Sunk in the depths of a vast leather armchair, a book in her lap, the child was so quiet that the men actually forgot her presence. This room, in whatever building (with the exception of Sid Kleet’s bare and gritty office) always was baronial. Invariably its many windows looked out upon Seattle’s glorious bay and mountains. The ceiling was high, the room vast, the walls mahogany- or oak-paneled. The visitor trod on the ruby and sapphire, emerald and topaz of an oriental carpet. Paintings of ships and mountains and waters seemed to reflect the view one saw through the windows. Models of ships stood on the mantel shelf. The fireplace was cavernous, the desk a plateau, the leather-upholstered chairs gigantic. The child sat quietly, quietly, every object in the luxurious room, every color, storing itself in her memory. She heard every word the men said. It did not interest her, she understood none of it, she merely retained it. She was like a reservoir into which every fluid thing from trickle to torrent finds its way. She liked the scent of the cigars the men smoked, sitting well back in their chairs, their legs spread comfortably, their eyes approving the long lavender-gray ash that clung so tenaciously in proof of the costliness of the oily brown cylinder. They talked quietly, leisurely, one would have thought, from their manner, that their subject was, perhaps, philanthropy.

“Thing to do is put pressure on him, give him the screws.”

“Lubbock says he wants to see the situation from every angle before he makes his report.”

“Lubbock wouldn’t know a salmon from a herring if he ate it.”

Sid Kleet’s dry nasal voice. “Gentlemen, I would like you to give me authority to by-pass fisheries commissioners and directors and little stuff like that.”

“What have you in mind, Sid?” It was Czar’s question, his tone one of mild interrogation. He knew the answer, he wanted it stated in words uttered by the group’s legal representative.

“Go over their heads,” Kleet barked.

“To who?”

“You damn well know to who. Cabinet Member. Senator. They’ll get action.”

“What’ll you do with Lubbock?”

“Same as we did with Diener. Get him.”

“Yeh, but how about old Storm?” Dave Husack demanded. His voice, booming from that barrel chest had the effect of a bellow in the quiet, almost somnolent, room. Czar waved a cautioning hand toward the child.

Very early in her childhood Bridie had impressed upon her the vileness of tattling. “Now don’t you go tattling to Czar about Thor, or Thor about Czar. You got anything about either of your Grampas, why, just come and tell me.”

“Wouldn’t that be tattling?”

“No. I’d be a kind of a judge, like Judge Gannon here, I’d think about it, not leaning to one or the other, and then decide about it and try to fix whatever is wrong. I’d do the best I could for all three.”

As Chris’s keen mind missed practically nothing, and as she had almost total recall, the plums that fell into Bridie’s lap were rich and juicy. This office conference, for example, conveyed quite innocently in Christine’s childish terms, sent Bridie scurrying to the office of the Northern Light. She was discreet, she did not give her source, she merely hinted.