"But of course that is not in my province," Smith continued. "The question with me is what immediate action to take with reference to the agency plant. Now, Boston is gone—there's no hurry there. Buffalo is lost, too. It seems unlikely that New York will get in any deeper trouble this week or next—although of course you can't tell. But Philadelphia and Pittsburgh need attention right away." He glanced at the small clock on Mr. Wintermuth's desk. "If you'll excuse me, sir," he said, "I think I can make the ten o'clock on the Pennsylvania. I brought my suitcase down here, thinking that I might want to start in a hurry."

"Go ahead, my boy. Good luck," said his chief.

And so Smith caught the ten o'clock express from the Pennsylvania station, leaving behind him in the Guardian office an elderly gentleman in whose breast an undefined cheerfulness had awakened. But it was to neither Philadelphia nor Pittsburgh that the Vice-President's ticket read; he had taken a ticket to Harrisburg.

Many years before, the Attorney-General of the state of Pennsylvania had been a famous football player at the state university; whether his gridiron career had any bearing on his legal equipment or not was a question, but it certainly did not make him a worse man. His name was James K. Prior, he stood six feet one, and weighed two hundred pounds.

Mr. Prior was a believer in modern government, although in fighting his way up to the attorney-generalship he had seen enough of the Pennsylvania variety to have given a lesser optimist his doubts. He also believed in modern business conditions, and so far as he properly could, he officially encouraged what he regarded as being legitimate commercial combinations. But he did not believe in trusts. He had followed local legislation long enough to be very sure that there was in it far too much sophistry and too little equity, and he was a strong upholder of what he termed fair play, whether it came peacefully along statutory lines or whether it had to be jerked raw from the shambles of a hundred confused and specious lawyer-made laws.

All in all, he made an active and satisfactory attorney-general.

Now it chanced that during the last session of an unusually prolific legislature a political opponent of Mr. Prior's had contrived to secure the passage of a bill designed to give a certain latitude to certain rather questionable combinations of capital, known in the vernacular as trusts. Senator McGaw, Mr. Prior's antagonist, had managed this bit of special legislation very craftily indeed. The bill was so innocently worded as to disarm the most vigilant and radical trust-buster; it appeared as though its purpose was exactly the reverse of that for which it had been subtly designed; in fact, in an excessive effort to avert suspicion a couple of clauses had found their way into this document which gave Mr. Prior some of the keenest pleasure of his career.

"You are perfectly safe in signing that bill, Governor," he had said to the State's chief executive, who had asked his advice in the matter. "I'll bet my professional reputation that the courts will hold that it gives us more than it takes away. McGaw's people think it ties the State's hands from proceeding against concerns which operate in restraint of trade by restricting their distributing centers. Instead of which we'll have them on the hip—that section four went a little too far. Just let one of them try to keep his product exclusively in the hands of his sole distributers, and I give you my word I'll have the responsible officer of that concern in jail! Go ahead and sign the bill, Governor—it's all right with me."

It was the draft of this bill, now signed and recently become a law, which occupied the attention of Smith during a large part of the ride from New York to Harrisburg. And the more he studied it, the more hopeful became his expression. And it was with the most buoyant of steps that he made his way from Harrisburg station to the office of Mr. Prior. To that distinguished gentleman he sent in a card whereon he added after his name two things: first, "Vice-President Guardian Fire Insurance Co. of New York," and second, by a whimsical but considered afterthought, "I saw you kick that goal from the field against Cornell."

Mr. Prior was thoroughly inured to conversing with corporation executives,—they were no novelty to him,—presumably, therefore, it was the second memorandum which caused Smith to be ushered almost immediately into the presence of the Attorney-General, who regarded his visitor with a good-humored smile on his clean-shaven lips.

"Mr. Smith, I presume?" he inquired.

"Yes, sir," the other answered.

"I gather from this card," Mr. Prior pursued, glancing at it, "that you remember having seen me—elsewhere."

"When I was fifteen years old," Smith replied. "And I've been to a good many games since, but I don't think I ever saw any one else kick a goal from the field at a mean angle on the forty-yard line with a stiff wind quartering against him."

"Perhaps not—at least in the last two minutes of play," the Attorney-General agreed reflectively; and the New Yorker could easily pardon this embellishment.

It was some little time later when Mr. Prior somewhat reluctantly returned to things mundanely legal so far as to ask his caller's business.

Smith explained.

When, on the following afternoon, he walked into President Wintermuth's office, if there was in his manner a certain undertrace of elation, it must be forgiven him, for this, his first stroke in his broad horizon, seemed thus far up to every expectation of success.

"Well, what did you do?" was Mr. Wintermuth's greeting, as he looked up to find Smith before him.

"The Attorney-General of Pennsylvania," said Smith slowly, "is going into court to-morrow to ask for an injunction, alleging conspiracy and restraint of trade, forbidding the Eastern Conference from enforcing a separation rule anywhere within the boundaries of the state."

"What's that?" said the President, sharply. "A restraining order, you say?"

"Yes. Mr. Prior, the Attorney-General, thinks he will have little trouble in securing a temporary injunction. Later on he will move to make this permanent, and there will doubtless be a fight on that; but he thinks he can beat them under the new Anti-Trust Law. In the meantime it ties up the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh boards, and I think we can get back most of the smaller Pennsylvania agents we've lost. Most of them are well disposed toward us; other things being equal, they'd be glad to restore the status quo, and none of them are anxious to be made joint defendants with the Conference companies in a conspiracy suit."

Mr. Wintermuth said nothing for a long minute; then his face broke into almost the first sincere smile which had been seen on it since the opening of the year.

"That's very well done—a good idea and well executed, Richard," he said.

"Thank you, sir," said Smith.

There was more discussion to follow, and the two went over the situation as a whole more fully than had been hitherto possible.

"Of course," Smith pointed out, "this is just a beginning. But Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are safe—that's something. And Baltimore will never dare make a move after this, for Maryland always follows Pennsylvania. No, our chief problem at present is New York and New England."

"Yes," agreed the older man. His face darkened. "Boston! How about Boston? What can we do up there?"

"I don't know," returned Smith, slowly. "But there's one thing we can do, and do at once. We can close the Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy agency. We can decapitate that crew in forty-eight hours, and with your permission I'll go up there and do it myself."

"Go ahead," said the President.

That night Mr. Wintermuth enjoyed the first peaceful rest for almost three months. Smith, on the contrary, perhaps through his anxiety to put his Boston agency house in order, remained sleepless far into the small, still hours. Nevertheless he departed next day for Boston on the three o'clock express, arriving in Boston at eight, although he might as well have taken a later train, for it was certain that neither Sternberg, Bloom, nor McCoy would be apt to remain in their offices until that hour of night. Doubtless it was for this reason that he left the train at the Huntington Avenue station and turned west toward Deerfield Street.

Fifteen minutes later he was waiting in the reception hall of an apartment house, the construction of which he had once, in the Guardian office at New York, quite minutely described for the edification of a certain young lady visitor. In due course of time he was conveyed to the proper floor, and a moment later found himself shaking hands with the identical young lady.

"Mother, this is Mr. Richard Smith of New York, a friend of Uncle Silas, of whom I told you."

Smith found himself bowing to a little gray lady whose manner was so gentle that he unconsciously lowered his voice in speaking to her. She was dressed all in gray, and her hair was gray, and the silvery lights that glistened in it moved through the folds of a tiny lace object which might, had it been developed, have proved to be a cap. To call so filmy and nebulous a thing a garment of any kind was perhaps absurd; but if this premise was once granted, it would have been correct to say that Mrs. Maitland clung to caps. Certainly no article could have better suited her, and in her single person she had done almost as much as all the rest of Boston to revivify a dying but delightful institution.

The little lady, for all her mildness of manner and appearance, proved to be as wide awake as any one of the three. She even found a way to discover, without Smith's being aware of it, whether he possessed the typical New Yorker's attitude toward her native city. Mrs. Maitland lived in the firm and fixed belief that all New Yorkers, dwelling as they did in a restless and artificial milieu of restaurants and theaters and dollars, had for Boston and Bostonians a kind of patronizing pity. The fact that she herself regarded New Yorkers in very much the same light had never occurred to her.

Smith, however, was not a typical New Yorker. He had too real and intense an interest in all created things to fear Mrs. Maitland's gently suspicious inquisition. In addition to this he was so genuinely interested in at least one of the Bostonians before him that he naturally and easily escaped the pitfalls into which another might have tumbled. So thoroughly, indeed, did he win approval and disarm suspicion that before very long he had his reward in being left, before the small but cheerful fire, with the daughter of the house.

This tactful withdrawal did not lessen the attraction of Mrs. Maitland in Smith's eyes, and it was with real admiration in his tone that he said to Helen:—

"I think your mother is charming."

"I have thought so," returned Helen, with assumed loftiness, "for thirty or forty years."

"So long?" queried Smith, thoughtfully. "That merely goes to show how one can be deceived."

"Deceived!" said Miss Maitland. "Unless you mean self-deception, I would like an explanation of that remark."

But her visitor said that in his opinion to explain anything, however occult, to a Bostonian, savored of intellectual impudence, and was, at the least, a piece of presumption of which he hoped he should never be guilty.

"And yet I can remember," said the girl, laughing, "an occasion when explanations were made to a young lady from Boston—and explanations that took some time, too. I—even I—can bear witness to that."

"My life," Smith rejoined, "has been like that of a candidate for office, such that he who runs may read—and he need not necessarily be a ten-second sprinter, either. Only one dark, shameful page is in it, and that is the record of the day when I talked deaf, dumb, and blind the helpless stranger within the Guardian's gates."

"Are you really sorry?" Helen asked more seriously.

Smith looked at her.

"It has been more than three months since you left New York," he said. "I have been glad of it—and sorry for it—every day of that time."

"And which are you now?" inquired the girl, with interest.

"If I should start on that subject, I should probably regret it. Hadn't we better talk of something else?"

"As you wish," Helen returned lightly. "But you can at least tell me about the Guardian, and what has been happening since I left. In an occasional letter which I have received from an insurance friend of mine in New York, there has never been a word about his company."

"Your correspondent no doubt wanted to be cheerful when he wrote to, you, and for that reason it has been necessary for him to omit all reference to the Guardian's affairs."

"But I heard indirectly about them, just the same—from Uncle Silas. I know of course that he retired from the active management of Silas Osgood and Company because he was humiliated and chagrined at being obliged to resign the agency of his old friend Mr. Wintermuth's company, and I know that, although he would not interfere with Mr. Cole after Mr. Cole took charge of the business, he disapproved of Mr. Cole's accepting the agency of the Salamander."

"Well, if you know as much as that, you know that our suspicions of Mr. O'Connor proved all too true. He not only engineered the scheme to get us out of the Eastern Conference, but after we got out he has tried to steal all our best agents and business for his own company, and, thanks to the lack of any resistance on our part, he has been able in many cases to succeed."

"But why didn't you resist? I don't quite understand. Couldn't anybody—couldn't you stop him?"

"I—I didn't have a chance," answered Smith.

"Indeed? And why not?" continued his inquisitor.

"From the series of pointed questions you are putting me, I might almost imagine I was being interviewed by the representative of a muck-raking magazine," countered her visitor, in covert concern.

"From the lack of actual information in your replies one might almost imagine you were," Helen cordially agreed. "Now are you going to answer my inquiry?"

"Well, the Guardian directors selected another man to take charge of its underwriting affairs, and we didn't hit it off very well—naturally he did things in his own way."

"I know," said the girl, nodding her head; "Mr. Gunterson."

"Good heavens!" said the young man, "is there any use in my attempting to give information to some one who already has it all? If you know all about this and what has gone on, why ask me?"

"I wanted to hear what you'd say. It is a natural desire, I'm sure, and you ought to be willing to help gratify it. You see, you are responsible for my interest in the affairs of your insurance company, and you have almost a parental responsibility."

"How is Wilkinson?" said Smith, engagingly.

"Presently it may be that the conversation can be diverted to Mr. Wilkinson. But not now."

"Well, then, to go back to the affairs of the Guardian, how is Mr. Osgood? It's rather dangerous for a man who's been in harness so long to get out of it so suddenly. It's not good for a man—in my opinion."

"More adroit—for I really want to tell you about Uncle Silas. But business first—then pleasure."

"Well," said her visitor, with resignation, "go ahead, Miss Portia."

"I wish to know all about what happened in the Guardian while Mr. Gunterson was in charge," said Helen, simply.

And finally, with a few evasions which were immediately detected and some omissions which were possibly suspected, Smith told the story of the decline of the Guardian.

"So Mr. Gunterson left," commented the girl, when all was said. "What happened then?"

"Why, that's substantially all, to date," returned the New Yorker, dishonestly; "except that I've been sent up here to see what I can do to improve our position in Boston."

"Ah! Who sent you? Who is in charge of the Guardian now?" continued Miss Maitland, calmly.

"Mr. Wintermuth, of course," replied her victim.

"And under Mr. Wintermuth? Has no one been elected to fill Mr. Gunterson's place?"

"Well, you see, Mr. Gunterson only resigned a few days ago. Boards of directors don't as a rule move very rapidly. There hasn't really been a great deal of time."

"Who has been elected to fill Mr. Gunterson's place?"

"Are you under the impression that—?"

"Do you wish me to say it again? Who has been elected Vice-President of the Guardian?"

"A man," said her visitor slowly, "by the name of Smith."

Helen leaned back in her chair in mock exhaustion.

"That was certainly awfully difficult," she said, with a little laugh of triumph. "I thought you would never admit it."

"I suppose you'd have found it out sometime, anyway," Smith said philosophically.

"No, you're wrong," his companion denied, "for the very good and simple reason that I already knew it."

"You knew it! And yet you put me through this cross-examination?"

Helen nodded complacently.

"Uncle Silas told me this afternoon."

"But how did he know? No announcement has been made."

"Mr. Wintermuth wrote him."

"Well," said Smith, "no ring master with a long, cracking whip ever made a reluctant poodle jump through a series of hoops in a more professional manner than you put me through my little story."

"Yes," said Helen, demurely. Then, growing suddenly more serious, she said, "And won't you let me congratulate you, Mr. Vice-President?"

"I will," said Smith. "There is no one I know by whom I would rather be congratulated."

He took in his own her offered hand, and for just a moment an enchanted silence abode in the room. Then, with no effort on Smith's part to detain her, Helen withdrew her hand.

"Now I can tell you about Uncle Silas and Charlie Wilkinson," she said. "And both are so interesting as topics that I hardly know where to begin."

"Begin with Mr. Osgood, please," her visitor suggested.

"Very well, then. I have been seeing quite a little of Uncle Silas lately. After he turned over the management of his business to Bennington Cole, it seems as if he hardly knew what to do with himself. For many years he has been such a busy man that this leisure has left him at a loss to pass his time. So he has been playing around with me to some extent. We have had lots of long talks together; among other subjects we have even discussed you."

"So I learn," Smith responded.

"Don't be saturnine," the girl rejoined. "Seriously, though, while I've enjoyed Uncle's Silas's society, I don't believe this idleness is good for him. In fact, I'm rather worried about him—I think having nothing to do makes him despondent, for it makes him feel as though his day's work was over. And there's no reason why it should be. He's not really old, although he looks rather frail, and I believe he'd be better and happier if he went back into business now."

"Why doesn't he, then?" the other asked. "He still retains his interest in the agency, doesn't he?"

"Yes, I believe so. But it's largely a matter of pride with him. He retired because it was necessary for the firm to resign the Guardian, and I doubt whether he would go back unless it could be arranged that the Guardian go back too. Can't you arrange it?"

"Well, hardly—that is, right away," Smith replied. "Present conditions are about the same as when the company left the Osgood agency, but I feel more encouraged, myself, to believe there may be a way around. I'll call on Mr. Osgood to-morrow the first thing I do—no, the second."

"What is the first?—if I may ask."

"To close the agency of our present Boston representatives, Messrs. Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy. And now tell me the news about Mr. Charles Wilkinson, the hero of the Hurd trolley schedule."

"Mr. Wilkinson is about to extend his responsibilities in connection with the Hurd family."

"You don't mean that old John M. Hurd was so impressed that he—?"

"Quite another thing. Undoubtedly Mr. Hurd was impressed with Mr. Wilkinson's talents as an insurance broker, but scarcely to the extent of desiring him for a son-in-law."

"A son-in-law! You mean—"

"That Charlie got a trolley schedule and a fiancee out of the same family."

"Well, well! So Miss Hurd is going to marry Wilkinson! Well, she'll acquire an ingenious and enterprising husband, at any rate. And what does John M. say?"

"Not a great deal—he's quite laconic, as usual. But what little he says is very much to the point. He says he had supposed a daughter of his would have more sense. However, since she hasn't, he can merely state that he withholds his consent to the match. Isabel's of age, and if she chooses to marry Charlie she can do so, but without approval or assistance from her father."

"Meaning," said Smith, "an unpleasant codicil in the paternal last will and testament, providing that instead of a previous bequest, his beloved daughter be paid two hundred dollars a month as long as she lives. What does Wilkinson say to Mr. Hurd's attitude? One might gather that it would make a certain difference with him, for, although Miss Hurd is certainly very attractive, I somehow gained the general impression that your friend Charlie had a very clear eye on the main chance."

"Isabel doesn't seem a bit disturbed, for I think she anticipated her father's point of view; and as for Charlie, seeing that his chief source of income at present depends wholly on the favor of a man who is angry enough to disinherit his daughter for wanting to marry him—well, one would expect that Charlie would be depressed, or at least thoughtful. But not at all. He's in the highest of spirits, and says that the mere rumor that he is going to marry into the Hurd family will establish a line of credit good enough to last ten years."

"But really—isn't the young man a bit mercurial?"

"Oh, awfully! To tell the truth, I was a little surprised when Isabel took him, for under her society manner she's very sensible and self-controlled. And yet Charlie's very attractive and amusing and really clever at times, and she is just the kind of girl that ought to take hold of him and tactfully make him amount to something. She'll be the best thing in the world for him."

"I wonder why a man almost always falls in love either with a girl who is just the sort or not at all the sort he should have selected. It's always one or the other—never any middle course. I wonder what kind of girl you would say was just the sort for me."

"One would have to know a man extremely well to venture a suggestion on such a point, don't you think?" Miss Maitland parried.

"Perhaps," Smith agreed. "And after all, since I can't myself say exactly what sort of girl would be most perfectly suited to my special peculiarities, it would be a little unreasonable to expect any one else to do so."

His companion gave a suppressed sigh of relief that a subject which might have developed elements of high hazard seemed now to be avoided. She was not quite sure what she thought of the man before her, but she knew that he seemed strong and vital and sincere. From Mr. Osgood she had learned that other people of considerable discrimination held a like opinion.

It was quite strange. Superficially, introspection would have led her to believe that she would have been attracted by some one nearer to her own enthusiasms, her own breeding, her own ideals. This young man was alien to her in birth, and his education had been along totally different lines, and logically they should not have been in sympathy one with the other, for he made her ideals seem somehow bloodless and her enthusiasms sterile and hardly worth while. It was certainly perplexing, for after three months in which she had not seen him, the attraction he exercised upon her had not noticeably lessened. She oddly felt that it would have been more considerate in Smith had he reappeared a little weaker and less vivid than her remembrance of him.

Nevertheless she was distinctly glad to see him again. That was a fact to be faced, and when, at parting, he inquired whether Boston would be scandalized if he were to call again the following evening, since he would probably have to leave on the next day, she found herself impelled to yield so ready an assent that she felt swift need to disguise it. Yet she gave him the answer he wished.

Next morning Smith's first visit was to Mr. Gunterson's discoveries. Only one of the partners, Mr. Bloom, had reached the office at the time the representative of the Guardian was announced, and it became necessary to wait until Mr. Sternberg and Mr. McCoy arrived. This they presently did, and a brief meeting took place in the same room in which, three months before, this precious trio had signed a Guardian contract with Samuel Gunterson. But the present interview was far less meandering and much more to the point than its predecessor.

"Gentlemen," said Smith, "the jig is up. I've come here to close your agency for the Guardian."

The three partners looked at him. Sternberg was first to recover the power of speech.

"Why, Mr. Smith," he said unctuously, "you're acting very hasty! Do you think this is fair and just to us? We haven't had enough of a tryout to really count."

"And I bet you we're giving you fifty per cent more business than Osgood did," Jake Bloom broke in. "Just because we've been a little unfortunate right on the go-off on a few losses is no reason for closing us up. You're making a mistake to leave us. Give us a year at least—we'll make good for you."

"The losses you've got through this office is on business any company would be glad to write," interposed McCoy. "Any company would take it right over again."

"I'm sorry," responded the New Yorker; "but in accordance with the conditions of our contract, either party can terminate it at any time, and I consider it best to take this action for my company. I regret that it is necessary, but there is no alternative. If it's a mistake, we all have to make mistakes now and then, and I guess I'll choose this for mine."

Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy regarded him in hostile silence.

"Furthermore," Smith continued, "the Guardian feels that it would prefer to cancel all policies written through your agency. I hope that this can be arranged without trouble to your firm."

Bloom laughed, and directed a stream of tobacco juice into a convenient cuspidor.

"Sure it can, Mr. Smith," he said, "because this firm absolutely declines to have nothing to do with it. If you want any policies canceled, cancel 'em yourselves."

"Well," said Smith, "if we cancel all these policies we will undoubtedly inconvenience the brokers that placed the business with you, and they'll come back at you. Now I tell you what I'll do. If you'll cancel these policies and replace the lines in one or more of your other companies, I won't demand any return commission. By just substituting other policies you can square yourselves with the brokers and make a double commission besides. Isn't that fair?"

The three partners looked at one another inquiringly.

"That seems all right," Sternberg finally said. "But you're making a mistake to leave us, Mr. Smith. I tell you that straight. No one else can give you what we can."

Probably the last statement was absolutely true, but it did not alter the New Yorker's decision.

"Well, we won't go into that," he said. "I shall expect our canceled policies to come along as soon as you can get at them. Meanwhile, please give me your commission of authority and unused policies forty-one twenty-seven to forty-five hundred inclusive. You can send back the rest of the supplies by express collect, or destroy them."

A few minutes later, Smith, with a large bundle under each arm, might have been seen leaving the office of his late agents and making straight for an express office from where he shipped the Guardian's supplies back to New York. To Mr. Wintermuth he sent a telegram which read concisely, "Closed Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy agency. Smith." He then sought a telephone booth.

"Hello. Is this Mr. Silas Osgood? Yes, I'd like very much to see you. That's very good of you to say so. Yes, last evening—I called for a few minutes. Can't you take lunch with me at the Touraine? Good—in about half an hour."

It was a very cordial meeting between the two, and when they sat down to luncheon in a peaceful corner where their talk would be uninterrupted, Mr. Osgood was more alert and cheerful than the veteran underwriter had been since the bleak day when O'Connor and the Eastern Conference moved on Boston; and as Smith went on, his companion's manifest pleasure increased.

"So I think I am justified in saying that even if the courts do not absolutely hold the separation feature illegal, they will come so close to it that the Superintendent of Insurance will take a hand," Smith said. "I'm mighty glad you didn't sell your interest in the agency, for I believe that things are going to break our way, and when it's possible for the Guardian to go back into the Osgood agency, I hope to see Silas Osgood in command—opening the front door to let us in."

"I'll open the door to admit myself and the Guardian together—I'd rather have it that way," the older man replied. "But I hope that this can be accomplished before very long. I dislike idleness intensely. When I was in the harness I often thought I had too much to do; but any excess amount is better than nothing at all. How long do you suppose all this will take? I expect to spend the summer in Europe—do you suppose that it can be fought out within a year?"

"It's rather hard to say," the other responded. "There appears to be no clear-cut law under which we can proceed directly, as we did in Pennsylvania. I suppose you heard that the Attorney-General over there had taken up our battle for us. Still, it ought not to take a year here. Meanwhile my hands are rather tied here in Boston. I can't appoint another agent, because it wouldn't be fair to close up his agency and go over to Silas Osgood and Company when you were ready to take us. Meanwhile the Guardian will be doing no business at all in Boston, and I hate to be getting no premium income whatever out of the town, but I guess I'll have to be patient. You haven't any one to suggest, have you, that would give us exclusively a suburban business so that he wouldn't interfere with your congested district lines when we appointed you?"

Mr. Osgood reflected for a moment.

"That sounds like a difficult question to answer," he said; "but I believe I know such a man. There is a very live young fellow named Greenwood who has a nice business out toward Dorchester mostly. He's a sort of protege of mine, and if I had remained in the agency I think I should have offered him a junior partnership. He doesn't represent any company except as a sub-agent. If you appointed him, his risks wouldn't conflict at all with ours later on. Perhaps, even, I might carry out my original intention toward him."

"An excellent idea," Smith said. "When do you suppose we could go and see this Mr. Greenwood?"

"I think," said Silas Osgood, with a smile, "that we could go this afternoon."



CHAPTER XVII

Mr. James Wintermuth had just finished a luncheon of such unusual proportions that evidently it had attracted the respectful attention of the Down Town Association's waiter who usually served him, and who of late had grown almost to despair of being able ever again to bring his client anything more substantial than a half portion of crab-flake salad.

"Nice day, sir," the waiter suggestively remarked, as if Mr. Wintermuth's appetite were in some curious way governed wholly by the vagaries of the weather.

"Yes," agreed his patron, with almost a touch of embarrassment; "a very nice day, indeed."

Mr. Wintermuth was feeling uncommonly cheerful, and the cause of it was quite largely the oblong yellow missive then reposing on his desk. He knew he would have to wait a day or two before he could learn the details of Smith's doings in Boston, but it was at least a relief to feel that some decisive action was being taken.

When, two days later, Smith returned, his report seemed eminently satisfactory to his chief.

"I'm not a lawyer, so I can't tell you exactly what kind of court proceedings will have to be brought," he said; "but so far as I can make out it's a sort of action for conspiracy against the companies belonging to the Eastern Conference, joining them all as defendants. The Insurance Commissioner of Massachusetts comes in, too, in some way, and I believe that under the state law as recently amended we will finally win out."

"Finally!" said the President. "That sounds rather remote. How long do you expect it will take? Protracted litigation is both expensive and unsatisfactory."

"Oh, it won't cost us anything; the Insurance Commissioner nominally brings the suit, as I understand it, and I'm sure it won't take more than a year. But in the meantime I feel positive that we will suffer no further annoyance or injury in New England. We've already lost about all the agents that could be shaken loose, and with this suit pending I fancy the Conference will go very slow before forcing the issue further—for fear of civil actions for damages from all the non-Conference companies if we win our conspiracy case."

"That sounds reasonable."

"It is. So I really think we need not worry much about New England for a while. I fancy I managed to stiffen up the backbone of Crowell, who's a first-class field man, and I'm going to circularize the local agents, telling them the facts."

Mr. Wintermuth looked at Smith thoughtfully.

"All right, Richard; go ahead," he said. "I am quite content to leave it in your hands."

"Now for New York," pursued Smith, inclining his head in acknowledgment of his superior's commendation. "In New York State we shall have to accomplish our purpose mainly by means of bluffing, to put it plainly, for I can't find any law that covers the point; but perhaps we won't need a law. Mr. Ferguson, the Superintendent of Insurance, is, as you know, not unalterably opposed to being nominated for Governor this fall. He has listened before now to the siren voice, and Albany seems very attractive to him. And this is an anti-combination year. I don't think he'll need much persuasion to be convinced that much credit and capital will be gained by a spirited attack on something that more than faintly resembles a trust."

"That correctly describes the Eastern Conference, in its present activities," said Mr. Wintermuth. "But what do you expect Mr. Ferguson to do?"

"Oh, I haven't any idea," said his subordinate, with a smile. "He hasn't any law on his side; but as you are aware, his office carries with it very arbitrary and radical powers, and if he thinks that he can climb into the Governor's chair over the prostrate body of the Eastern Conference, he'll find some excuse to sandbag it and make it a stepping stone. He'll do something all right, or I miss my guess."

"Probably you are right, Richard."

"The next thing I do will be to go up to see him and talk it over. New York's an important factor with us to-day. With a little watching Pennsylvania and Maryland will take care of themselves. New England is safe to hold its own, I think. I believe we've covered the high spots, sir."

"How long have you been Vice-President of the Guardian, Mr. Smith, if I may ask?" inquired the head of the institution in a tone of affectionate raillery mixed with genuine pride.

"Oh, about a week," said Smith, laughing; "but I've been sitting around so long, spoiling for a chance to do something, that there's several months' stored-up energy which I've got to get out of my system."

"Well, I hope you get around to the local department pretty soon," said Mr. Wintermuth. "Poor Cuyler has worried himself nearly sick, and the city business has been hit very hard; premiums are away off for the year so far."

"Yes; I want to talk that over with you, too. But I think Mr. Ferguson comes first."

"Very well, Richard; use your own judgment," said his chief. "So far, I think you have done good work for us."

"I'm glad you're satisfied, and I'll try to keep it up, I assure you," said Smith. He hesitated a moment. "But there is one phase of all this thing which I haven't forgotten and which I don't think you have, either, and that is how we came originally to be dragged out of the Conference and exposed to all these attacks."

"I have not forgotten it," said Mr. Wintermuth, stiffly; "but I think there can be no advantage in discussing it."

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I do not agree with you in that—and for this reason," rejoined the other. "Just one man is responsible for most of our trouble. He caused us to resign from the Conference, he tried to steal our agents and our business when we were out and succeeded in some pretty important cases, he got our branch manager away from us, and alienated some of our best local brokers, and—I have no proof of this last and perhaps I should not discredit my predecessor—but I can't help feeling that he induced some mutual friends of yours and his to suggest Mr. Gunterson's name to you."

"No," said the President, shaking his head. "The man who mentioned Gunterson to me is a real friend of mine—it was merely his judgment that was at fault."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it," the other responded. "But the point is this: is O'Connor likely to stop now? That's what we've got to consider."

"It is no particular concern of mine what Mr. O'Connor does or where he stops," said the President, with magnificent but impractical dignity.

"Well, it is of mine," Smith retorted, "because I want to know what he's going to do next. O'Connor has played several very shabby tricks on you and on the Guardian—things that must, even in his own eyes, seem discreditable. The fact that we know what a rascal he is doesn't help us much if we just sit here with our hands folded. And the fact that at last we have begun to defend ourselves will not endear us to him the more—on the contrary it will make him even more vicious toward us. No, he won't stop where he is; we shall hear from him again."

Smith was possibly correct in his conclusion; but for the moment all was very quiet along the Salamander battle front—if battle front it were. So he went off to interview the vigilant and ambitious Ferguson; and for four days the home office saw him no more.

In the many years during which the Guardian had conducted its sane and conservative business life, it had gathered into its grasp a great many desirable adjuncts and aids to the smooth and proper operation of a first-class fire insurance company. Its agency plant, while not one of the largest, was second to none in the character and ability of the agents themselves; its force of office and field men was adequate; even its stationery was simple and dignified and well adapted to the ordinary uses of the management.

Perhaps at no time had Mr. Wintermuth's good fortune served him better than when he secured the Guardian's principal reinsurance treaty. Nearly every large company has contracts with one or more reinsurance companies, usually foreign, and whenever an agent writes a policy for a greater amount than his company thinks it prudent to hazard on the risk in question, it cedes to one or more of these reinsurers such a proportion of the risk as it feels disinclined to retain, paying to the reinsurers an equal proportion of the original premium. The larger the policies a company is willing to write, the higher the esteem in which it is held by its agents, as a rule; and the Guardian had always, thanks to the excellent reinsurance facilities it enjoyed, been able to take care of very liberal lines on all acceptable classes of business. Moreover, since the treaty company paid the Guardian for its proportion of the premium a higher rate of commission than the Guardian paid the agent who wrote the risk, the transaction was profitable to the Guardian. The reinsurance company could afford to pay the higher commission, because it had no expensive agency plant to maintain, it did not need conspicuous offices, it employed no field men or inspectors, and in fact, except for the inevitable losses, this commission paid for the business was its only important expense.

Mr. Wintermuth had, in the mist of years past, discovered on one of his trips abroad a reinsurance company rejoicing in the name of the Karlsruhe Feuer Rueckversicherungs Gesellschaft, or more briefly, the Karlsruhe Reinsurance Company. With the managing director of this worthy institution he had taken the unspeakable waters at an almost obsolete German spa, and although the waters did him no good, the reinsurance treaty that he incidentally arranged with Mr. August Schroeder made a very satisfactory termination of the treatment. It was a masterly contract—for Mr. Wintermuth—and its acceptance by Mr. Schroeder only showed that his experience with American business was very limited or that the waters had sapped his vitality to a degree more than was perceptible. It allowed the Guardian to do almost everything it pleased, restricted it not at all, never protested any action however unexpected, waived every possible right and privilege, paid a liberal commission and a share of the profits besides—in short, it was an ideal treaty and one which was the admiration of those few privileged characters who knew its merits. Nevertheless it had also proved to be a good contract for the Karlsruhe, for such business as the Guardian ceded had paid a modest but unfailing return to its Teutonic connection year after peaceful year.

One can therefore only faintly conjecture Mr. Wintermuth's surprise and genuine anguish upon receiving, one bright April morning, a communication in German, which, being translated by Mr. Otto Bartels with something more than his customary stolidity, proved to read, stripped of all superfluous verbiage, substantially as follows:

"The managing director of the Karlsruhe, in accordance with the conditions of the contract, hereby gives six months' notice of the termination of the reinsurance arrangements now existing between the Karlsruhe and the Guardian."

When, the following day, Smith returned, Mr. Wintermuth's first greeting was silently to hand him this letter. The younger man, with a little assistance from the President's recollection of Bartels's translation, managed to decipher the tangled German, and sat for a long minute without speaking.

"Why do you suppose they're canceling? And why didn't we get this through their London managers, I wonder?—they're the people we've done business with for the last ten years," he said at length.

"What difference does it make?"

"None, perhaps. Still, it strikes me as rather odd. Almost as though some one had planned that this should look as though it emanated from a point less in touch with William Street than London is."

"Then you think—?"

"Who else could it be but O'Connor? And these German underwriters are perfect babes in the wood—they're just idiotic enough to cancel a profitable contract merely to take on an experimental one with a bigger premium income in its place. Now, nobody outside the office knew the conditions of our contract with the Karlsruhe—except O'Connor. No, there's no question about it. He probably offered them a little better commission arrangement and a bigger business—and they fell for it."

"Very likely that is so," agreed Mr. Wintermuth.

"The only question now is: what can we do?" Smith continued.

"Schroeder has been dead six years. And I don't know the present managing director at all; I've never even seen this man that signed the letter."

"It would have done us no good if you had known him," said the younger man, slowly. "This is a cut and dried affair. All we can do now is to look for another treaty. We must try to get a contract as good as the one we have with the Karlsruhe."

"I'm afraid we can never do it," the President responded.

"Perhaps not—and again, perhaps we can. Still, I admit it won't be easy." He fell thoughtfully silent.

"Cuyler tells me he's lost another broker—Spencer and Carrick have begun to drop their expirations with us," remarked Mr. Wintermuth, with an irrelevance that was more apparent than real.

"Does he think the Salamander's getting them?" Smith inquired, his eyes narrowing.

The older man nodded.

The other rose from his chair.

"I think," he said deliberately, "that I will go and see Mr. F. Mills O'Connor. I will give him just one chance to let up in this campaign of his and restrict his energies to ordinary business competition; and then, if he refuses, I will ask you and the other directors of the Guardian to let me open things up and fight him on his own ground, if it costs us every dollar of prospective profit for the next three years."

Mr. Wintermuth's face assumed an expression of manifest concern.

"Don't be hasty, Richard," he said quickly; "the fault with all you younger men is that you're apt to go too fast. I myself have confidence in you, you understand, but I don't know that I could promise the support of the directors for any campaign of reprisals. I'm afraid the idea of spending three years' prospective profit wouldn't strike them with any degree of favor."

His perturbation was so sincere that Smith turned back in the doorway to reassure him.

"Well, don't worry," he said lightly. "Probably my remarks will so abash Mr. O'Connor that he will immediately promise to be good. I guess I'll try it on, anyway."

Fresh in his determination, he went straight to the Salamander office, and it was but a moment later that he found himself confronting the man he had come to see.

"Mr. Smith, I believe," said O'Connor, neutrally. "Won't you sit down?"

"Mr. O'Connor, I feel quite sure," said the other, taking the proffered seat.

"Yes. And to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?" responded the President of the Salamander, swinging around in his chair to face his visitor.

"If I can take up a few minutes of your time, there are quite a number of things I'd like to say, and a few that with your permission I will."

O'Connor waved his hand for the desired assent.

"Go ahead," he said.

"Mr. O'Connor," said Smith, "you owe your position in the fire insurance world to the Guardian of New York more than to any one other influence, and your recent acts seem to show that you've forgotten your obligation. You committed the Guardian to withdrawing from the Eastern Conference, for one thing, and after the company got out, you took advantage of its position to raid its agency plant for the benefit of the Salamander."

"That's most of it nonsense—but what if I did?" asked O'Connor, curtly.

"I am merely here to ask your personal assurance that from now on you will discontinue your active efforts directed especially against my company."

The other man looked at him.

"That's cool enough, I'm sure. And what'll you do if I don't grant your surprising request?"

"If you do not, the Guardian will be obliged to take such steps to meet you as seem advisable. So far we've been entirely on the defensive; but we are going to protect our interests, and if the best way to protect them necessitates a complete change of tactics from the defensive to the aggressive, we shall make that change. And if we do, I give you warning that we can make things unpleasantly interesting for you and your company."

O'Connor laughed, toying with a pencil.

"We don't want to be forced to attack you," Smith continued, "and I admit we would far rather not; but I warn you that if we are unfairly injured, the man responsible will be held personally liable. You understand what 'personally liable' means, don't you?"

The President of the Salamander did not reply for a moment, but Smith saw a flush come into his face when he answered.

"Pshaw! you're talking of things you know nothing about. I haven't injured your company—you've done it yourselves. If you don't like it, being outside the Conference, why in the devil don't you go back? I'll propose the Guardian for membership, myself, and you'll be reinstated within two weeks. I haven't done anything that any business man wouldn't have done. Some agents have decided that they'd rather represent the Salamander than the Guardian; in my opinion that's only the exercise of good judgment. If people prefer to give risks to us rather than you, they've a right to exercise the privilege of their choice. My feeling toward the Guardian is exactly what it has always been. If Mr. Wintermuth thinks he's been unfairly treated or that he has a grievance against me, let him come to me with it himself, and I will be glad to show him that he is wrong. But I don't care to go into the matter any further with any one else."

"That is your answer, then?" Smith asked.

"Yes—it is," the other responded shortly.

Smith turned to the door.

"Sure you've nothing further to add?" he asked, his hand on the knob.

"Nothing whatever," said the President of the Salamander, and he turned back to his desk.

"I'm afraid we'll have to fight," Smith reported to his chief. "O'Connor says," he added, with legitimate malice, "that if you imagine you have a grievance and will come to the office of the Salamander, he will graciously consent to give you a hearing."

Mr. Wintermuth looked up, and a flash of his pristine shrewdness gleamed in his eye.

"You're saying that—putting it that way to get me into a controversy with the Salamander people, Richard," he said.

"Yes," admitted Smith, honestly; "but I wouldn't do it if I didn't believe that eventually we'll have to fight that man on his own ground, and beat him, too, before he'll leave us alone to conduct our business."

"Perhaps that is so."

"Then you'll let me close in on him when it becomes necessary?" the other persisted.

"Possibly," said Mr. Wintermuth, cautiously; and more he would not say.

During the next few days Smith found himself a very busy man. There were a thousand and one matters demanding his attention, for in the three months' regime of his predecessor many things had come to loose ends. All through Conference territory agents had to be reassured; there were certain legal preparations to be made; definite instructions for a new plan of campaign had to be given to field men and office force. Smith found very little time to consider the two questions which most interested him—of which one was the next probable move of O'Connor and the other the securing of a new reinsurance contract.

To be sure this latter task was officially assumed by Mr. Wintermuth, but Smith felt reasonably certain that ultimately he himself would have to find the treaty. And this would not be an easy task, unless he should resort to the obvious and fashionable method of consulting Mr. Simeon Belknap and abiding by his selection on his own terms; and since the market was limited and Mr. Belknap's facilities in these delicate and complicated matters were unique, his services naturally were not cheaply held. Smith, with youthful self-confidence, decided that he himself would make a preliminary canvass of the reinsurance market; and so, when the first rush of new duties had abated, and his legal affairs were safely in the hands of counsel, and the interrupted agency machine of the Guardian was beginning to turn normally once more, he undertook this matter of a new reinsurance contract with all the energy at his command.

The one man in New York, aside from the eminent Mr. Belknap, who was the most powerful figure in reinsurance affairs and who best understood the situation on both sides of the Atlantic, was a solid, silent, almost venerable Teuton by the name of Scheidle. Mr. Scheidle occupied an anomalous position, but one of absolute authority, since he had been for many years the United States Manager of no less than three of the largest foreign reinsurance companies. He was unsociable, apparently uninterested in anybody save possibly himself, and disinclined to be lured by any call or beckoning whatsoever from his William Street office. An outsider would have said that most of his time was employed in crossing the ocean, for it seemed as though the Journal of Commerce reported every few days either his arrival or departure. Perhaps he reserved his loquacity for his native land, but at all events he exchanged in New York no converse with any one save in the strictest necessities of business; he had no intimates except a few anonymous Teutons as difficult of access as himself. He positively declined to make new friends, and it was evident that he had all the friends he desired to have; and in the same way he declined to consider any new business proposals, as all his companies were long established and all were in possession from numerous treaty contracts of premium incomes sufficiently large to satisfy their conservative manager.

This was the man that Smith, after careful deliberation, set himself to ensnare. But unfortunately, the more extended became his researches, the more impregnable appeared the cloudy barriers which Mr. Scheidle had raised between himself and the English-speaking world. At the end of a week of consistent effort Smith found himself precisely where he was when he began.

And then, just as his chances of success seemed faintest, the whole scroll suddenly unrolled itself before him. A chance inquiry of Mr. Otto Bartels provoked an answer of gutturals not especially euphonious in themselves, but which fell with vast and soothing solace on Smith's troubled sense.

"Sure do I know him," said Mr. Bartels. "Except when he goes to Germany, with him I play pinochle on Tuesdays always."

Smith surveyed him, speechless.

"To-day is Tuesday," he said at last. And for the next half hour he proceeded to explain to Mr. Bartels exactly what it was that Mr. Scheidle now had a chance to do for his old friend with whom for so many years he had played his nocturnal pinochle on Tuesdays always.

"You'd have saved me a lot of trouble if you'd ever said you knew Scheidle," Smith remarked after the explanation was concluded.

"I would have said if any had asked," replied Mr. Bartels, simply. However, the same commendable reticence being a characteristic of all his human relations, there really was no cause for Smith's criticism.

Mr. Bartels, moreover, now that he knew what he was expected to do and had his duty set plain before his methodical feet, advanced along the desired way in a most encouraging manner, and with considerable celerity. So successful was he in his negotiations with Mr. Scheidle that not long afterward he was able to bring Smith the most welcome of tidings.

"He says that one of his companies has a treaty with the Majestic of Cincinnati, and he has lost money by it. The Majestic gives him bad business. He will perhaps cancel this contract, and that leaves a place for another."

"The next time I want anything, I'll come to you first," said Smith, cheerfully. "Now I'll go and see the chief and ease his mind—and also find out what terms he is willing to make with Scheidle."

Mr. Wintermuth proved to be no stickler for terms; his anxiety to replace the lost treaty was too great. And Mr. Scheidle, after analyzing and studying the results of the business which the Guardian had ceded to the Karlsruhe, made a very fair offer. And so the Imperial Reinsurance Company of Stettin, with assets nearly twice as great as the once lamented Karlsruhe, agreed to pay as much commission to the Guardian as the Karlsruhe paid, on an almost equally liberal form of agreement.

It was only a short time after this matter had been so satisfactorily arranged that Smith met one morning at the office door the gloomy face of the once optimistic and combative Cuyler. The mind of the young Vice-President had been so cheerfully inclined by the events of the last fortnight that he had almost forgotten there still was depression in the world.

"For heaven's sake!" he said, stopping the disconsolate one, "you don't mean to say that you start in a pleasant day feeling the way you look?"

"Yes, of course I do, and why shouldn't I?" returned the misanthrope. "Business all shot to pieces; the only chance of getting back the brokers we've lost is to open up a little and fire off a few roman candles, and the old man won't let me do that; and no sign of a good branch manager. What more do you want?"

He eyed Smith so hostilely that the younger man, for all his regard for the veteran, felt inclined to laugh.

"Well, that sounds pretty bad," he agreed; "but absolutely nothing warrants a face as sad as yours. Those are simply a number of misfortunes that may be overcome, but your face implies a regular catastrophe. I don't see how a broker dares to tackle you; I wouldn't, if I were a broker."

"Oh, it's all very well to be cheerful, if you can," retorted the other, gloomily; "but I've been a good many years building up this local business, and I admit I can't take much enjoyment in watching it float out the door and disappear down the street."

"No, one would hardly expect you to," Smith conceded. "But cheer up, just a little. I've been waiting for the directors' meeting to tackle the local situation, and you know they meet to-day."

This was the first directors' meeting since that at which Smith had been chosen Vice-President. Had there been in the minds of those who had voted for him any doubt of his dynamic force and ability to cope with the situation before him, that doubt must have been dispelled by the brief but satisfactory report upon what had been done, presented to them by Mr. Wintermuth. Upon the conclusion of this there was a pause, and Mr. Whitehill spoke.

"That's a good statement, and I think our Vice-president is to be congratulated on taking hold of things in such an energetic and business-like way. We shall of course ratify the action Mr. Smith has taken on these matters; and now I want to ask Mr. Smith what he thinks our prospects are and what he has in mind for the immediate future."

There were two things Smith wanted, neither of which could he get alone and unaided; and accordingly he went to the point with the utmost directness.

"I believe that we have passed a kind of crisis and that things are fairly well started, gentlemen," he said. "I see no reason why the Guardian should not go on and continue to be the successful underwriting institution it has always been, and certainly I shall try my hardest to make it so. I am very much obliged to Mr. Whitehill for his expression of confidence in me. Now, there are two things which you gentlemen can give me and for which I ask you to-day. One is authority to double our liability on Manhattan Island, and the other is an uptown branch manager."

Smith stopped, glancing at Mr. Wintermuth and rather apprehensive of the reply he might receive. But all that gentleman answered was:—

"We've always tried to keep down our liability in Manhattan—especially in the lower end, between Chambers and Twenty-third Street."

"Yes," said Smith; "and I believe, sir, we've kept it down too far. In the last ten years the construction has been greatly improved, a high pressure water supply has been introduced, the fire department is bigger and more efficient, and yet our liability is very little greater in the dry goods district, for example, than it was ten years ago."

"That's true," the President agreed. He turned to the other directors. "I think perhaps that in our city business we may have been a little too conservative, but I have always preferred to err on that side, if I erred at all. I should not oppose a rather more liberal policy in New York."

"Thank you," Smith replied. "Mr. Cuyler and I will take care that the company does not get involved for dangerous amounts in any well defined district, and I hope that the larger part of our increased business will be uptown. And it will, if we can secure the right branch manager."

"But how can we help you there?" another director asked. "None of us is familiar with insurance conditions."

"I thought," the other said, "that some of you might have influence with some of the better uptown agencies. The competition for that class of business is tremendous. Mr. Wintermuth, Mr. Cuyler, and I all know most of these people, but a mere acquaintance is nothing—to get into a first-rate office and get their best business means that you've got to have a strangle hold on the agent—nothing less will do."

Mr. Whitehill leaned back in his chair.

"I don't know exactly what constitutes a strangle hold," he said with a smile; "but there's one firm up town that handles all my trustee business, and I think they would hardly like to disoblige me. I fancy the commissions on it must amount to rather a handsome amount, year in and year out. And I think they must have an agency, because once or twice I've noticed their name signed to policies they've sent me."

"Who are they?" another director asked. "Perhaps Mr. Wintermuth or Mr. Smith may know them."

"Evans and Jones," replied Mr. Whitehill.

The President and his young subordinate looked at one another. Even Mr. Wintermuth, who for some years past had given little attention to the details of the local business, knew that the firm in question was one of high standing.

"Of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street?" Smith asked.

"Yes. You know them? They have an agency, then?" Mr. Whitehill responded.

"They certainly have," replied the other. "They are as desirable agents as there are up town, and they represent the Essex of England, the Austrian National, and," he glanced at his chief, "the Salamander of New York."

Mr. Wintermuth found no words.

"Now, Mr. Whitehill," said Smith, "they are the people we want as branch managers. Our interests would be safe in their hands. But to take us and do us justice they would probably have to resign one of the companies they now represent. Do you think your influence with them is sufficient to get them to do that?"'

Mr. Whitehill smiled somewhat grimly.

"My boy," he said, "I don't like to extol my personal influence; but if I asked Evans and Jones anything within the bounds of reason and they declined to do it, I admit that I should be surprised—very much surprised."

This was the reason why, on a busy corner of the Street, only a week later, two men came to a stop face to face, the elder regarding the younger with a malignity that was indifferently concealed.

"Well, how's the boy underwriter?" said a sneering voice. "You think you turned a pretty trick when you took my branch manager, eh?"

"I told you we'd have to get back at you," the other replied. "But," he added, "I should hardly think it would be a subject you'd care to discuss."

The blood came into the face of the first speaker.

"Well, I do, just the same," he said; "and I want to tell you that you've gone too far. You've made a personal matter of ordinary competition. All right—have it as you like. But you take it from me, this fight's just started, and I'm going to see it through, and I'll get you and your Guardian yet."

"Is that all you wish to say?" Smith queried in a level tone.

"Yes," said O'Connor, shortly; "that's all. Remember it."

And he turned toward the office of the Salamander.



CHAPTER XVIII

"27 Deerfield Street.

"DEAR MR. SMITH,—You never come to Boston any more, do you? Or when you come, do you see some other lady? Assuming for the sake of argument that you don't come, I can't help feeling rather relieved, for if you ever thought my mind at all above the deadest dead level of my sex—a sex that most gentlemen either secretly or openly believe to be vastly inferior mentally to their own, anyway—you would receive a fearful shock if you should arrive and see me now. For no girl could more enthusiastically have thrown herself into the combination of things with which the comic papers most dearly love to associate the conventionally idiotic feminine—clothes and weddings. In this case the wedding has not yet occurred, but the clothes are in one way or another occurring nearly every twenty minutes; and far from being ashamed of my interest in such petty and ephemeral things, I have actually enjoyed the campaign—in which I have taken both an active and advisory part—toward completing a trousseau for the prospective bride.

"However, one thing gives me courage to confess this to you, and that is that I have merely followed out my natural tastes and inclinations, and I think you have a theory that anything absolutely natural has a right to exist. I hope I'm not wrong and that you really have such a theory, for it has cheered me up quite a lot, because I don't believe any one ever took a more vivid interest in clothes than I have done for the last ten days.

"I suppose by this time you are thinking I have talked so much about it that I must be acquiring this trousseau for myself, but such is not the case. The bride-to-be is Isabel, who has finally decided to marry Charlie Wilkinson at once, and without waiting longer for a change which may never occur. Miss Hurd, who inherits some of her father's sagacity, has always acted on the theory that if you consistently neglect to do things which absolutely have to be done, some one else will always do them for you,—and in this affair I am the some one else, doing most of the real work while Isabel placidly speculates on whether her father will or won't relent at the eleventh hour.

"I could save her the trouble of her speculations, for I know John M. pretty well, and the number of times he has changed his mind in the course of his life cannot be more than six! But Isabel argues that he reversed his decision once before on a matter in which the ingenious Mr. Wilkinson figured, and so he may do again. But up to now there are no signs of any such happy conclusion, for Mr. Hurd stands on his promise that if Isabel marries Charlie, her doom will be on her own head, so to speak. He has more than once thrown out the fine old conventional paternal threat—'not one penny, and so forth'—which would give me, I admit, far more concern than it seems to occasion either of the interested parties.

"Certainly Mr. Hurd has thus far given an excellent imitation of a very fair grade of adamant, as Charlie puts it. He concedes nothing that he doesn't have to. He says Isabel is of age and can legally marry whom she pleases, but if she pleases to marry Charles Wilkinson, the Hurds' roof shall not be the scene of the function. Charlie's obvious retort to this was that this didn't cause him very much disappointment, as Mr. Hurd's or any one else's roof seemed a curious and somewhat inappropriate place for a marriage ceremony, anyway, and he didn't think the prospect of himself and his ushers being obliged to reach the altar by crawling out of a scuttle would lend to the occasion a dignity strictly in accordance with his well-known reputation for always doing things in correct form.

"So the pair of them are now trying to decide whether to have a church ceremony or to run away—practically—and be married without any society annex whatever to the affair. I myself rather favor the latter, but Charlie is quite keen for the church. He is really very proud of Isabel, and so far as I can make out he would like a big wedding to advertise, as it were, his achievement in getting her. And then he adds as usual that his tailor and other similar friends ought to be considered, and the more important the function the firmer his future credit will be.

"Meanwhile time flies, and poor Mrs. Hurd is torn by conflicting desires. All her life, you see, she has subordinated herself to every whim and opinion of her husband and repressed every natural inclination and desire. How you would love her! And now she finds to her surprise that her natural affection for her daughter is in danger of taking her off her feet. I really believe there have been some painful scenes between the poor lady and John M.—and there may be some more if Mrs. Hurd's newly awakened self-assertiveness grows more positive and Mr. Hurd remains inflexible.

"Through all of this I keep the comparatively noiseless tenor of my way, and plots, counterplots, and cabals seethe deliciously round me. I've been having a simply splendid time, and I've discovered that the actual cause of my enjoyment is the most primitive one imaginable,—I love a romance, and a real romance ought to end in a wedding, just as this one is presently going to do. I can hear your comment on this: 'Good heavens! that Maitland girl is exactly like all the rest!' Well, perhaps I am; cut my acquaintance if you wish—but I have confessed the truth to you.

"Charlie is much improved, I think. He is as cheerful and as inconsequent as ever, and his plans for the future seem to me, although I am not a practical woman of business, more sketchy than well defined. Sometimes, after listening to him, I have come to the conclusion that even so attractive a quality as absolute optimism can be overdone, and that the principle of never crossing a bridge before you come to it can reasonably be modified by observing before you actually get to the water whether there is any bridge at all or whether you will have to swim for the opposite bank. However, one saving grace is the fact that Charlie seems genuinely in love with Isabel, if I know any of the signs, and in contemplating the future he even talks of going to work, if the need should ever arise for that radical departure from his whole life scheme. Of course, as says, he probably wouldn't do it, but that he should even think of it he conceives to be a sign of inherent nobility.

"Were it not for this excitement, I am afraid Boston would be a little dull. I am reluctant to put such a confession in writing, for some one has quite truly remarked that to say of any place that it is dull is too often a confession of one's own dullness, but I am going to be honest about it. Do you suppose it is because New York, after being denied by me so long, will have its hour?—or is this a permanent thing? Somehow I cannot get away from the feeling that Boston is small and narrow and cold. Perhaps it is because of the wonderful life that thrills through almost everything in New York—even through the things one dislikes. But I don't expect you to answer that, because I don't believe you dislike anything thoroughly characteristic of New York; I remember you once took me to a Broadway musical comedy and said you enjoyed it.

"It is a long time since you were in Boston. Are you likely to come here again within a month or two? If not, I wish you would write me all the news of the Guardian and all about the great legal fight which you and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are waging against the octopus. I try to keep in touch with it through Uncle Silas, who of course is intensely interested and who seems another man of late, but he has not your gift of explaining in words of one syllable. Have you ever thought of getting out a textbook of 'First Principles' of anything, for juvenile intellects of all ages? I am not wholly making fun.

"Yours faithfully,

"HELEN MAITLAND."

"It is," wrote Smith in reply, "one of the most soothing things imaginable for a person who is about to admit a human weakness to find his confession forestalled. Just as I had determined to confess to you my possession of frailties entirely incompatible with the conception of Richard Smith in the eyes of his ordinary acquaintances, I received your letter. It was with the delight of the reprieved client of a painless dentist that I read your admission that when such vital things as trousseaux and weddings are in question, you are very much like other girls—and perhaps even a little more so.

"I really breathe a huge sigh of relief. And with positive cheerfulness I can now proceed to divulge the secrets I have learned about one Richard Smith, Esquire, in the months which have elapsed since a certain traveler from the Far East—relatively—returned home from New York. As my somewhat cryptic rhetoric may not be clear, and appreciating your fondness for words of one syllable, permit me to state that this means you.

"Self-satisfaction, self-absorption, self-sufficiency, have had a sobering shock. For I find that for the full and perfect enjoyment of my city I myself am no longer enough. I need company—curiously, one specific and particular individual whom, having once named, I need not name again.

"Do you suppose all this can be a sort of vanity? Do you think it was my delight in the sound of my own voice, booming through the crowded streets I love like the bittern across his lonely marshes, that makes me wish you would abandon even such thrilling traffic as trousseau planning, and come back and let me boom some more? For I have found it truth absolute that New York with Miss Maitland in it is a better place than the same city peopled only by Richard Smith—and some millions of others. Do you object to my telling you this? If your mood is unusually Bostonian when you receive this letter, you will very likely hurl the fragments of it into an ashcan omitted from the map of the brown building on Deerfield Street. However, I am counting heavily on the mood and influence of the approaching wedding to help me out.

"For nobody—that is, no real girl—is inflexible when there is a wedding in the air, and your letter only proves you are a real girl—which I always thought you to be. And I'm awfully glad you are! Only think how icily unhuman you would seem if you could hold yourself superior even to a wedding, and especially to one so romantic as this of Miss Hurd's promises to be, with all the melodramatic settings of a possible elopement, a distracted mother, and the thunderously raging paternal parent of the disinherited heiress to add zest to the occasion! If you remained unmelted by all this, my next visit to Boston—which I am sorry to say cannot occur as soon as I would like to have it—would almost certainly see my calls confined to insurance agents and lawyers—or perhaps to the mythical other person referred to in your letter.

"For the other person is purely mythical, as you must some day know. Only in Deerfield Street is there the type of brown building that irresistibly attracts me. So beware of stray rings at the doorbell, for any moment it may be I. Do you believe in telepathy? And if so, do you believe in it sufficiently to think it can ring a doorbell all the way from New York to Boston? If you do, listen—and you can hear it now!

"You asked me about the onslaught upon the octopus, and I am happy to say that things are going as well as the most ardent muck-raker on the most active fifteen-cent reform magazine could wish. The suit has been put on the calendar for trial in Massachusetts, and in New York State the Superintendent of Insurance is causing more trouble than we ourselves could possibly have created. There haven't been any actual results yet, but the moral effect for us has been immense. The Eastern Conference people are no fools, and they can read the Mene-tekel on the wall even if they don't know Assyrian.

"If you have talked with Mr. Osgood, you doubtless know that we are agreed on our Boston plans. At the proper time he is to go back into his office, taking the Guardian back with him—and probably the first thing he will do after taking charge again will be to resign the Salamander. Meanwhile we sit as tight as a couple of dynamite conspirators—and at present the Guardian appoints no Boston representative and accepts no Boston business except from a few suburban agents.

"Elsewhere things are looking very much more cheerful than when I saw you; and when the rush begins to let up a bit, I shall have no difficulty at all in persuading myself that a conference with Mr. Osgood and our Boston attorneys is necessary. Until then I must do my best to forget that New York is less delightful under some conditions than—others.

"I hope you will be good enough to write me all about the wedding of Miss Hurd and Wilkinson. Somehow I cannot help regarding it as a fundamentally humorous happening—I think the picture of Wilkinson as a man of responsibilities in any actual sense is probably the cause of my amusement. But I wish them both the very best of luck, and if you think it a suitable match, I am quite willing to accept your judgment. Wilkinson always seemed to me to look quite happy and contented, and it is the popular belief that any young bachelor of such an appearance needs a woman to take care of him.

"Do you remember the old print of the Madison Cottage that we discovered in the print room of the Library one afternoon? I found a copy of it in a second-hand book shop down town a few days ago. In case you don't object to having it I am "inclosing it herewith," as we say in our office correspondence a hundred times a week. Except that the people to whom we send the inclosures usually don't want them, and I am hoping that you will care something about this.

"Very sincerely yours,

"RICHARD SMITH."

It was at the close of a pleasant afternoon in the good town of Boston, only a few days after the arrival of this letter, that two girls and a young man rather hastily descended the front steps of a certain substantial and dignified dwelling in the Back Bay district. That something a little out of the ordinary had occurred might have been guessed from the expression of guilt on the faces of certainly two and perhaps all three of them, and possibly by the half-embarrassed alacrity with which the young man escorted his companions down the steps. No one of them apparently cared even to glance back at the building they had just left, although its occupancy was as respectable as its appearance indicated; and each one seemed oddly reluctant to look at either of the others. It was not until their feet stood soundly on the flagged sidewalk and the house was well behind them that the tension snapped and the young man spoke.

"Well, Isabel," said he, "I'm awfully glad I've done it, but that ceremony was certainly terrific. I believe that to go through such a thing twice in a span of life would unhinge a mind like mine, whose hinges creak slightly at times, anyway."

"Very well, Charlie," responded the young lady addressed, smiling. "I think I can arrange that you shan't have to, for the Hurds are a notoriously long-lived family."

"But what was so terrific about it, Charlie?" inquired the other young lady. "It didn't seem to me to differ much from any other marriage ceremony—and you must have heard dozens at one time or another."

"Oh, I suppose I have," was the reply; "but somehow that man made me feel like a worm—and a worm that's only by the most extraordinary luck managed to keep out of jail. I felt like a cheap political hack accepting the nomination for an important office that I was perfectly certain I couldn't fill acceptably."

"Well, he did look a trifle severe—not very cheerful," conceded Miss Maitland.

"Cheerful! He looked about as cheerful as a firm believer in infant damnation during a bad attack of dyspepsia. But never mind." He turned to the other girl. "Now that it's all over, how does it feel, Isabel, to be Mrs. Charles Sylvester Wilkinson?"

"I really don't know," said his wife, considering a moment. "It's the Sylvester part that seems most unfamiliar. I had honestly almost forgotten that you had such a decorative middle name. And when I was told that some one called Charles Sylvester had endowed me with all his worldly goods, I admit I felt somewhat surprised."

"You would have been even more so if, at the same time, you had been given a list of them," replied the bridegroom. "I think—to go back to the Archbishop—" he said reflectively, "that the trouble with that man was that he was too high-church. Now my leanings have never been toward high-churchness. Ordinarily my inclinations toward church at all are discernible with difficulty. My enthusiasm regarding it is continually, under normal conditions, at low ebb. And this, I take it, makes me a low-churchman."

"It's a most encouraging sign, to see you embracing any kind of ritual," said Miss Maitland. "Isabel, I have hopes of him yet."

"That is very good of you," replied the bride, smiling amiably at her lord and master—to speak academically.

"Very strange feeling it gives one to be so suddenly married in this way—without any of the conventional preliminaries," Wilkinson continued. "I always imagined that when my time was come, while the grape scissors and sets of Jane Austen and cut glass berry bowls were pouring in on my happy fiancee, I should have one last, lonely, sentimental hour set apart for maiden meditations and twilight reflections over my dead life and half-forgotten past. Also to recover from the effects of my ushers' dinner. An ushers'—girls, have either of you ever given or even attended an ushers' dinner?"

His companions' reply was a laughing negative.

"Well," said the young man, gravely, "to have escaped giving an ushers' dinner is assuredly worth an almost innumerable number of pairs of grape scissors and several entire editions of Jane Austen. Yes, I am certainly to be congratulated, for an ushers' dinner should be shunned like the Bubonic plague. To begin with, the cost is simply colossal. The food, of course, counts for practically nothing, and the drink is only an incidental, though a large one. But repairing the broken furniture, and repapering and redecorating the room in which the function has been held, and purchasing another piano in place of the one which your guests have playfully torn to pieces—those are a few of the things that count."

"They sound as though they did," agreed Miss Maitland.

"Moreover," Wilkinson continued, "if the dinner is given at the club to which you belong, you always put the board of governors in an awkward position, for at their next meeting after your entertainment they can never agree on whether to expel you outright or merely suspend you for three years, and quite often there is bad feeling created by these dissensions; while if you hold the affair at a public restaurant, you risk the friendly ultimate intervention of the police. And then the favors! Why should I present several gentlemen with pearl stick pins, when I have none myself? To be sure I might give my best man the ticket for mine, and he could redeem it whenever he had four dollars, but generally speaking, the answer is in the interrogative."