Miss Wardrop herself, being by far the most dominant of the three, shall be mentioned first. The second was her ancient butler, whose surname—and apparently his only name—was Jenks, which was always pronounced with ever so slight a tendency toward him of the Horse Marines. And the third, who, like Miss Wardrop, still retained possession of the family mansion, was Mr. Augustus Lispenard, bachelor, aged—in the morning—nearly eighty, although later in the day, when the ichor in his veins began to course more briskly, his appearance was that of an uncommonly well-preserved man of sixty or thereabouts. His residence adjoined that of Miss Wardrop, but there had never been any intimacy between the two households. For this there were a number of reasons, but the paramount one was the fact that Mr. Lispenard was descended from one of the oldest houses among the Knickerbockers, and as such it was extremely difficult for him to become aware of any one not sprung with equal selectness. The Wardrops had arrived on the Square at the comparatively recent period of Miss Mary's babyhood—and even now Miss Mary was only sixty or so.

Miss Helen Maitland remembered very well the occasion of her first meeting with the distinguished personage who lived next door. It had occurred on the first visit she had made her aunt, when she was but a small girl, yet Helen had found few things in after years to etch themselves more sharply upon her recollection. It had been in the holiday season, and, Helen's mother having been sent South by the inclemencies of the Boston weather, the child had been left with Miss Wardrop over the Christmas time. On New Year's Day, wide-eyed, she had beheld the elaborate, old-world, decorous preparations made by Jenks under the eye of his mistress, and with delight she had learned that, while she could not—nor indeed did she wish to—attend the New Year's reception herself, she was to be allowed a seat of vantage above stairs where part, and the most interesting part, of the reception hall lay open to her view.

Miss Wardrop rigidly preserved the old custom as to New Year's calls—preserved even the old blue punch-bowl, which Jenks filled with a decoction of haunting and peculiar excellence; and the dress wherein the hostess received had done duty on more New Years' Days than its owner liked always to recall.

Peering down through the mahogany railings that fenced her eyrie from the world, the youthful Miss Maitland had watched, starry-eyed, a function which in essentials had not altered in very many years. Its hostess had grown more gray, but no less alert, had changed in years more than in age. And it was with a courtly bow, which also had not varied in angle or courtliness, that little Miss Maitland saw Mr. Augustus Lispenard bend low over Miss Wardrop's hand.

A small, slight man was Mr. Lispenard, very erect, very straight of eyebrow, keen of glance, precise of speech. His extraordinary black eyes peered out from beneath his level brows in a disquietingly observant manner. One felt immediately that one's hands and feet were peculiarly large and awkward, or one's last remark hopelessly banal, or one's birthplace in some cheap and innominate region outside of Manhattan. So long as Miss Wardrop remained under forty, Mr. Lispenard had held aloof. Perhaps he feared that by calling on a maiden lady under forty he might arouse hopes which, however chaste, could not, in the nature of things, be fulfilled, he being what he was, a Knickerbocker. But after this danger mark was past, and perhaps stimulated by the removal of almost the last of the other patriarchal residents of the Square, he called one New Year's afternoon, and gravely presented the compliments of the season to the woman to whom he now spoke for the first time in his life.

There was nothing vindictive about Miss Wardrop. She appreciated his viewpoint, and bade him welcome as naturally as though they had been friends for years. And thereafter Mr. Lispenard was an irregular but always gladly received caller in the parlor separated from his own by little more than twelve inches of brick and mortar.

In the days when Miss Mary was growing up to childhood, Mr. Lispenard had been one of those who had marched down Broadway in 1861, not to return for four long years. South of the Potomac he had acquired many vivid and remarkable experiences of which no one had ever heard him speak, and also a pension, incredibly small, which he received in silent dignity each month and equally without comment turned over to a rascally body servant who had run away from more battles than one would have conceived to be possible. This sturdy retainer, having served a short time in Mr. Lispenard's troop and performed him some trifling services, had ten years after the war turned up with a calm and most surprising assumption of his old commander's responsibility for his entire existence, and since that time had lived on his ex-lieutenant's bounty.

One of the chief attractions, in Helen's eyes, of her aunt's old house in Washington Square was the chance of a call or two from Mr. Lispenard. After her third or fourth visit he grew friendly with her, in fact vastly more friendly than he ever became with her aunt. And she, for her part, found this elderly aristocrat all the more fascinating for finding him in New York, through the rushing progressiveness of which he seemed to move in a kind of stately, romantic twilight.

"My dear child," were her aunt's first words after Helen's latest arrival, "you have missed by a single day a call from our next-door neighbor."

"Well, if he doesn't come again," replied the girl, with a smile, "I'll scandalize the dear old man nearly to death by going and calling on him myself."

And this, a few days later, she actually did, to the carefully concealed elation of Mr. Lispenard's elderly housekeeper, who, after ushering Miss Maitland into the high-ceiled parlor, betook herself to the region below stairs, where she definitely expressed herself to the cook.

"Sure it's a divil the masther is wid the ladies till this very day—and him only about four minutes inside of eighty!"

"A lady calling, is it?" inquired the cook, with interest.

"Sure—a young wan. It's the ould bhoys have the way wid them, after all's said and done."

Meanwhile in the old-fashioned reception room with its tinkly crystal chandelier aquiver, as it were, in sympathetic excitement, the old gentleman was greeting his young guest.

"Old age!" he said, with a smile of half-mock ruefulness. "Old age! When ladies come to call on us, we understand, we old beaux, that it is because we are no longer considered dangerous. Yet the bitterness of that knowledge, were it twice as bitter as it is, would be more than offset by my honor and pleasure in receiving you."

Helen beamed on him for reply, and his swift, penetrating eyes observed her.

"You have grown up to be beautiful, my child," observed old Mr. Lispenard. "There is nothing about you of this new generation, which I hate. Indeed, if you would wear crinolines and a curl of that dark hair on your shoulder, you would be quite perfect."

His young caller blushed a little, but she laughingly retorted:—

"Did you say you had ceased to be dangerous? No one of my generation could have said that. You will turn my head, sir—and isn't that being dangerous? For the heads of my generation, the new generation, as you call it, are not easy to turn."

"No. True enough," said Mr. Lispenard, nodding with cynical approval. "Their heads are on so tight there is no turning them; no flexibility about the young people to-day. The maids are sad enough, but the young men are worse. Gallants is what we used to call young men, but they make none to-day that could answer to that term. Gallants! There is no more courtesy in the land than among the fishes below sea!"

Helen felt inclined to defend her contemporaries, but as she looked at the old aristocrat before her and contrasted his manner with that of some of the men in her own set, she did not know quite what to say. Pelgram's poses seemed cheap and shallow, and Charlie Wilkinson's free-and-easy carriage might have its virtues, but it certainly was not marked by dignity, nor did it make particularly for respect.

"They have no reverence for age, none for the great things, the great days that some of us remember. I confess that I do not like them. I am quite an old man, and for some years past I have met scarcely a young man whom my mother would have permitted in her drawing room."

"I know what you mean," Helen said thoughtfully; "and in one way, at least, I'm afraid you're right. But don't you think that most of the difference is on the surface, and the young people of to-day are not really so irreverent as they appear to be? The fashion now is toward plain, blunt unaffectedness; reverence is a polish of manners which implies insincerity, and the young men who are really reverent are most of them ashamed of it and work all the harder to conceal it."

"They are not obliged to overexert themselves," replied Mr. Lispenard. "But perhaps you are right, my dear. I admit that I am out of sympathy with the younger generation. They might possess a thousand virtues, and I could see none of them."

"I'm of the younger generation," said his visitor, with humorous apologeticalness. "I hope you won't be too hard on it."

"One of its few virtues—that it numbers you among its members," her host gallantly rejoined. "But they are not all like you—or there would be fewer bachelors in your town of Boston."

Helen laughed outright.

"No bachelor yet have I unmade," she replied, somewhat enigmatically.

"Indeed?" said Mr. Lispenard. "I may not think very highly of the young men of to-day, but my opinion of them is not so low as that. Come, now—I am an old gentleman and the model of reticence—I will never tell. I'll wager you a box of roses against anything you like that you had a proposal no later than last week. Perhaps you even came to New York to escape him."

Considering that Pelgram's studio tea was barely a week in the past, Helen's face betrayed her confusion.

"Touche!" said her host, with a laugh. "Really, I may have to revise in part my idea of modern young men. After all, they're not blind."

Helen found that time passed quickly during her first few days in New York. Miss Wardrop was a self-sufficient personage, with a decided opinion upon everything in heaven and on earth, and a preference no less decided for that opinion over those held by others. She had, however, a great fondness for her niece, whom she honored, as she expressed it, by making not one iota of change in her menage or habits on account of the presence of her visitor.

"It would be a poor arrangement for both of us if I were to put myself out for you," she had once explained to the girl. "I would be certain to regret having done so; and if I did, so would you. So I will pay you the compliment of going on precisely as though you weren't here."

So she continued to breakfast in bed at the conservative hour of ten o'clock; continued to superintend the rehabilitation of two rooms on the second floor which Jenks, to his rheumatic distress, was redecorating in accordance with the latest whim of his mistress; continued in all things to order her life exactly as she had ordered it for twenty years.

It was now the very end of September, and autumn was more than ever in the air. There was none of the chill ocean breath which in Boston had already begun to make itself unpleasantly evident, and Helen found the keenest enjoyment in walking about the city, which heretofore she had seen principally from the windows of street cars and taxicabs.

It was about three o'clock of a Saturday afternoon at the close of her second week in New York that she started northward up Fifth Avenue, casting, as she turned, one backward look at the beauty of the Washington Arch, white in the sunshine. She herself, after the first few blocks, took the west side of the avenue, for the afternoon sun was unexpectedly warm. When she came to Fourteenth Street, she paused to allow the passage of a number of street cars and other vehicles which were figuratively champing their bits till the Jove-like person in blue set them free to move. And as she stood there, she became aware of a voice behind her, which said:—

"You have chosen a beautiful day for a walk, Miss Maitland," and turning, she faced Mr. Richard Smith of the Guardian.

"Why, how do you do!" the girl said, holding out her hand with frank cordiality. "I'm very glad to see you. Would it flatter you if I said I was thinking of you this morning?"

"It would," said Smith, soberly. "It does not do to flatter me. I don't get over it easily. I don't go so far as to forbid it, you understand, to those who know me, but I recognize it as being as seductive and alluring and dangerous as any delightful but deadly drug, and I usually flee from it accordingly."

"Well, there's really no reason why you should flee from it now—unless it is a pecuniary reason," said Miss Maitland, smiling. "But in case you should start to escape, perhaps I had better modify my statement and say that I was actually thinking of that old harness maker and wondering when you were coming to tell me about ways and means of keeping him in business."

"I had hoped to do so before this," the other replied. "I wrote the Guardian agent at Robbinsville on the same day you visited the office, but I've had nothing to report until to-day."

"And have you now? What is it?"

"This morning I received a letter from our agent. He said that the creditors had held a protracted meeting, and there was one irritating old party who kept suggesting that the poorhouse was the inevitable solution; but finally arrangements were made by which our old friend can keep his shop as long as he lives. They trusteed the business, I believe."

Helen was silent, and for a little space the two walked forward without a word. At last the girl lifted her eyes to Smith's a little wistfully.

"I'm glad he can keep his shop," she said; "and yet in one way I'm rather sorry that the creditors agreed. I would have liked to have helped the old man, myself, and I think it would have been rather good fun to have financed a harness business."

"Yes; it would," Smith rejoined, with a laugh. "But I confess I'm a little relieved. I'm afraid that for me it would have meant attaching another mortgage to the old homestead, which already looks like a popular bill board, it is so plastered with prior liens."

The girl did not know exactly what answer to make to this, so she made none. Smith presently went on.

"But I'm sure he would like to know that you would have assisted him if it had been necessary. If I am ever anywhere near Robbinsville, I shall make a point to see him and tell him."

"Why, I had nothing to do with it!" said the girl. "It was entirely your plan—I merely said I'd go halves with you."

"Yes. But I would really have never done anything by myself," Smith replied frankly. "And for a very good reason. But in any event the old man would be much more interested in thinking it was you."

"If I am ever in Robbinsville, I shall see that he knows the real facts," said Miss Maitland, with a slight flush in her cheeks.

"Here is Twenty-third Street," the underwriter said abruptly. "Where are you bound for, if I may ask?"

"Nowhere in particular," the girl answered. She stopped. "Isn't that a wonderful sight, now, in the sunlight?" She indicated the white tower of the Metropolitan Life building, pointing far up into the clear blue of the eastern sky, across Madison Square.

"Wonderful indeed," agreed Smith, so thoughtfully that his companion glanced at him. "By the way, you didn't happen to be here half a century ago, did you?" he asked whimsically.

"No," said Miss Maitland. "If I had been anywhere, it would have been around Back Bay, I presume."

"Then you miss part of this. Unless you had been here then, you can't appreciate how marvelous all this is now," he went on. "Of course I wasn't here either; but I am a New Yorker, and I know how it used to look."

"Do you?" she asked with interest. "And how did it look then?"

"Well, suppose we go back another ten years and make it sixty in all. There was no tower there and no Flatiron building here beside us. And there was no open square before us. Oh, it was open, but not a square—more of a prairie. Broadway came up and intersected Fifth Avenue just as it does to-day. But on this Flatiron corner there stood just one thing. And what do you suppose that was?"

"I couldn't imagine."

"One solitary, lonesome lamp post. And over there, on the site of that monstrous building, was the little frame structure that gave the Square its name—the Madison cottage. And that was the only building to be seen."

"The only one! But when was this?"

"In the fifties—in fact, up to eighteen fifty-eight, when they began to put up the Fifth Avenue Hotel on the same ground. Next year that was finished, and in eighteen sixty came the Prince of Wales and honored it by leading the grand march in its great dining hall."

They had crossed Twenty-third Street by this time, and were standing on the memorable corner. An electric bus whirred by on the east side of Broadway, and Smith drew Helen's notice to it.

"On a post that stood near here," he said, "there used to be a sign that read, 'Buses every four minutes.' And if you wanted to go down town, there was exactly one other way besides taking a bus, and that was to walk."

"And that was quite enough," declared Miss Maitland.

"Well, it served, anyway," Smith conceded.

They walked on up the Avenue. Finally the girl broke a long pause.

"I was thinking," she said slowly, "that I would like to have you meet Mr. Augustus Lispenard."

"And who is he, may I ask?"

"Well, he is an old gentleman who lives on Washington Square, and you will probably never see one another, but he seems to love New York more than anything in the world—and you seem to, also."

"Well . . . it's my town," confessed her companion. "That is, it's not my native town, for I was born out in Iowa, but I've lived here nearly all my life. And it's a good town. Even a Bostonian will have to admit that," he added laughingly.

"Yes—I admit it," said the Bostonian. And it struck her that her admission came more readily than it ever before could have come. "By the way," she returned, more conventionally, "I'm afraid I must be taking you out of your way. What would you have done if you hadn't been kind enough to act as my guide this afternoon?" she inquired carelessly.

Smith looked across at her.

"To tell the truth, I was thinking of going to the ball game up at the Polo Grounds," he said promptly; "but I didn't leave the office soon enough. I'm very much interested in this present series."

"You're interested in lots of things, I should say," his companion commented. "Fire insurance and New York I have found out already. And here is something else. Are you really interested in baseball?"

"I certainly am," said Smith; "and I think every one else ought to be, if he or she has any interest in this country of ours."

Helen glanced at him in surprise.

"What possible connection can those two things have?" she asked.

"Oh, it's not a thing you can understand unless you've seen it. From the way you speak, I presume you've never seen a game of professional baseball."

"No," Miss Maitland replied with docility, "I'm afraid I never have. I've been to a few college games—Harvard mostly—but I've never seen a professional game. Is it very different?"

"Absolutely. You ought to go to one. You can't really understand the United States of America until you do."

"Are you serious? I'm afraid you're just joking with me."

"Not at all. Why, do you know that baseball is the most American thing in America? And it's about the only wholly American thing, as we like to think of America. There is only one other place besides the ball ground where the spirit of genuine democracy shows itself, and that is in politics. There you will find the high and low together—the judge putting off his ermine and getting down from the bench elbow to elbow with Tom Radigan, the East Side barkeep, when the Patrick J. O'Dowd Association of the Eighty-eighth Assembly District gives its annual outing or its ball. But that's not true democracy because it's very largely selfish—inspired by the desire of votes. Now baseball—that's different. Inspired by no desire but to see a good game—and for the home team to win. Nowhere else in the world can you see democracy in its fine flower—at its best. There you can see them all—judges and dock rats, brokers and bricklayers, cotillion leaders and truck drivers, historians and elevator starters, lawyers and the men they keep out of jail, college boys, grocers, retired capitalists, and the lady friends of the whole collection. You'll find them all there. Oh, you ought to go to a game yourself. Then you'd understand."

It seemed to Miss Maitland that this Smith was a very unusual person. And his enthusiasms were strangely contagious. Fire insurance, New York, and now baseball, things in none of which had she ever felt more than a flicker of interest, suddenly, seen through his eyes, assumed a reality, a vital quality she had never dreamed they could possess. Was it all the difference in point of view?

"It isn't because baseball in my opinion does more real good than all the socialistic documents put out by high-browed agitators will ever do," Smith was continuing, "that I go to it. Not at all. I go to it because I like it, and because I like to yell."

"Do you yell?" asked Miss Maitland of Boston.

"You do—that is, I do," said Smith, tersely. "At all events, when things go our way."

"And don't you think I would be likely to—yell?"

"Well, hardly, at first," the underwriter answered. "After a while, probably. If you'd like to go and see, though, whether you'd yell or not, I should like awfully to take you."

Thinking the matter over afterward, Helen was at a loss to discover why she had so readily accepted this somewhat unusual invitation. To see this young man at an office on a matter of business was all very well; it was one thing to meet him casually on the street and walk with him a few blocks up the Avenue—but it was decidedly another to promise she would accompany him to a professional baseball game. Baseball, of all things! Yet she had accepted, and on the whole she could not seem to be quite sorry that she had. But it would never do to tell Aunt Mary. Yet Miss Wardrop must of course be told. Helen was twenty-five years of age and her own mistress, but Boston in the blood dies hard.

It was moribund, however, on the afternoon that Smith called to escort her northward to the field where those idols of Gotham, the Giants, were indulging in a death grapple with their rivals from Chicago in the closing series of the year, with the National League pennant hanging on its result. Her companion had, to be sure, called formally and in due order upon Miss Wardrop and her niece on an evening of the intervening period, so that Helen felt her sharp New England sense of the proprieties lulled to a state of pleasing and comfortable coma.

The elevated train which took them to the grounds was jammed to the very doors with cheerfully suffering humanity, and Miss Maitland, most of whose previous experience with crowds had been with those decorous gatherings in the subway beneath the Common, regarded the struggling multitude with covert dismay.

"If you should find the elbows of the populace unduly insinuated into you, don't worry," her companion advised. "It will merely be part of your general education. Getting back to the soil is nowhere beside the democratic experience you are about to enjoy," he added.

"I—I didn't expect to be quite as democratic as that," the girl said.

"Well, I'll try to see that the more intimate personal demonstrations are spared you," her escort reassured her.

Presently they left the train, and passing down the platform they joined the crowd that was now forcing its slow course along the inclosed runway which led to the Polo Grounds. There was considerable jostling, much talking and laughter, deep trampling and shuffling of many feet. At last Smith reached the window before which for some five minutes he stood in line.

"Of course I could have gotten box seats," he explained as he purchased two score cards; "but I wanted you to get this thing in its entirety."

"You are the doctor," replied Miss Maitland, cheerfully; at which form of acquiescence her companion regarded her in such surprise that she burst into a laugh.

"I heard that just now," she confessed; "and it seemed to fit the case. You know you are really prescribing this game as a cure for acute Bostonitis."

"Right!" said he, laughing, "I fancy I was. But I didn't mean to be unpleasantly Aesculapian."

"You weren't," she said. "And do you know, I think you were correct. Even if you didn't consciously prescribe this as a remedy, I myself admit—or I almost admit—that I was feeling the need of a tonic a little different from any I had ever tried at home. And I believe this is it."

Surely it was. They reached their seats, which they found back of first base, and sat down between neighbors of uncommon parts. Next to Helen was a large red man of Hibernian extraction, with a long upper lip tamed but little by civilization or by razor; on his head he wore a dilapidated cloth cap; he was, to appearances, driver for an ice company or a brewery.

At Smith's elbow was a small, black-haired Jew with a pock-marked face. In front of them were four people who could have been the shipping clerk for a hardware house, his fiancee, who presided conceivably over a switchboard in some uptown hotel, a gentleman who looked like a college professor and who was probably night clerk in a drug store, and lastly a chunky and well-fed person who, from his turning at once to the cotton reports, could probably be put down as holding some responsible position in a Wall Street house. The farther the eye strayed, the more motley became the array, the more difficult any generalization.

"It's really useless," said Smith, guessing the girl's thought. "If any one's missing, it's because he's home sick in bed. Now, tell me how much you need to be told."

Nearly everything, it seemed; so for the next ten minutes her companion held forth in a compendious but concise exordium on the great American game. During this interim the huge concrete stands filled entirely, and the populace began to spill over onto the field.

"That means ground rules—hit into the crowd good for only two bases," said several critics, for the general information of an ambient air fully as well informed as the speakers.

Down on the field the interesting machinery was in process of oiling—the batting and fielding practice of either side in turn, the pitchers lazily warming up, the motley crew on the side lines in their amusing and alert play of high-low. Helen, fascinated by the players' movements, the accurate interception of stinging grounders, the graceful parabolas of long flies to the deep outfield, as well as by the spectacle of the orderly base and coaching lines laid out on the smooth, close-clipped greensward, watched as though in a new medium of sight. This was little like anything she had ever seen.

A yell from ten thousand throats announced that the Giants'—and the crowd's—favorite was to pitch. Another yell, though less in volume, indicated that the opposing pitcher also was named and approved, not from any delight in the selection, but merely that the choice was made. The umpires in their sober blue uniforms took their places; the home team went into the field; the pitcher picked up the new white ball and settled his foot firmly on the slab—and the game was on.

It can serve no useful purpose now, when that game is done and its year's pennant determined, to play over the two hours' traffic of it. Suffice it to say that the tide of battle rose and fell sufficiently to keep forty thousand delirious spectators on their feet at least one quarter of the time. Nothing of Oriental calm about the crowd that day; nothing of passive acceptance of whatever the Fates might have in store. Every soul within that enclosure was a rabid partisan, bound up in the fortune of the fray; and if the concentrated desire of forty thousand minds could avail aught, the home team should certainly have felt the psychic urge.

But apparently they did not, or perhaps the opposing cohorts felt a far-off urge more potent still, for the game wore on to the seventh inning with the home team still one run behind.

"Seventh inning; everybody up!" twenty thousand informed the other twenty thousand. And everybody rose, the forty thousand almost as one man.

"Now then, you Tim!" shrieked a voice behind Helen's ear. And Tim responded with a two-base hit to the left field crowd. Another sharp crack of the ball against the bat, and men running at lightning speed, one to first base, one desperately rounding third and toward the home plate with the run needed to tie the score. But the Chicago team were busy as well. As from a catapult the ball shot home to the catcher, waiting astride the rubber.

A flash, a slide, a cloud of dust. Then the umpire, flapping a flippant thumb skyward. Then a berserker roar of rage, a pandemonium of fury beside which Babel was a soundless desert. And from leather-like lungs four inches from Helen's ear, in a voice which could have brought the glad news from Ghent to Aix without leaving the first-named city at all, came:—

"Hey, you big wart! The bush for yours!"

But the umpire thus unflatteringly described and assigned was obdurate, the run did not count, and the game went on. However, it was won in that inning by the combination of two more safe hits, and the checked paeans rang their fill. If there was a heart in all that great amphitheater not beating to the tune of the forty thousand, it must have been some unfortunate outlander who could only watch, reserving his own delirium until some more fortunate era beneath more friendly stars.

But at last, when all was over and the great crowd reluctantly dissolved, swarming the diamond, Smith and Miss Maitland sought the exit in silence.

"When it puts one in such intimate touch with forty thousand of your fellow beings," said Smith, reflectively, "it seems worth while, now and then, to be what is commonly termed a low-brow."

"Is it really worth while," asked Helen, "to be anything else?"



CHAPTER XI

If Mr. Edward Eggleston Murch had had nothing to do but attend the meetings of the various boards of which he was a director, his time would still have been reasonably well employed and he would have enjoyed an income sufficient at least to keep him in cigars of the standard to which his eminence entitled him. Mr. Murch's private secretary held a position requiring quick-wittedness and suavity in no common degree. Hardly a day went by that the ring of the phone did not serve as preamble for some such colloquy as this:

"Hello. Mr. Murch's office?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Murch in?"

"No. Can I do anything for you?"

"The W., T., and G. have called their annual meeting for election of officers on Friday the sixth. How about ten-thirty? Is that all right with Mr. Murch?"

"Wait a minute. Ten-thirty, you said? No, Mr. Murch has the International Corkscrew meeting at ten. Can't they push W., T., and G. into the afternoon?"

"I'll let you know later. Good-by."

And later it was arranged to suit Mr. Murch. If there were a pie in Mr. Murch's vicinity which Mr. Murch's finger was not in, it was, if not proof positive, strong circumstantial evidence that the pie was of a most inferior order of succulence; and Mr. Murch was a fairly good judge, being himself chairman of the finance committee of the United States Pie Company. He was a director in two banks, three trust companies, several railroads, at least four mining companies of the immensely profitable kind whose stock is never offered to the general public, besides innumerable industrial and general commercial concerns of every sort, color, and description, the sole similarity between them being their translucent money-making attributes. He was, on the other hand, a trustee of an art museum which was liberally assisted by contributors other than Mr. Murch, whose assistance was administrative rather than pecuniary; and he was on the executive committee of a charity organization society which under his astute management bade fair to be more than self-supporting, and there was really no valid reason to the contrary, for it transacted a very considerable business in sawed and split wood which it sold at current prices after paying each of its unfortunate employees twenty-two cents and an indescribably bad dinner for eight hours' hard work in the wood yard. Mr. Murch was also interested in a chain of blue-front restaurants, and a line of South American freighters, and last but not least, he was the heaviest stockholder and most potent factor in the management of the Salamander Fire Insurance Company.

The Salamander was as exactly the antithesis of the Guardian as it was possible to conceive. Where the Guardian was conservative, the Salamander was ultra-radical; where the Guardian wrote a million and three quarters yearly in premiums, the Salamander, though its surplus was rather less than that of the other company, wrote nearly two millions and a half. In short the Salamander gambled, and played to win, and as a matter of fact it usually did win by sheer audacity. It had never made any money out of its underwriting, that real test of company efficiency; but four years out of five the daring manipulation of its assets in Wall Street—politely termed the slight rearrangement of some of its investments—yielded it a handsome profit. Its dividend rate was more than twice that of the Guardian, and in some years, when losses were heavy, it failed to earn its dividend and was obliged to take the money for its payment out of its already narrow surplus.

The President of the Salamander was an obliging, disingenuous, rather weak individual of Mr. Murch's own selection. His name was Wellwood, and the less said of his character and attainments the better. Mr. Wellwood's mastery of the conditions of his business had never been especially deep, and during the past year a swelling penchant for fast horses, and indeed for acceleration of all kinds, had rather gotten the better of him. And Mr. Murch, concernedly going over the figures which showed the present condition of the Salamander's finances, felt a chill of doubt striking into his usually impassive veins.

"You've been losing money for the company faster than I can make it," he said coldly to Wellwood.

"Well, it's been an awfully bad year—losses have been terrific," stammered the underwriting executive, anxious to placate the god of his car.

"They're all bad years with you. Leave these papers with me; I want to go over them again."

Wellwood slunk out. The presidency of the Salamander, involving as it did occasional interviews of a nature similar to this with Mr. Murch, was no sinecure. Mr. Wellwood frequently debated whether it would not be better to listen to the siren voices of the agricultural weeklies with their alluring refrain of "back to the soil"; but the facilities for his favorite dissipations were painfully inadequate in the rural districts, and besides he was a city man born and bred, and while he knew how to take hold of a shovel, he would probably have stood askance and aghast before a scythe. So he hung on, hoping against hope for something—almost anything—to happen. To be sure his own comparative incompetence was to blame for the company's underwriting record, but that was a matter beyond his control.

It was perhaps an hour after Mr. Wellwood's departure when the card of another caller was brought to Mr. Murch by the efficient office boy.

"Show him in," he said.

A man in a light fall overcoat entered the room, nodding to the capitalist as he did so, but turning back almost immediately to attend to the cautious closing of the door.

"Sit down, won't you?" said Mr. Murch, carelessly. He raised his eyes to the door. "Anybody out there?" he inquired. "I mean any one that knows you?"

"No," the caller replied.

"Well, it doesn't matter about any one but Wellwood. But it would be better not to have him know anything about your having been here."

"Why? What do you care?" queried the other.

"No need of superfluous friction and unpleasantness, that's all. If we—agree, he'll find out everything soon enough; if we don't, no call to excite him."

"No doubt you're right," assented the visitor, lightly. He had by this time removed his overcoat and laid it over the arm of a convenient couch. He then selected a chair near Mr. Murch's own but facing that gentleman squarely, and sat down.

"Well, I'm ready to talk business," he said.

"And I," rejoined the other, easily. But he made no move to begin. After a strategic pause wherein it was made clear that he was determined not to open the conversation, his caller began to speak.

"Looking over the figures, I see," he suggested.

"Just running through them. They don't seem so bad, on the whole—in fact, rather better than I expected. Wellwood hasn't done so badly this year, after all, considering how heavy the losses have been all over the country—especially in the South."

The other did not reply. Each man fully understood that the other was temporizing, hoping to gain whatever advantage might accrue from letting the other make the initial play. But Mr. Murch was the older and the less nervous, and had himself better in hand. Finally the visitor spoke.

"Well, I don't suppose you sent for me merely to tell me that," he said abruptly. "Go ahead—make your proposition; there's no use beating about the bush between us." He picked up an ornamental paper cutter from the capitalist's desk and examined it with exaggerated care.

Mr. Murch took his time. He reflectively bit the end off a long cigar, and reached for a match box.

"I'm not sure that my mind's sufficiently made up to put a definite proposal up to you," he said, striking the match thoughtfully. "As I say, Wellwood hasn't been doing so badly—comparatively. And it hurts a company to make a change in its presidency—it disturbs the whole organization, especially when an outsider is brought in over the heads of all the subordinates. We have several promising men that might be disaffected by such a move. No, I don't believe I'm decided, at this time, on such radical action."

"Then I'll come again, when you do decide," said the other, and promptly rose to his feet.

In essence all this very much resembled the way an Algerian curio merchant conducts a bargain.

"Still, it would do no harm to talk the situation over a little to-day," suggested Mr. Murch.

The other man sat down again.

"Look here," he said, "you know what I'm here for. You're looking for a man to take charge of the management of the Salamander. You've looked into the affairs of the company and you know there isn't any one in that office—Wellwood or any of his understudies—that really knows his business. Now you think I'm the man you want, but it's your opener. It's for you to say what you expect done, and how much you'll give to get it done. You tell me that, and I'll tell you first whether I think I'm able to do it, and second whether I'll take it at your price."

For Mr. F. Mills O'Connor was sufficiently shrewd to anticipate that the presidency of the Salamander would be an empty honor unless it could be gained on terms which would free its incumbent from the immediate yoke of Mr. Murch. O'Connor did not intend to be a second Wellwood, with Old Man of the Sea Murch riding him to the grave.

The wisdom of his outspoken decision was proven by the altered tone in which the capitalist now said:—

"All right, Mr. O'Connor. No time like the present. We'll go into it."

And for nearly two hours they went into it. They discussed the subject of fire insurance from top to bottom; the amount of premium a company could safely accept in comparison to its resources, lines in conflagration districts, reinsurance treaties, relations with various unions, boards, and conferences, and underwriting in its relation to finance.

"So far as I can gather—and it's the general impression," said the Guardian official, "the Salamander has lost most of its money in the big cities. And you know as well as I do that the hope of making any money for the company consists in the chance of getting a profitable business from such cities as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. I don't believe your five-year record shows a dollar's profit from any one of those places, yet nearly every well managed company has taken good money out of them. Wellwood knows it. He knows the kind of business he gets doesn't pay, but he doesn't know where or how to get the kind that does pay."

"Perhaps that may be so," agreed Mr. Murch, cautiously.

"Well, I do know where to get it," rejoined his visitor, "and I also know—what is much more vital and to the point—how."

"And how is that?" inquired his host with innocent curiosity.

"When you've made your proposition, I'll tell you," said the other, with a smile. "I'll amplify at the proper time."

"Oh, very well, then," replied the capitalist, apologetically. "Very well." But at this last sticking point he temporized again. His caller gave him no help, but waited in silence until he was ready.

"Mr. O'Connor," said Mr. Murch, "I have a high opinion of your underwriting ability. It is pretty well understood that you have had immediate charge of the underwriting of the Guardian for some years past, and they have been much more profitable years for your company than for ours."

He paused.

"The figures show that," said the other man.

"I do not conceal from you the fact that we are not wholly satisfied with Mr. Wellwood's operations. I have talked the matter over unofficially with two or three of my fellow directors, and I believe they would ratify officially the offer which I am going to make you. This offer is made upon certain agreements, restrictions, and presumptions. It is made contingent on your ability to carry out these agreements—in short, to deliver the goods."

"I understand," said O'Connor, with composure.

"The offer of which I speak is based on your taking the presidency of the Salamander, with a five-year contract, at a salary of twenty thousand dollars a year. You will be required to purchase as a matter of good faith—backing your entry, as it were—a certain amount of the company's stock; indeed, I presume you would wish to do so, and that is a feature that can be easily arranged. And we, of the Salamander, want a man qualified to turn the company into a money maker, and who can assure us at the same time of a reasonable increase in our premium income—say in the five years, from two and a half up to three millions."

O'Connor smiled rather cynically.

"You don't want much, do you?" he observed. "Those are modest requests."

"And," continued Mr. Murch, disregarding the interruption, "we wish to be assured by reasonable show of proof that the new business will be of a class that will be more profitable than the old—in other words, that it will not increase the company's present loss ratio."

"Which is quite high enough already," commented the other, dryly.

"In short, Mr. O'Connor, we must be assured not only that you can secure this increase in income, but we feel that we are entitled to be shown where it is likely to come from, and how you are going to stop the loss on our present business, before the matter goes before our directorate."

The Guardian's Vice-President rose, and stood looking down at Mr. Murch from across the table.

"You need me, Mr. Murch," he said. "I don't have to tell you that. You're supposed to be an expert in picking winners, although you made a bad break on Wellwood. I'm the right man for your job, and you knew it when you sent for me. And your offer is a handsome one—I'll admit that. I'll admit it so willingly that I'll come out and lay my cards—and yours—on the table. I'll put it to you straight."

"Yes?" replied the capitalist, inquiringly.

"Yes. What you mean is this. I've had charge of the underwriting of the Guardian for seven years. Many of its best agents look on me as the company; the Guardian is just a name, but the man they do business with is F. Mills O'Connor, and I'll guarantee that a lot of the best of them will keep on doing business with me, no matter with what concern I'm associated. Now the Guardian has as fine a class of big city business on its books as any company of its size in the field, and I'll bet that in the big cities, where you've lost your money, its business is not only better but larger than the Salamander's. In New York and Boston and Philadelphia you couldn't beat it to save your life. What you want to know is whether I can get equally good stuff for the Salamander, and I want to tell you that I can. And in some pretty important places I can get the identical business, you understand. You want to know how I'm going to get it. Well, what I just told you about a lot of agents keeping on with F. Mills O'Connor is one factor, but there are several others, and I'd rather not mention them until I take charge. But you need have no fear that they cannot be successfully utilized. Do I make myself clear?"

Mr. Murch smiled a deprecatory smile.

"Quite," he said. "In fact, you put it a little more bluntly than I had expected."

"Well, then, if you want to ratify this arrangement at the next meeting of your board, it will be all right with me, and moreover I'll guarantee you personally that within a year the Salamander will be taking over the Guardian's business in at least three of the principal cities of the United States."

"The next meeting is on Monday," said Mr. Murch.

"Very well. Ratify it then, but keep it strictly under cover for two months. If I hear from you that the deal has gone through, I'll start laying my wires. This is the first of October. Don't let anything out until the first of December. Then I'll resign, and come to the Salamander the first of the new year—possibly before that."

"How so?"

"Oh, I've a notion that when I resign, Mr. Wintermuth will say that I needn't remain the customary thirty days; I fancy he'll let me out at once."

A smile, none too pleasant, crossed the lips of the Guardian official. Business was business, of course, and a man was entitled to use his personal influence to advance himself; but he scarcely relished the idea of practically looting the company for which he had worked for a good many years. O'Connor's fiber was not of the tenderest, but he had his intervals of conscientiousness, when his brain saw the correct ethics, even if his hand did not always follow.

Mr. Murch got up from his chair.

"I'll call you on the phone Monday, after our meeting," he said.

"I shall be at the office until five."

They parted.

Criminologists assert, from many years' observation of many men in many lands, that no man positively desires to become a criminal. So little does the average man wish it, that it is usually difficult, even in the case of the most confirmed lawbreaker, to persuade him that he actually is or has been criminal in intent, no matter what his acts may have been.

This state of affairs is equally true in those higher grades of society where instincts are less passionate. Just as the man who kills his king or his father holds himself absolutely innocent of any wrong intent, so the unhappy parasite who steals his wife's earnings for drink, or the bookkeeper who makes away with the contents of the firm's cash drawer in order to play the races, believes himself to be unfortunate only, and more sinned against than sinning. No matter how much of a scoundrel a man may be, his self-analysis brings him far short of the correct degree of turpitude.

Mr. O'Connor was not a villain or a criminal. He was not, according to the standard of many, a dishonest man. But he was not an honest one. He had several weaknesses, the chief among which was venal ambition; and of courage, that quality which makes all other qualities seem just a little tawdry and futile, he had none except in a broad, physical sense. He was not, of course, afraid of the dark, but he was decidedly afraid of James Wintermuth; and when on Monday noon the telephone rang at the call of Mr. Murch, it is not too much to say that he was momentarily shaken.

"Suppose you drop around to the Club in about twenty minutes," was the suave suggestion of the man at the other end of the line.

"For a moment," the Guardian's Vice-President agreed hastily. "For a moment," he repeated, as he replaced the receiver on its hook. It were much better that he and Mr. Murch be not seen together in public until the meat was ready for the fire. And so it was the briefest of interviews that took place between them in the big smoking room. A few words, concluding with a handshake and a "Congratulate you, Mr. President," and the incident was closed. Even had the lynx eyes of Simeon Belknap himself perceived this meeting, he could hardly have found significance in the episode. And an event in the insurance world without significance to Mr. Belknap was a rara avis indeed.

Mr. O'Connor betrayed that night, aside from his customary lack of the refinements of courtesy, the first indication of human weakness that his household had noted for some time past. For a considerable part of the night he lay awake, tossing about in his bed until his long-suffering wife thought he must be ill.

"Is anything the matter?" came her solicitous voice through the dark doorway. And her husband answered irritably:—

"No. Don't bother about me. I'm all right."

Whether this nocturnal disquiet was the last throe of an expiring sense of honor and decency, or whether it was ambition burning in the blood, it is impossible to say. Quite likely it was a little of each. Mr. Wintermuth had been a good friend to O'Connor; still, a man must needs look first after his own interest; no one was apt to butter his bread for him. Sophistry old as the world.

Nevertheless, when morning dawned, the travail of the night had left no mark on Mr. O'Connor's brow. His wife, accustomed from many years of sky searching to look for trouble there, saw the unwrinkled expanse and took heart. Her husband answered her polite morning inquiries with sufficient attention, although he was palpably preoccupied and in no mood for casual conversation.

The fact was that his mind was made up and his plan of campaign chosen, and he was now bending all his thought and energies upon the manner and details of attack. There was no time to lose, and the iron would never be hotter than now. Accordingly, when he had disposed of the accumulation of morning mail at his desk, he walked thoughtfully over to President Wintermuth's office. In response to that gentleman's invitation he entered and seated himself near the desk, holding in his hand a number of papers pinned together. From his expression it would have seemed that disquieting reflections occupied his mind.

"What's the matter? Loss?" inquired his chief, taking the cue O'Connor had proffered.

"No," said the Vice-President, slowly. He glanced down at the papers that he held. "Mr. Wintermuth," he said, "what is your opinion of—or no, let me put it another way: how deeply are we committed to the Eastern Conference?"

"What do you mean—how deeply are we committed?"

"Just that. We were among the original subscribers to the Eastern Conference agreement, as you are aware. What I want to know is whether we are bound to a more rigid observance of its rules than other companies that are members of it."

"We are not, sir," returned the President. "Of course we are not. Why do you ask?"

"Well, sir, I hardly like to say so, but for a long time I have been growing to feel that our strict adherence to our obligations was affecting our business unfavorably at some points. In other words, I have been growing more and more sure that we are too honest—comparatively."

"How is that? How is that?" said Mr. Wintermuth, sharply.

"Perhaps I should say that some of our associates in the Conference are not quite honest enough, at least in the construction they put upon their pledges."

"You will have to be more specific, sir," returned the President, somewhat sternly.

"Very well, sir; I will be as specific as you please. Bluntly, then, I know that at least three of the leading Conference companies are violating the conditions of the Conference agreement, which they are pledged to observe, in no less than four cities in New England, and probably a dozen in New York and Pennsylvania. Some of them are in agencies where the Guardian is represented, and it's hurting us. I know it to be a fact."

"But I thought we went into this recently in New York State. I remember there was a lot of talk about crookedness, and Smith went up to find out what was going on. We made some charges, didn't we? And didn't we get a satisfactory answer?"

"Satisfactory, I presume, to the companies that made it. And possibly satisfactory to Smith, who seemed to me at the time, I confess, a little too easily satisfied for a man with his eyes open. But not to me. I wasn't satisfied at all, or rather I was entirely satisfied in my own mind that we were being sacrificed to our own uprightness."

"What companies are these that are breaking their pledges? How are they doing it? And where?"

"Mr. Wintermuth, I am absolutely convinced that three Conference companies in the Nolan agency, who represent us at Syracuse, are paying at least ten per cent excess commission on preferred business without going through the formality of demanding even a receipt for it. I know it to be a fact that at Trenton, New Jersey, the special agent of one of the biggest American companies—also a Conference member—makes a monthly visit for the purpose of putting into the agent's hands spot cash equal to the amount of the agent's illegitimate excess commissions for that month. The agent deducts his regular commission in his account, and gets this additional amount in cash, so that he gets a good deal more than what we can pay him under the rules. Is it any wonder, then, that our business is dropping off in these offices? And these are two cities only. I could name a dozen. That is why I asked you how deeply we were committed to the Conference."

The President rose, his eyes flashing.

"If these are facts capable of substantiation, we will be committed only until our resignation can take effect. I believe it takes thirty days' notice for a company to terminate its membership. If these cases are typical of others, and you can prove them, exactly thirty-one days later the Eastern Conference will lack one of its charter members."

"Oh, I can prove them, all right. Proof is pretty easily secured—circumstantial evidence enough to hang a man with any jury. But I didn't really think you'd look at it in quite this light, sir. I had not come to the point of recommending that the company withdraw from the Conference. It struck me that before we made that move, certain expedients might be tried."

"Expedients? Such as what, sir?"

"Well, I thought possibly you might be willing to—meet a few of these most open cases of competition with similar methods—"

He stopped, at the expression of his chief's face.

"You thought, did you, that because these men, my competitors, have no respect for their publicly pledged word, I would be willing to be equally indulgent. Mr. O'Connor, you have served a long time under me, and I am surprised at you! When James Wintermuth gets to the point where he is unable to live up to his promises, it will be time for him to quit. We are not in that business, sir."

The Vice-President summoned a forced smile to his lips.

"I think you misunderstood me, sir," he replied smoothly. "I would not myself suggest special commission deals at these places. Of course I agree with you that we should always respect our pledges. But at the same time it struck me that—"

"I don't want to hear what struck you," retorted Mr. Wintermuth, with unwonted asperity. "Let me see the proofs—I will take the necessary action. Is that what you have there—those papers?"

"One or two of them, sir. My principal ones naturally come from word of mouth. For example, I have talked with responsible men who have seen the Trenton agent's bank deposit slips for certain sums, dated, month after month, coincidently with the visit of a certain special agent. I can give you all the proofs any one could wish—if you need any more after what you have in your hand."

Mr. Wintermuth turned to his desk to indicate that the interview was over and he wished to be alone. And it was a well-satisfied conspirator who retired to his own office. Privately reflecting that the deed was as good as done, Mr. O'Connor returned almost instantly to his ruling passion of caution. Now to conceal or to make vague as far as possible his own intent in the matter.

"Ask Mr. Smith to step here a moment," he said to Jimmy, and a shadow of a smile crossed his face. The idea of using Smith to help serve as a foil for himself had an element of grim humor to which Mr. O'Connor was not entirely blind. Smith, of all men, by all means.

With a troubled expression on his face he turned to meet his subordinate.

"I've been talking to the chief about the crooked work in the Conference," he said. "Trenton and Syracuse and some of the rotten spots. I'm afraid I made it a little strong. I swear I didn't imagine he'd take the thing so much to heart or I believe I'd have kept still entirely."

"What did you tell him for?" asked the General Agent, not especially impressed.

"Well, I was getting pretty tired of seeing some of those fellows put it over us, and I thought perhaps he'd let us fight fire with—well, fireworks. Instead of which, he flew up to the ceiling. He wants to get out."

"Get out? Out of the Eastern Conference?" Smith inquired with more interest.

"Yes. And such a move might be justified, strictly speaking, but it seems to me a little extreme—just a little uncalled for. There are a few crooked companies in every agreement, concerns that take advantage of the good faith of the rest—like the Protection of Newark—but after all, even under present conditions, we're getting about as much business as we're entitled to, and pretty nearly as much as we're willing to write. What do you think?"

Smith looked sharply at his superior officer.

"Why do you put it up to me?" he asked. "If the President has decided to get out, that settles it—out we go."

"Oh, he hasn't absolutely decided. I thought I'd tell you about it, in case he asked you what you thought."

"I see," replied the General Agent, thoughtfully, and said no more.

"Well?" queried O'Connor, expectantly, after a moment.

"If he asks me, I'll tell him what I think. Is that all, sir?"

"Yes, that's about all."

The Vice-President, gazing a trifle uneasily at Smith's departing back, somehow felt that he could not flatter himself on having done what he wished toward the covering of his tracks. But, as it chanced, Mr. O'Connor's elaborate mechanism for befogging his trail was entirely wasted, for the President, so far as could be learned, said not a thing on the subject to anybody. He took home the papers O'Connor had left him, and studied them, presumably alone, for several days. He did not seek to cross-examine O'Connor's witnesses. From something that gentleman had said, he had gained the impression that outside parole evidence would probably be prejudiced, and he felt that the documents in his possession were sufficient to govern his verdict. He conceived that here was a matter for calm, deliberate judgment, for the exercise of the critical, judicial faculty, which he felt he possessed in a high degree. This was not precisely vanity; it was rather the long habit of undisputed dicta. He felt that here was an excellent opportunity for justifying his reputation for independence of decision and action.

So Mr. Wintermuth, pondering in silence for nearly a fortnight, left his Vice-President stretched on the rack of uncertainty without a glance in his direction. To all the tentative efforts O'Connor made to reopen the subject, his chief returned a curt refusal. There was nothing to do but to wait, and O'Connor, with increasingly bad grace, waited.

Not until the close of the second week was his suspense ended, and then not by any intimation from headquarters. Mr. Wintermuth had acted overnight, and had given his verdict directly to the press; and thus it was that the Vice-president, opening one morning the Journal of Commerce to the insurance page, found himself confronted by the headline:—

"Guardian Quits the Conference."

Mr. O'Connor sank back into his chair with a sigh of relief, and carefully read and reread the article from beginning to end. It was very brief, stating simply that Mr. Wintermuth had sent to the Conference the resignation of the Guardian, for "reasons which could be better imagined than discussed," and proposed henceforward to conduct the operations of the company without reference to any "unequally restrictive restrictions."

It was with positive buoyancy that the Vice-president delivered the paper into the hands of Jimmy, for its processional through the office.



CHAPTER XII

It was late afternoon in the drawing room of Miss Wardrop's house in Washington Square. The short November dusk was fading into night, and outside in the old Square, the street lights gleamed in the frosty air. In the fireplace, before which two people were sitting, a wood fire crackled, throwing fantastic shadows about the old room.

Dinner at Miss Wardrop's was at half after seven. Just why Mr. Smith should have considered it necessary to drop in, on his way home from the Guardian, could no doubt have been better explained had his face not been shaded by his hand. The face in the room best worth seeing, however, was not so shaded, and Smith manifested no displeasure at the fact. He himself sat on the chimney seat, and he appeared to be less talkative than usual. His reticence may or may not have been understood by Miss Maitland, but if it were, she chose to pretend otherwise.

"Why are you so very silent?" she finally asked. "Do you know, it isn't at all flattering. One might think your thoughts were a thousand miles away from here."

"Well, perhaps some of them are," Smith confessed. "And I must really ask your pardon for thinking far away, when I am with you. And yet," he smiled slightly, "perhaps you also came in as an important factor in the background of those far-off thoughts."

"If you are trying to stimulate my curiosity, you have been quite successful," said Miss Maitland, and she waited expectantly.

"Do you remember Mr. O'Connor, the Vice-President of the Guardian?" Smith asked abruptly.

"Yes. He was the one, wasn't he, who came into Mr. Wintermuth's office for a minute?"

"Yes."

"You say he is Vice-president of the company? Is he a great friend of yours? Perhaps my first impression was wrong, but I don't believe I liked Mr. O'Connor very much—not nearly so much as that amusing Mr. Cuyler, or nice, polite Mr. Wintermuth, or queer, silent Mr. Bartels."

"Well, between you and me, I don't believe your first impression was far from correct. I don't like O'Connor much, myself," said Smith. "More than that, I know he is unfriendly to me. But that is not the point. The point is that he is up to something, and I don't know what it is. And I've got to find out what it is. That's what I was thinking of."

"What kind of a thing do you mean? And what has he done to make you think so?" the girl asked.

"He has succeeded in persuading the President to take the Guardian out of the Eastern Conference. And I can't figure out why. He's got some ulterior motive, but I can't guess what it is."

"What is the Eastern Conference?"

"It's a sort of association of insurance companies doing business in New England, New York, and other Atlantic states. Most of the best companies belong to it. It's a sort of offensive and defensive alliance. It keeps down the general expense of conducting business by limiting the rate of commission its members can pay to any agent, and it supplies inspections to its members and does a lot of other things. But it really isn't a question of what the Conference does for its members so much as a question of what it may do to the Guardian, if the Guardian gets out. There's considerable quiet coercion about such a union, you see—the Conference companies can make it very interesting for an outsider, if they choose to do so. And after a company has been operating on the inside for a good many years, it's hard to jump the fence and make so radical a change. It upsets your organization."

"But why should the Conference try to make you belong? And will they attempt to hurt you if you resign?"

"I don't know. Possibly not. That will soon be seen. But what I can't fathom is why O'Connor, after all these years, should now lay his wires to get the Guardian out. He never does an important thing like that for nothing; he's got some idea in the back of his head. I feel certain of that from the elaborate pains he took to make me think it was not at his instigation that the thing was done. But I know better, for I know O'Connor."

"Haven't you any clew at all?"

"Not really. They're all too vague. I can't for the life of me see what O'Connor has to gain by getting the Guardian out of the Conference. What good can it possibly do him personally?"

"I feel sure you'll hit on the correct solution at last," Helen said thoughtfully, "because I have a distinct remembrance that one of your chance shots went right to the mark when Charlie Wilkinson was trying to get Mr. Hurd to insure his street car company. Charlie thought it was tremendously clever of you. It was the first time I had ever heard of you."

Smith looked at her quickly. Feeling rather than seeing the glance, the girl hastily continued:—

"I wonder whether Mr. Hurd ever decided to carry insurance."

"I wonder, too," the underwriter agreed, with amusement. "If cool nerve counts for anything, your friend Wilkinson ought to have come out all right. I must ask Mr. Osgood about it the next time I go to Boston."

"If he does succeed, I'm sure he'll feel it was quite largely due to your suggestion. And that is why I think you'll eventually solve the mystery of Mr. O'Connor's conduct."

"I wish I could believe it. But I seem to be as far away as when I began to speculate. The only things I can think of don't appear to me to be reasonable."

"What are some of them? Could I understand them?"

"Better than I, very likely. Since I've gotten you so far into this horribly businesslike affair, I may as well go all the way through. As I said, I can't see how O'Connor can personally get any advantage out of this in any conceivable way, so long as he stays with the Guardian."

"But suppose he himself resigned—what then? Or don't people ever leave the Guardian?"

"Oh, minor employees, of course—they're always shifting about. But no one of any importance has left the company, except by old age or death, for a good many years. Nobody knows exactly why, but it's a good company, and every one just stays. And besides, if O'Connor got out to go with some one else, what good would this move have done him?"

"Isn't it just possible that he has gotten the impression the company has treated him badly, and he is trying to do something to hurt it before he leaves?"

"Pure malignance? Hardly that. And besides, if that were so, why should Mr. Wintermuth accept his suggestion? No, I can't believe that is it."

"What could Mr. O'Connor do, supposing that he left the Guardian and went with some other company?"

"That's another thing. As things are now, I don't see how he could do much to hurt us. It would be a bit awkward for us, I don't mind saying, if he went with some Conference company, for some of the insiders are none too scrupulous in their methods against non-Conference competitors. Of course, if the Conference should pass a separation rule—but no, that's impossible."

"What is a separation rule?"

"Why, it's a kind of boycott. The Conference might pass a rule reducing the commission of any agent who also represented non-Conference companies. You see, most agents represent several companies—a good, big agency may perhaps represent fifteen or twenty—and the Conference companies are in the majority in most of the agencies where the Guardian is represented. It would mean that those agents would have to choose between resigning us and having their commissions reduced, and there is very little doubt as to which course they would take. The Conference might even forbid its companies to be represented at all in mixed agencies—where both Conference and non-Conference companies were located—and then those agents would either have to throw us out or lose the bulk of their companies."

"But couldn't they get other non-Conference companies to fill up their agencies and keep the Guardian?"

"No—hardly. There are only a few really high-class companies on the outside. And most of the agents couldn't afford to change. They would simply have to let us go; and that would mean that we'd have to make our agency plant practically all over again."

"And that would be hard to do, I suppose?"

"It would be just about equivalent to building a new company, for the company's agents are the company."

"But you say it's impossible they should pass this rule. Why?"

"Several reasons. It's pretty arbitrary—it looks a little like a combination in restraint of trade, although company organizations in a lot of states have separation rules. But I doubt whether the Eastern Conference has the backbone to put such a rule in effect. Besides, it's scarcely worth while as things now stand—almost all the good companies are in the Conference, and as for the rest, they're either used to them or they feel they're hardly worth bothering about."

"But the Guardian is, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Smith, thoughtfully, "I suppose it is. Still, what good would it do O'Connor? That's what I keep coming back to, because I'm absolutely certain he wouldn't have put this thing through without some personal end in sight."

"Might not he be disinterested, for once?"

"Not O'Connor," said Smith, dryly. "But good heavens! haven't we talked intrigues and cabals and plots long enough? There are one or two other things in life, you know—I've hardly given you a chance to speak, and I've been holding forth like an unsuccessful detective reporting to his superior officer."

And the conversation drifted into other channels.

A great city is a wonderful place in a thousand ways, not the least of which is its magical influence upon human relationships. Perhaps its mere size, the multiplicity of its sights and sounds, its effect of isolating an individual in the midst of an almost impenetrable throng—perhaps these things are chiefly responsible. But it is certain that, in common with the desert and the sea, a city like London or Paris or New York carries in its very atmosphere a sense of almost devotional reality, of almost the pure essence of life. In the very shrine of the unreal and the artificial, reality grips with a power elsewhere unknown. Beyond all the curious striving for the immaterial, the sense of the utter futility of that very effort becomes wholly clear. Follies and affectations may be sought with added fervor for the mind and the body, but the want of them is stilled in the soul.

Since this is so, in the very home of conventions and conventionalities these artificial ideas become more palpably ridiculous. Surrounded by needless man-made fetters, one sees them to be inane. The wind that blows between the worlds blows in the world's great cities, and it blows, for their lovers at least, the cobwebs from the heart. What is natural is seen to be right, and what is real is seen to be true.

To Smith, lover of his city as he was, these truths were peculiarly obvious; and to Helen Maitland, seeing them largely from the angle of Smith's vision, they became the truth no less. She remembered with some surprise her quite recent dislike of New York, and her even more recent chill of distaste and dread, when she came from the Park, which had checked for the moment the liking she felt springing to life. Of course it was loneliness; but here was a man who had told her that New York's loneliness was one of its greatest charms, and who regarded the apparent heartlessness of the city as one of its most inspiring tonics. Somehow, and apparently most naturally, she found it was coming to seem so to her.

If a man wishes to interest a woman, he does well to speak to her of his enthusiasms; and if he desires to alienate her interest, he will do well to forget them. Smith, who cared deeply for New York, and who was moving unconsciously along the sunny way that led to Helen Maitland, found that never two enthusiasms welded so readily as these. Part of this, no doubt, was due to the city's own influence, but probably the greater part was due to his own genuine understanding and affection for the town itself.

And Helen had not been the readiest of converts, for in the first place, coming as she did from Boston, her sympathies were not with the larger city. She had found its confusion rather tiresome, its contrasts perhaps a little crude, its poverty somewhat distressing, and its wealth a trifle vulgar. With Smith, a new viewpoint was hers, and her old conceptions, which now seemed hopelessly provincial, melted like mist before the sun.

Smith knew his city as a maestro knows his instrument, and their voyages together were like incursions into an enchanted space where time was not. He seemed to know exactly what had been in every nook and corner of the town at every period of its career. Once they stood on Broadway near Columbia University, on whose granite wall was fixed the plate which told of Washington's muster upon those very heights; and Smith had built up for her, not as an historian, but as an actor in the drama, the picture before her eyes. He showed her the old Jumel Mansion farther up town, and they went back together a century and a half to all the strange sights those old halls had seen.

Perhaps the softest spot in Smith's sympathies was held by the Knickerbockers—those sturdy old citizens who seemed all of them somehow to have taken something of the mold of their redoubtable leader and the greatest of them all, Peter Stuyvesant. Smith was familiar with them all, from Peter down. And old Minuit, the Indian, selling his island for a song, was so much a matter of reality to Smith that Helen came to believe in him also as a real individual.

"There he is now!" Smith once suddenly remarked, as they turned a corner and found themselves almost in the arms of an exceptionally spirited cigar-store figure.

"Who?" Helen had asked in surprise.

"Why, old Peter Minuit himself, in the very act of reaching for the proceeds," Smith explained. For which piece of simple levity it is to be feared that he was neither properly ashamed nor adequately rebuked.

It was in the old city, below Twenty-third Street, that the work of time had been most diverse. Here four full eras had left their mark—the aboriginal, the early Dutch, the English-American, and lastly the modern age of granite canyons and sky-seeking towers and marvels of high air and below ground. Smith knew all four, and if one knows where to search, there are plenty of interesting relics of the first three still to be found. He knew how the southern end of Manhattan looked when Hendrick Hudson moored the Half Moon in the lower harbor; and where the shore line lay when the old Dutch keels with their high poops and proud pennons rode at anchor in the river; and again later on when the English flag had replaced the Dutch, and the towering masts of frigates and brigs and schooners made with their threaded rigging a constant etching of the water front.

He guided Helen through old streets where a century's relics still persisted and where one could still find an occasional cornerstone which the flight of a hundred hurrying years had not displaced. He was familiar with most of the old street names,—how West Broadway was once Chapel Street,—many of them long since abandoned for modern changelings far less effective. For the first time Helen realized the origin of the name of "Bouwerie," and how far into New York's and the nation's traditions reached some of the mossy gravestones in Trinity Churchyard.

The city, during the progress of the Civil War, of which Helen had heard Augustus Lispenard speak, was clearer in her vision than ever before, for Smith's grandfather had marched down Broadway in '61, and, unlike Mr. Lispenard, he had not come back.

"They were just starting Central Park," Smith said; "because I have heard mother say often that her father's letters from the front asked several times how the Park was getting along."

"It seems odd, doesn't it? I had always looked on the Park as something which must always have been where it is," Miss Maitland commented. "But I suppose there must have been a beginning some time."

Now all these wanderings and this companionship could not go wholly for naught. Smith was not at all a sentimental person, and Miss Maitland was not in search of emotional adventure, but they were on hazardous ground, and it was hazardous because it was very pleasant to them both.

Miss Mary Wardrop was a lady in whom discretion was held in but lukewarm esteem. Had this not been so, she would have doubtless interposed, for convention's sake at least, in the swiftly developing friendship between her niece and this young insurance man. But Miss Wardrop had long since ceased to care what the world said, and her satisfaction with her own views was sufficient to permit her ignoring those who disagreed with them. She saw nothing objectionable in Smith, and if she speculated on the affair at all, she probably reflected that Miss Maitland was now twenty-five years old and if she didn't know her own mind at that age, it didn't much matter what happened to her.

So Smith, who was blandly ignorant of the fact that propriety as strictly measured in Boston would have been aghast at his candid manner of following his inclinations, met with no obstacles save from Miss Maitland herself. She, it is true, now and again drew back when it seemed to her that their friendship was perhaps progressing too rapidly; but she was not used to men like Smith. There was nothing of the Puritan about him, nothing of the false idea that if a thing is pleasant, it must therefore be somehow sinful. On the contrary, Smith believed that with a normal person the gratification of wishes was the natural result of their possession. If he felt hungry, he ate; if he wanted to see Helen, he went and saw her. Against this hopeless lack of affectation ordinary feminine weapons were badly blunted; in fact, they came to strike Miss Maitland as rather silly. After all, if he wished to see her, why shouldn't he do so? The mere fact that he had seen her the day before was not germane. The one germane thing would have been a lack of inclination on her part to see Smith—and curiously enough, this lack did not manifest itself.

Thus it was that only a few days after their long talk about O'Connor, the same fire saw them together once more. It was Thanksgiving Eve.

"Please don't tell me you have any engagement to-night," said Smith; "for by almost superhuman effort and influence I have managed to reserve a table for three at the Cafe Turin at eight o'clock. May I call the Honorable Jinks and request Miss Wardrop to come and be invited to dine with me?"

"You might try," said Miss Maitland, smiling.

"Then I will."

When the dignified Jenks had limped upward on his mission, the conversation took another turn.

"You are looking very cheerful to-night," Helen remarked.

"More so than I usually do when you see me?"

"More so than the last time I saw you, at all events. Does this mean that you have correctly solved the O'Connor mystery? You really got me very much interested in it."

"No, I haven't solved it. But I have a clew—the one you gave me. If it is the right one, we shall learn very soon."

On the stairs came the sound of Jenks's returning feet, followed a moment later by the rumor of Miss Wardrop's own approach.

"Good evening," she greeted Smith.

"I've come to ask you a favor," he answered. "I once happened to save the life of a head waiter, and he has now repaid the obligation by reserving a table for me to-night at the Cafe Turin, and I want you and Miss Maitland to come and dine with me."

Miss Wardrop wavered; she looked at her niece inquiringly.

"Then you'll come," Smith said.

The old lady laughed.

"Apparently I will, if Miss Maitland has no other plan for the evening."

Helen signified that she had none; and thus it was that eight o'clock found them seated in an eligible corner of the big, gay restaurant, watching the animated holiday crowd, and themselves in no somber or taciturn mood.

A restaurant may be the resort of strange people, but it is an institution of peculiar attractiveness, for all that. All the other tables in the room were occupied by merry parties, jewels and demigems glinted back a thousand lights, men and women of society and out of it laughed and talked, there was the clink of a myriad of glasses, the hurrying of anxious and expectant waiters, the tinkle of silverware on china, mingled with the ignored strains of an orchestra invisible and sufficiently remote not to dictate offensively the tempo of mastication of the diners. It was nothing if not a cosmopolitan gathering. In the crowd were, to judge from appearances, foreigners of many races; but all were masquerading as citizens of the world.

"A conglomerate crew," Smith observed. "They like to convey the impression that last week they dined on the terrace at Bertolini's in Naples, or at Claridge's, or Shepheard's at Cairo, or the Madrid in the Bois, or the Poinciana; while as a matter of fact most of them are like myself and get into this sort of game about twice a year."

"Where do you suppose they all come from?" Miss Wardrop inquired. She affected the newer haunts of modern society very little, and this sort of gathering was strange to her.

"Nobody knows," said her host, lightly. "Rahway, Yonkers, Flushing. Probably Harlem would actually account for the majority, if my theory is correct that most of them are as new to this as I am myself."

"Why don't you include Boston in your humble category?" Miss Maitland asked, laughing.

"Because I would be surprised if there were another Bostonian in this room this evening."

"But why do you think so?" the girl persisted.

"Oh, this isn't their style; they don't like this sort of business. No, I'll wager you three macaroons against a lump of sugar that you are the only child of the Back Bay in this place to-night."

"Done!" declared the girl.

"How can the question be decided?" Miss Wardrop inquired. "I don't see how you can either of you prove your contention."

"I will show you," replied her niece. She turned to a waiter, hovering paternally near by, and said, "Will you please go over to that third table where the very light-haired young lady in the blue gown is sitting, and say to the young gentleman whose back is turned toward us that Miss Maitland wishes to speak with him?"

Smith turned, in time to see the young gentleman in question rise at the waiter's message, cast a look at Miss Maitland, and then come cheerfully forward.

"Do you know, I never dine at a place where I hope and expect—and select—to be absolutely unknown, without meeting anywhere from five to nineteen friends, relations, and acquaintances of various degrees of intimacy," he said, shaking hands. "I'm really delighted to see you, Helen—upon my word, I am; but I sincerely hope you are discretion itself."

"Mr. Wilkinson," said the girl, introducing him to her aunt; and with the briefest of glances at Smith, she added, "of Boston."

"I remember Mr. Smith," said Charlie, easily. "There is an epic quality of justice in his being here, because he is indirectly responsible for my presence. At least," he explained, turning to Smith, "if you hadn't made a certain pregnant suggestion of the susceptibility of a trolley magnate to the opinion of the stock market—"

"You don't mean—?" Helen exclaimed.

"As sure as eggs is incubator's children! They hatched. My esteemed uncle listened to my siren voice—and here I am on a celebration trip! By the way," he said to the underwriter, "I asked Bennington Cole, who's handling the schedule for me, to put as much of it as he could in your company."

"That's very good of you," Smith replied; "but it will be a comparatively trifling amount, I'm afraid. The Guardian has just about as much as it is willing to risk in the congested district of Boston, and Silas Osgood and Company are under instructions to keep our liability down to its present amount and take little new business."

"I congratulate you, Charlie," Helen said. "But why did you come here, hoping to be unknown? Is it your beautiful lady? Is she some one you shouldn't know?"

"Well, hardly that. She's not precisely an undesirable citizen—she's all right enough—but you scarcely want to meet her, I'm afraid. You see, Isabel went South and left me in the lurch, and I had to celebrate somehow—hence Amye."

"Amye?" said Smith, with amusement.

"Yes. With an ultimate 'e.' Amye Sinclair on the program; Minnie Schottman in the Hoboken family Bible. She's a nice girl but a trifle unintellectual. She threw me a papier mache orchid once in Boston."

"Young man," said Miss Wardrop, speaking for the first time, "are you a typical example of the young men of to-day?"

"I am," Wilkinson promptly answered. "I am energetic, entertaining, an opportunist, a eudaimonist, and a baseball fan. Yes, I think I may concede I am typical. Do you agree with me, Helen?"

"I always agree with you, Charlie," said the girl, with a smile. "What possible good would it do me if I didn't?"

"Oh, you could—but you'll excuse me, I'm sure. I see the waiter is preparing to serve my table with real food, which is something I have a confessed predilection for. Good-by—I'm perfectly charmed to have seen you all."

And Mr. Wilkinson returned to Amye and the Cotuits.

"Don't look so scandalized, Aunt Mary," said Helen to her relation. "He is really much less abandoned than he would have people believe; and I think Isabel will bring him out all right yet. I rather fancy she has decided to."

"Isabel Hurd, you mean?" responded Miss Wardrop. "You don't mean to say so! But, bless your heart, I'm not scandalized—I've heard boys talk before. Still, if your friend Isabel knows what she is about, she won't stay South too long; she'll come North and let Amye go back to Hoboken."

"Probably she will. But I have not seen the three macaroons which I won with such ease and finesse."

"Waiter," said Smith, disregarding the fact that they had not finished the entree, "bring three macaroons—exactly three—right away."

An expression of slight mystification appeared on the broad brow of the waiter, but he was inured to eccentric gastronomic requests, and fulfilled this one with his accustomed dignity.

"There!" said Smith. "There's my bet paid, though strictly speaking you couldn't have held me for it, since you were betting on a certainty."

"May I pass the spoils?" replied the girl, with a laugh.

The memory of those three macaroons had to stand Smith in the stead of other things for the last days of November. On his arrival at the office on the morning following Thanksgiving Day, Mr. O'Connor requested him to go down to Baltimore on company business requiring some little time to transact, and not until after the first of December did he set foot again in New York.

He arrived at about eight o'clock in the morning; and as he was obliged to go home first, he did not reach William Street until nearly ten. As he entered the Guardian office, he was aware that something unusual had happened. Business seemed somehow to have been oddly interrupted. Around the map desks and file cases little groups of clerks were gathered, talking in low tones.

Smith watched them in silence for a moment, and as no one volunteered to enlighten him as to what had occurred, he walked over to Mr. Bartels's office and went in.

"What's the matter here this morning? Is there a conflagration anywhere?" he asked the stolid personage at the desk, who barely ceased his figuring to make response:—

"Go and see the boss. He and O'Connor have had a quarrel—funny business—I don't know anything about it, that's all."

Smith went. Mr. O'Connor was in his room, busily engaged at his desk; the table beside him was heaped high with papers and books, which was an unusual sight, for O'Connor was a methodical man and the room was customarily bare of litter. The General Agent walked thoughtfully over to the other side of the office, and glanced through the President's door. Mr. Wintermuth was walking up and down, his hands behind him and his face a little flushed. Smith hesitated, then deliberately opened the door and entered.

"Good morning, sir. I have—" he began, but his chief, with an expression in which anger was still the predominant characteristic, said abruptly:—

"Do you know what has happened?"

"No, sir, I do not."

"Mr. O'Connor has tendered his resignation, as Vice-President of the Guardian!"

Smith stood still a long minute without answering, and then he saw suddenly and clearly all that for so many weeks the darkness had hidden from him.

"And did you accept his resignation, sir?" he asked at last.

The President turned swiftly to face the question.

"He tendered his resignation as of December thirty-first. I told him his resignation was accepted as of nine-forty-five this morning. And I told him to pack up his stuff and get out of here and never show himself in the Guardian office again."



CHAPTER XIII

In the course of his extended career Mr. Wintermuth had been called upon to face many serious and unexpected crises. Conflagrations; rate wars; eruptions of idiotic and ruinous legislation adopted by state senates and assemblies composed of meddlesome agriculturalists, saloon keepers, impractical young lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians;—all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port in safety. In fact, he had done this with such aplomb that long ago he had dismissed from his mind such a thing as the possibility of a wave insurmountable.

In his first flush of anger against O'Connor's betrayal—for by Mr. Wintermuth the action of his Vice-President could not otherwise be regarded—he had but one thought, and that was to make O'Connor's act recoil upon his own head. At that time, however, he was still in ignorance of the full scope of the betrayal, and when the element of bitter personal resentment had largely faded out, his pride and dignity reasserted themselves and bade him choose a different course. Let O'Connor go his way—inevitably justice would overtake him. After all, the first duty was to the company, and the first thing to be done was to fill O'Connor's place.

The cardinal principle of Mr. Wintermuth's administration of the Guardian, during all the years he had been chief executive, had been that all vacancies be filled by promotion of the company's own men. All those who occupied positions of responsibility with the Guardian had come up from the ranks, and it was one of the President's favorite themes for self-congratulation that it had always been possible to fill every opening without going outside the home office.

Unfortunately, however, of late years the current flowing toward the top had been rather clogged by the unusual pertinacity of the incumbents of important places. O'Connor, Bartels, Wagstaff—for years undisturbed all these had held their positions. Even Smith, the youngest man to occupy a place of trust, had been in his present capacity for quite a while. And the natural result of this was that new material in the company, or at least material capable of advancement and development, was painfully scarce.

Bartels was not an underwriter at all, but an accountant, and it was inconceivable that he would ever be anything else. Wagstaff, who supervised the Southern and a part of the Western field, was a good enough machine man, capable in a routine way and within his limitations, but helpless outside them; he had no initiative, wholly lacked dash and imagination, and it was out of the question that he be given charge of the general underwriting of the company, even under such a chief as Mr. Wintermuth. Cuyler, the head of the local department, was a city underwriter pure and simple; his knowledge and his interest stopped short where the jurisdiction of the New York Exchange ended; he knew no more, nor did he care for anything else.

There remained but one possibility—Smith. And Smith was very young. There had been few or no cases in the annals of fire insurance where the underwriting of such a company as the Guardian had been placed in the hands of a man scarcely turned thirty. Mr. Wintermuth, going over the situation carefully, began to wish that he had looked a little farther into the future. A sharp sense of indecision came disagreeably to him, and very reluctantly he reached the conclusion that he did not quite know what to do.

By his order a special meeting of the directors had been called for the next morning, and for the intervening hours he possessed his soul in what patience he could command. If the reflection occurred to him that perhaps it would have been wiser to retain O'Connor until his successor could be selected, he dismissed it at once. The company would have to go on as best it could without a vice-president until such time as the proper man could be found.

It was ten-thirty to the minute when Mr. Wintermuth took the chair and looked about the table at his board. Eleven directors in all, including the President, were in attendance; and although no one except Mr. Wintermuth knew why they had been called together, there was an undercurrent of concern among those present. This was soon crystallized, for Mr. Wintermuth's opening words wakened the active interest and lively perturbation of every man.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this meeting has been called as the result of my having received the following letter. 'James Wintermuth, Esq., and so forth—I hereby tender my resignation as Vice-President of the Guardian Fire Insurance Company of New York, to take effect on December thirty-first or on such earlier date as may suit your convenience. Signed, F. Mills O'Connor.' That is the letter, and so far as I am concerned, that closes the matter, except for the vote whereby I ask you gentlemen to confirm my action in accepting Mr. O'Connor's resignation—as of yesterday morning."

There was no discussion, and the vote was taken.

"Now," continued Mr. Wintermuth, "the office of Vice-president has been declared vacant, and I will request your consideration of the filling of the vacancy. As you know, it has always been the policy of the Guardian to fill all vacancies, official and otherwise, by the promotion of its own men. It is my own belief that this is the only satisfactory and in fact the only honorable system. But Mr. O'Connor's resignation was so unexpected as to leave us unprepared—perhaps more so than we should have been—and it now seems as though a deviation from our usual course might be forced upon us."