“Precisely,” replied Durkin, wheeling nervously back and forth. “This is where I’ve got to run the gauntlet of the whole Postal-Union system, cut in on their double-guarded wires, and get away with my information without being caught.” “But you can’t do it, Jim. It’s impossible.” “Oh, but it _is_ possible, quite possible!” he said, halting for a moment before her. “Here’s where the climax comes to my story—the one I started to tell you over the ’phone. You see, just at the time of that little conduit fire the Postal-Union Company was having trouble with the Electrical Workers’ Union. I happened to be laying in the supplies for that up-town loop of mine when I found they were offering two dollars an hour for expert work. I jumped on a Broadway car, and took the plunge.” “What plunge, Jim?” “I mean that I applied for work, down there, as a cable-splicer.” “Wasn’t it dangerous work—for _you_, I mean?” “Yes, a trifle so, I suppose. But none of the inside men were on the force. No one knew me there, from Adam. And it was worth it, too!” “You mean, of course—?” “I mean that a certain cable-splicer has the entrée to that conduit, that he has a hand-made chart as to its wire-disposition, and—well, several other things!” He waited for some word of appreciative triumph from her. As she remained silent, he went on again. “And I mustn’t forget to tell you that I’ve leased a little basement place not far from Pine Street. I’m going to do commercial printing and that sort of thing. I’ve got a sign out, and the power all ready, only my presses are slow in coming!” “And will be still further delayed, I suppose?” “Yes, I’m afraid they will.” Some mysterious touch of his excitement at last communicated itself to the listening woman, almost against her will. She was as fluctuant, she told herself, as the aluminum needle of a quadrant electrometer. No, she was more like the helpless little pith-ball of an electroscope, she mentally amended, ever dangling back and forth in a melancholy conflict of repulsion and attraction. Yet, as she comprehended Durkin’s plot, point by point, she began to realize the vast possibilities that confronted them, and, as ever before, to fall a victim to the zest of action, the vital sting of responsibility. Nor did she allow herself to lose sight of the care and minuteness of the continued artfulness and finish, so teeming with its secondary æsthetic values, with which he had reconnoitered his ever-menacing territory and laid his mine. And added to this, she saw, was the zest of stalking the stalker: it carried with it an ameliorating tang of dramatic irony, an uncouth touch of poetic justice.