"Of course, as you can see, John W. Blake is the principal figure in the whole intrigue, just as the Pearl Street line is the key to the merger scheme. But you stay away from Blake. Don't go near him--yet. If he gets wind of what we are figuring on doing here in this office he might have influence enough to make trouble for us before we're ready for the big blow-off. Leave Blake out of it for the time being--leave him strictly alone! He can do his talking and his explaining after we've smoked the nigger out of the woodpile. But here are two other men"--he touched the remaining piles of sorted-out clippings--"who are willing, under cover, to indulge in a little conversation. I want you to read these morgue clippings, more to get an angle on their personalities than for any other reason. Bogardus--Samuel P. Bogardus--used to be Blake's best little trained performing lobbyist. When it comes to handling the members of a general assembly or a board of aldermen he's fuller of cute tricks than a clown dog is. Old Pratt is a different kind of crook--a psalm-singing, pussyfooted old buccaneer, teaching a Bible class on Sundays and thimblerigging in Wall Street on week days. As a Pharisee who's working at the trade he'd make any Pharisee you ever ran across out yonder on the Pacific Slope, where you came from, look like a piker. "Well, for reasons best known to themselves they happen just at present to be sore at Blake. There's been a falling-out. He may have used them to do his dirty work in the past; and then, when this melon is ripe to cut, frozen both of them out of the picnic. I don't care anything about their quarrels, or their motives either; I am after this story. "Now, then, here's your campaign: You take to-night off--I'll tell the night city editor I've assigned you on a special detail--and you spend the evening reading up on these clippings, so you'll have the background--the local colour for your story--all in your head. To-morrow morning at ten o'clock you go to the Wampum Club up on East Fiftieth Street and send your name in to Mr. Bogardus. He'll be waiting there in a private room for you, and old Pratt will be with him. We'll have to keep them under cover, of course, and protect them up to the limit, in exchange for the stuff they're willing to give up to us. So you're not to mention them as the sources of any part of your information. Don't name them in your story or to anybody on earth before or after we print it. Take all the notes you please while you're with them, but keep your notes put away where nobody can see 'em, and tear 'em up as soon as you're done with 'em. They'll probably keep you there a couple of hours, because they've got a lot to tell, son; take it from me they have. Well, say they keep you three hours. That'll give you time to get your lunch and catch the subway and be down town by two-thirty.