"As for your noise about quitting six weeks ago," he said, "how was I to know that the suckers were going to stop running? We looked good for three months then. We've got three weeks to go. All right. As for the pinch, they won't get us unless the wad gives out. Every stage of this game has been submitted to a lawyer. We're just a hair inside--but inside all the same. _But_ if we can't come through liberally to him when we're really in trouble, we might as well measure ourselves for stripes. He's that kind of lawyer. With a hundred thousand dollars--" he seemed to roll that phrase under his tongue--"we can stay and make snoots at the Secret Service or beat it elsewhere, just as we please. Ozias Cowler can furnish the hundred thou'. But he'll take only one bait. I've tried 'em all--flies, worms, beetles, and grasshoppers--and there's only one. And that one is trying to wriggle off the hook. I thought last night when I sent her out with him that maybe she would fall for him. The rest would have been easy. But she only worked up a case of this here maidenly virtue. On top of that, she reads this letter. Of course, she has read it, though she don't know I know. I squeezed that out of her. "There," concluded Warner, "that's the layout, isn't it?" He turned to Byan; and his smiling, office manner came over his expression. "What would you say, Joe? You're by way of being an expert on this kind of bait." In the Carbonado Mining Company, Warner ruled partly through his quality of personal force, but partly through fear, the cement of underworld society. Just as he shook at O'Hearn from time to time the threat conveyed by that sinister gesture, he held over Byan the knowledge of that trade and traffic, shameful even among criminals, from which Byan had risen to be a pander of low finance. At this thrust, however, Byan did not pale, as had O'Hearn. His expression became only the more inscrutable. "You should have let me break her in when I wanted to, months ago," he said. "I'd 'a' had her ready now. He won't fall for anyone else. I've offered those other Molls to him, but he's crushed on her and won't look at anybody else. So we've got to put the screws on her. They're all cowards inside--yellow every one." "Meaning?" inquired Warner.