Crowley's letter was the first intimation to the chief of the whereabouts of his confidential secretary. She had not resigned, nor had she asked for a leave of absence, nor had she bothered to write or telephone; she did not show up at the office--that was all! Lida, having discarded ethics, had decided to play her game from an ambuscade, just as the Vose-Mern agency did its business.