Never-Fail Blake | Page 7

day of late November, with a lake
wind whipping the street dust into his eyes, that he had seen the huge
canvas sign of a hiring agency's office, slapping in the storm. This sign
had said:
"MEN WANTED."
Being twenty-six and adventurous and out of a job, he had drifted in
with the rest of earth's undesirables and asked for work.
After twenty minutes of private coaching in the mysteries of railway

signals, he had been "passed" by the desk examiner and sent out as one
of the "scab" train crew to move perishable freight, for the Wisconsin
Central was then in the throes of its first great strike. And he had gone
out as a green brakeman, but he had come back as a hero, with a
Tribune reporter posing him against a furniture car for a two-column
photo. For the strikers had stoned his train, half killed the "scab"
fireman, stalled him in the yards and cut off two thirds of his cars and
shot out the cab-windows for full measure. But in the cab with an Irish
engine-driver named O'Hagan, Blake had backed down through the
yards again, picked up his train, crept up over the tender and along the
car tops, recoupled his cars, fought his way back to the engine, and
there, with the ecstatic O'Hagan at his side, had hurled back the last of
the strikers trying to storm his engine steps. He even fell to "firing" as
the yodeling O'Hagan got his train moving again, and then, perched on
the tender coal, took pot-shots with his brand-new revolver at a last pair
of strikers who were attempting to manipulate the hand-brakes.
That had been the first train to get out of the yards in seven days.
Through a godlike disregard of signals, it is true, they had run into an
open switch, some twenty-eight miles up the line, but they had moved
their freight and won their point.
Blake, two weeks later, had made himself further valuable to that hiring
agency, not above subornation of perjury, by testifying in a court of law
to the sobriety of a passenger crew who had been carried drunk from
their scab-manned train. So naïvely dogged was he in his stand, so
quick was he in his retorts, that the agency, when the strike ended by a
compromise ten days later, took him on as one of their own operatives.
Thus James Blake became a private detective. He was at first
disappointed in the work. It seemed, at first, little better than his old job
as watchman and checker. But the agency, after giving him a
three-week try out at picket work, submitted him to the further test of a
"shadowing" case. That first assignment of "tailing" kept him thirty-six
hours without sleep, but he stuck to his trail, stuck to it with the blind
pertinacity of a bloodhound, and at the end transcended mere
animalism by buying a tip from a friendly bartender. Then, when the

moment was ripe, he walked into the designated hop-joint and picked
his man out of an underground bunk as impassively as a grocer takes an
egg crate from a cellar shelf.
After his initial baptism of fire in the Wisconsin Central railway yards,
however, Blake yearned for something more exciting, for something
more sensational. His hopes rose, when, a month later, he was put on
"track" work. He was at heart fond of both a good horse and a good
heat. He liked the open air and the stir and movement and color of the
grand-stand crowds. He liked the "ponies" with the sunlight on their
satin flanks, the music of the band, the gaily appareled women. He
liked, too, the off-hand deference of the men about him, from turnstile
to betting shed, once his calling was known. They were all ready to
curry favor with him, touts and rail-birds, dockers and owners, jockeys
and gamblers and bookmakers, placating him with an occasional
"sure-thing" tip from the stables, plying him with cigars and advice as
to how he should place his money. There was a tacit understanding, of
course, that in return for these courtesies his vision was not to be too
keen nor his manner too aggressive. When he was approached by an
expert "dip" with the offer of a fat reward for immunity in working the
track crowds, Blake carefully weighed the matter, pro and con,
equivocated, and decided he would gain most by a "fall." So he planted
a barber's assistant with whom he was friendly, descended on the
pickpocket in the very act of going through that bay-rum scented
youth's pocket, and secured a conviction that brought a letter of thanks
from the club stewards and a word or two of approval from his head
office.
That head