Pete Loale was quite an unusual creature.  He looked unkempt and unclean, with his yellow, pock-marked skin, and his clothes that would have disgraced a second-hand dealer’s stores of waste.  But for all his lack in these directions there was that in the man which was more than worth while.  Out of his black eyes looked a world of intelligence.  There was also a resource and initiative in him that Standing fully appreciated.

“Sure I get that,” he said simply.  Then he repeated in the manner of a child determined to make no mistake.  “He’s to take that mail-bag right into your office—­himself.”

“That’s it.  Don’t knock on my door.  Don’t let him think there’s a soul inside that room.  Just boost him right in.  You get that?”

The half-breed nodded.

“I’ll just say:  ’Here you!  Just push that darn truck right inside that room, an’ don’t worry me with it, I’m busy.’  That how?” The man hunched his slim shoulders into a shrug.

“See you do it—­just that way,” Standing said.  Then he turned to Bat.  “We’ll get inside,” he went on.  “He’ll be right along.”

They passed into the office.  The door closed behind them and Standing moved over to his seat at the crowded desk.

“Wal?”

Bat was still standing.  He failed to grasp his friend’s purpose.  His wit was unequal to the rapid process of the other’s swiftly calculating mind.

Standing littered his writing-pad with papers.  He picked up a pen and jabbed it in the inkwell.  Then he flung it aside and adopted a fountain-pen which he drew from his waistcoat pocket.  His eyes lit with a half-smile as he finally raised them to the rugged face before him.

“You sit right over there by that window, Bat,” he said easily.  “If you get a look out of it you’ll be amazed at the number of things to interest you.”  He nodded as Bat moved away with a grin and took the chair indicated.  “That’s it.  Just sit around, and you won’t see or even hear the fellow with the mail fall in through the door.  And maybe, sitting there, you’ll want to smoke your foul old pipe.  Sort of pipe of peaceful meditation.  Yes, I’d smoke that pipe, old friend, but you can cut out the peaceful meditation.  You need to be ready to act quick when I pass the word.  It’s going to be easy.  So easy I almost feel sorry for—­Idepski.”

“It is—­Idepski?” Bat filled and lit his pipe.

“It surely is.  No other.  And—­I’m glad.  Now we’ll quit talk, old friend.  Just smoke, and look out of that window, and—­think like hell.”

Bat’s understanding of his friend was well founded.  The extreme nervous tension in Standing was obvious.  It was in the wide, dark eyes.  It was in the constant shifting of the feet which the table revealed.  For the time, at least, the cowardice Standing claimed for himself was entirely swamped.  He was stirred by the headlong excitement of battle in a manner that left Bat more than satisfied.