She was that, at least to him; and Durkin was content to let the world think what it liked. He found work to be done, it is true,—rigorous and exacting work while it lasted, when the appointed days for holding up Penfield’s despatches came around. But the danger of it all, for some reason, never entered his mind, as he sat over his instrument, reading off the horses to the woman at his side, who, in turn, repeated them over the telephones, in cipher, to MacNutt and Mackenzie; and then, when the time allowance had elapsed, cutting in once more and sending on the intercepted despatches, even imitating to a nicety the slip-shod erratic volubility of Corcoran’s “blind send.” Once only did a disturbing incident tend to ruffle the quiet waters of Durkin’s strange contentment. It was one afternoon when Mackenzie had been sent in to make a report, and had noticed certain things to which he did not take kindly, Durkin thought. “I’m not saying anything,” he blurted out, when they were alone, “but don’t you let that woman make a fool of you!” “You shut up about that woman!” retorted Durkin, hotly. Then, imagining he saw some second and deeper meaning in the other’s words, he caught him by the lapel of the vest, and held him against the wall. “You _are_ saying something, you hound! What do you mean by that, anyway?” he cried, with a white face. The man against the wall could see that a word would bring the onslaught, but he was used to trouble of that sort, and many a keener menace. So he only laughed contemptuously, with his shoulders up, as he pulled the other’s fingers from his throat. “You damned lobster, you!” he said, going off on the safer tack of amiable profanity. Then feeling himself free once more, his old bitter audacity proclaimed itself. “You fool, you, don’t you know that woman’s been—” But here the entrance of the girl herself put a stop to his speech. Yet, troubled in spirit as some currish and unspoken insinuation left him, Durkin breathed no word to the girl herself of what had taken place, imperiously as she demanded to know what Mackenzie had been saying.