could!”

“Within a reasonable length of time?”

“I don’t know about the time! But I could get him, all right.”

“If you were still on the outside work?” interposed Copeland.

“I certainly wouldn’t expect to dig him out o’ my stamp drawer,” was Blake’s heavily facetious retort.

Copeland and the Commissioner looked at each other, for one fraction of a second.

“You know what my feeling is,” resumed the latter, “on this Binhart case.”

“I know what my feeling is,” declared Blake.

“What?”

“That the right method would’ve got him six months ago, without all this monkey work!”

“Then why not end the monkey work, as you call it?”

“How?”

“By doing what you say you can do!” was the Commissioner’s retort.

“How’m I going to hold down a chair and hunt a crook at the same time?”

“Then why hold down the chair? Let the chair take care of itself. It could be arranged, you know.”

Blake had the stage-juggler’s satisfaction of seeing things fall into his hands exactly as he had manœuvered they should. His reluctance was merely a dissimulation, a stage wait for heightened dramatic effect.

“How’d you do the arranging?” he calmly inquired.

“I could see the Mayor in the morning. There will be no Departmental difficulty.”

“Then where’s the trouble?”

“There is none, if you are willing to go out.”

“Well, we can’t get Binhart here by pink-tea invitations. Somebody’s got to go out and get him!”

“The bank raised the reward to eight thousand this week,” interposed the ruminative Copeland.

“Well, it’ll take money to get him,” snapped back the Second Deputy, remembering that he had a nest of his own to feather.

“It will be worth what it costs,” admitted the Commissioner.

“Of course,” said Copeland, “they’ll have to honor your drafts—in reason.”

“There will be no difficulty on the expense side,” quietly interposed the Commissioner. “The city wants Binhart. The whole country wants Binhart. And they will be willing to pay for it.”