ts. He found them useful; one woman in particular had proved
invaluable in the case of the great explosion at the Valentine Steel
Works. It was Mannie Kerrnon who actually carried out his designs. He
had some of her letters in his case. There was no love between them,
there had been none between them; she reaped her reward in money, which
she much preferred to affections.

Mannie Kerrnon was an Irishwoman on the mother's side. Her father was
a blackmailer, a despicable ruffian, in the pay of a notorious New York
Inspector of Police. She suspected him of killing her mother and she
hated him as a murderer. It was mainly because her father, Dirk
Kerrnon, was employed at the Valentine Steel Works that she undertook
to help Carl Meason in his nefarious plot. It was a sad disappointment
when Dirk Kerrnon escaped with a few scratches; he never suspected his
daughter's hand in the affair. He entered the steel works in order to
spy on Valentine Braund. The Inspector had given him some useful hints
to go upon, but Braund was a careful man and more than a match for half
a dozen Kerrnons.

After the affair Mannie Kerrnon quarreled with Carl Meason over the
money due to her. She was outwitted and, being the woman she was, she
intended being revenged on him. So far she had not succeeded, nor had
she any idea where he was, or what he was doing; and he had no
intention of enlightening her if he could help it. He was safe as
regards the great explosion at the steel works. She could not "split"
on him without compromising herself.

As Meason sat in his room at the hotel his mind went back to the old
days in New York, when he was hand and glove with the biggest set of
sharks in the city, and a pliable tool of Tammany when well paid for
his nasty work. What little conscience--and most men have some stored
away--he possessed revolted at his intentions toward Jane Thrush--not
that they were entirely dishonorable, but he knew a man with such a
past and present as his had no right to pollute the life of any bright,
happy, innocent woman. To be troubled with scruples was new to him; he
had sent innocent men to death without a tremor, had even seen men and
women go to long terms of imprisonment through his instrumentality, and
thought nothing of their misery; and here he was actually hesitating
about sacrificing Jane Thrush on the altar of his desires. Marry her,
he even went so far as to declare he would, and was astounded at