..THE.. CAVE MAN

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6, 10 August 1907, Page 21

..THE.. CAVE MAN

By

JOHN CORBIN

XX «• 4k 1 STAR'S position as executive ■* / head of the combination made bM/ a radical change in his daily J f life. Tt was no longer possible to give any consider able portion of his time to his old business, and his first duty was to appoint a manager in his place, to appoint a manager in his place. He selected the head of a department, doubled his salary, and promised him a block of stoek in the combination. The experiment seemed to him hazardous; but it speedily justified itself. Things went on quite as well as before. There is a saying that good men are scarce, and it had been a favourite of Wistar’s; but he now woke up to the inconsistency of proverbial wisdom, recalling the equally approved adage that no man is indispensable. The awakening struck harshly across all his old habits of mind; but it had this advantage, that it chimed in with his new mood with regard to Judith. What he had been all these years meant as little to the work as to her. He accepted both conclusions with the sardonic self-satire that was fast becoming habitual. He made a special point of visiting personally the many small manufacturers who had not belonged either to I’enrhyn’s faction or his own, for it was upon these, he believed, that the chief hardship of the new order would fall. He promised himself that he would make a place for every good man he found; and there was more than altruism in this, for he was well aware that the future of any great combination must be founded upon men of ideas and of individuality of character. < hie of the weaker sisters, as he soon came to call them, was a man of Dutch ancestry, who had fixed upon his model five years before, on embarking in the business, and in all the extraordinary development of the motor-car had never seen fit to change it. He made a boast of the fact, and seemed actually to regard it as an achievement. What is more, he did a fair business with men of his own stripe. Another was an inventive genius who had varied the standard type of almost every part, and was the proud possessor of as many patents as there are varieties of pickles—and all this before he had put a single model on the market. When Wistar went out with him in his demonstration-ear, tie newly-patented ignition gave out on the gangway leading out of the garage; and in the middle of Central Park his carbureter sulked, like Achilles in his tent, and refused to be persuaded. Wistar put a few questions as to his financial resources, and found that he was in high hopes of finding enough capital in the near future to pay his last year’s bills. Then he bade him a good-natured adieu, and took the Fifth Avenue stage with a warm admiration for its simple reliability. Still another man was turning out numbers of runabouts, which were built, as he frankly explained, on the principle of the one-dollar watch—the best thing to be had for the money. Wistar pointed out that with such cheap and illfinished materials there was bound to be an infinite need of repairs. The man smiled cannily and said with pride that the profits of his repair shops more than equalled those of the original sales.

As the result of a month of hard labour, which included thousands of miles of travel, from old-world Bridgeport to newly-arisen San Francisco, Wistar was convinced that nothing is commoner in life than individuality and ideas; but he had not found one man or one idea worth securing for the combination. With heightened curiosity he turned his attention to the concerns that had gathered under Penrhyn. Many of them, he knew, were strong and able; but aliout many more he had his suspicions, for his ideas of trust promotions were founded upon the practice of half a dozen years before, when Colonial blacksmith-shops and the latest developments of Pittsburg brains were rolled into a conglomerate mass and sold in shares of common and preferred. To his amazement 1 e found scarcely an instance in which, to use the vernacular, Penrhyn had been stung. When he brought his own former allies under scrutiny, he was obliged to admit that, though assembled by a committee of cooperative experts, they contained a considerably larger proportion of dead wood.

Then Wistar did some hard thinking. 'l'he sense of commercial values, he concluded, is a thing quite apart from the technical knowledge of commodities. Penrhyn scarcely knew a clutch from a carbureter, but he knew a good man and a sound plant by telepathy—or at best by the same sense that is making the sons of Abraham financiers of everything, though producers of nothing. The fact that Penrhyn had let Minot slip through his aptly meshed net Wistar now felt inelined to put down to the fact that he was only a Yankee. At the end of six months the late trust-buster had gained no little respect for high finance. Wistar’s next problem, to which, in fact, he had given a part of his time from the outset, was to build up the various concerns into an organic unit. His plan was to confine each to the production of a distinct type of car. the whole to inelude every variety for which there was a market. Where several factories had produced each a small number of cars of similar model, one now produced a large number of the same model. A number of factories he shut down at once, transferring the men and managers, as far as possible, to other shops. With regard to Irvingdale Smith, his temptation was to wipe out the nefarious concern. But to his surprise he found that it was well organised and profitable. He ended by making it essentially, what it had been superficially, a duplicate of his own. The plant operated in a widely different section, and by doing this he gained local goodwill and a considerable sum in freights.

Here, as elsewhere, as far as practicable, he made each part, from cylinder to screw, of standard size, pattern and finish. The result was a vast convenience to the motoring public in repairs, and at the same time a vast advantage the the manufacture. A single shop, giving regular and full employment to expert specialists, was able to do the work that had hitherto been done at irregular intervals by general workmen; and the gain was as great in quality of output as it was in cheapness. In facility and economy of sales the result of combination was a notable saving. With fewer models to sell there was need of fewer agencies and agents,

fewer advertisements in newspapers and periodicals. The only competition was with single, and unimportant, makers, and could be more cheaply and success fully met by maintaining a reputation for excellence than by the aid of the elo quence of the writer of advertisements of the volubility of the agent. Before the year had passed Wistar was convinced that with all these savings it would be possible to scale down prices a good thirty per cent, and still gain enormous profits; and he made a special point of gathering minute data with a view to recommending this. I'he final advantage of combination, the power to regulate prices, he was slower to realise, for it was closely allied to the abuses he had so long abhorred — the extortion of undue profits; yet, as time went on, he saw it clearly and more clearly. With competition reduced to the nunmimum, and dealing in large quantities, it was possible to avoid irrational fluctuations both in buying raw materials and selling the finished product. In times of prosperity, he foresaw', it would be less easy for the makers of iron and steel to exact from him unfair terms; and when a business depression cut off the demand for motor-cars there was less likelihood that the market would be ruined by a desperate cutting of prices. He had accepted the old order of competition as one of the incidents of life—as earthquakes, fire and flood are incidents of the general life of man. But he gradually, and in part unconsciously, slipped into Judith’s opinion, that, economic sincerity being granted, it was as needless as it was wasteful.

In fact, many of the prophecies of the promoters, which he had laughed at only a few months ago, now seemed to him possibilities, even probabilities. Already he had reduced the cost of manufacture of the various parts so low that it was possible to put a skilfully-designed and finished one-cylinder ear on the market at a price within the means of commuters of average means. In thinking of the model he sometimes called it his Straphangers’ Seoreher, and sometimes, in memory of his friend the independent, his One-Dollar Wonder. But, whatever he called it, he saw that it would bring ease and health to thousands. Tn the end, it might even counteract the present unw’holesome tendency toward the congestion of life in the cities, making the metropolis the arena of mere business, and putting it within the power of the million to live in the country, motor ing in and out daily. Thus the classes most bitterly opposed to trusts might in the end be the chief gainers—not in dollars, perhaps, but in wholesome living, which is the end of all wealth.

ne was no less active in behalf of ears of more expensive design. The news of the American combination had hardly been made public when it became known that the leading European manufacturers were effecting a not dissimilar organisation. and it soon became evident that they were planning to take a stronger hold upon the American market. For. backward as we had been in the manufacture of motor-cars, our abundant wealth and delight in novelty had made us the chief of the world's consumers of this as of other commodities. As yet they had a vast advantage. The industry had had its origin abroad, and had reached its highest development

there. The ablest inventors were on the Continent, and better workmanship W’as to be had for smaller wages. Moreover, the publie had long been accustomed to accept the Continental ear as beat; and though the tariff gave an advantage to the home product, the buyers of firstclass cars were not inclined to consider a few thousand dollars in the original cost as against possessing the best the market afl’orded. The next few years would see a struggle to the death for dominance. Wistar proceeded slowly, but gaining point by point. In a very few years, he calculated, it would be possible to equal tne best Continental ears in all respects —perhaps to transfer the fight to their home markets.

And the destliny of the American motor lay in his hands. The idea of power had never appealed to him very strongly; but the possession of it, and most of all his new visions of its possibilities for good, took firm hold upon his imagination. It seemed to be his fate to be mocked by the very phrases he had scoffed at that day in his garage. He, James Wistar, might yet be a “factor in world-politics." There were times when he would have been glad of a chance to let the future Mrs. Stanley Penrhyn know that he was a different man from the late James Wistar, and that it was she who had made him so.

Even while he felt himself rising to his new responsibility, however, he questioned whether it was right for any private citizen to have as great a fortune as was coming to him, or to play so large a part in the lives of his fellowcountrymen. It was all against his American instinct of equality. And these misgivings were greater because his old distrust of his associates would not down.

On the very day after he had thrown in his lot with the combination, Irving dale Smith had called again, and to sound him as io precisely the matter contained in the stolen list. He appeared, as always, the cheerful pirate he was; but his manner was not that of a man who had gained inside information, and least of all of a man who was dissimulating the fact that he had done so. Incidentally he had sent his card. It was a business-card, not a social card, and it differed in size, shape and letter ing from the one Wistar had taken from Andrews. The whole case against Irvingdale Smith, to his mind, fell to the ground.

Wistar’s good opinion of Penrhyn. meanwhile, was the result not so much of instinct and judgment as of what philosophers call the will to believe. Occupied with the business end of the new corporation, he bad had little time for the politics that centred in the election of directors, ami with Billy and Mr. Sears to back him up he had no fear that the authority which had been promised him would be called in question. When it was too late to make protest he found that the place on the committee which he would have given to Minot had been given to Irvingdale Smith. Though a stronger man than Wistar had supposed. Smith scarcely deserved so important a |s>st; and in view of their past relations, to give it to him was at l>est d ! scourteous, especi ally as the decision I. id lain easily with

in Penrhyn’s power. As matters stood, Penrhyn and Smith had only to win over Mr. Sears in order to outvote him. And the more powerful he made the combination the greater would be their temptation to bend its power to evil ends. By this time his signal vigour and success as manager of the industry, contrasting as it did with his former well-known hostility to big trade combinations, had made him in a manner a public character. One of the daily papers, the attitude of which was that of a satirical, if good-humoured, man of the prosperous world, printed a leading article about him, calling him, by name, the star pupil of the experience school, and displaying his views before and after. This was in the mid-summer silly season, with a Presidential campaign in the near future in which the trusts were to be a leading issue; and the paper pursued the subject from day to day, humorously exaggerating its importance, and luring subscribers to write letters expressing their minds about Wistar, in terms satirically gay. The incident did not lessen his sense of the gravity of his predicament; but it nourished his sense of humour with regard to himself, and he came to see that life is a comedy or a tragedy according as one maintains or loses his good sense and his ability to laugh at Fate. In the autumn, early in the second year of his control, came an incident which put a new edge upon bis doubts. Happening in at the Harvard Club one evening for dinner, he ran upon Pedey Ryan, the old quarter back, rough rider, and soldier of fortune, whom he had encountered in the Stadium, Class Day, and whom he had not thought of since. The little man's face was tanned to leather, his cheeks were sunken, and the gaunt bones beneath were a living picture of an Irish potato famine. He was drinking pony after pony of brandy. The two fell upon each other’s necks like long lost brotners —as they would have done if they had met at the age of seventy, on the brink of the grave, though they had not thought of each other since the old gridiron days.

Ryan. W istar gathered In the course of friendly questioning, had been in South America. Ever since his roughrider days he had had a hankering for Dago countries, lienee his fever-ridden state; and hence, also. Wistar surmised, his thirst, lie had been all over the shop — up the Amazon to the place where the natives shoot poisoned arrows at you with blow-guns, and the vampire is not a metaphor but a bat. He had had dealings with various Dago republics, too. He had led one revolut ion to a successful issue and crushed another—casualties: one Indian killed, three negroes wounded, one Spaniard scared to death, and a bullet through his own Irish neck. What was it all about? Ryan hesitated, and then said, “Rubber.” Wistar took this as a vernacular rebuke to his friendly curiosity, and dropped the subject in favour of dinner. It was some days before an alternative explanation offered itself. Of all the parts of a motor-car, the tyres are the only one in which it is even faintly possible to secure a monopoly of the raw material, and the tyres are as vital a part of the whole as the engine itself. The lands where rubber is grown are comparatively few, and are not beyond the resources of modern finance. To bring a new grove to the bearing requires eighteen years. The motor-ear industry of the whole world might be at the power of the syndicate that monopolised the existing rubber forests. All that was needful was to negotiate the purchase of lands —often merely to gain concessions by “squaring” republics. Then there flashed upon him the memory of an incident so trivial that, though his eye had registered it with its usual clearness and vividness, it had never before impinged upon his mind. Tn the Stadium. Class Day, Ryan had nodded to Penrhyn and offered a glad hand—which had been received furtively and with a trace of hesitation. It was a nebulous hypothesis, but it accounted for all that had hitherto been dark. Minot’s new prosperity had taken the form of a little house off Madison Avenue, which he converted into a graceful and comfortable English basement. Wistar. who had advised him in this, had early formed the habit of going there for Sunday breakfast. This was

ostensibly to talk business —the organisation and management of the company formed to exploit the new gear; but in reality it was quite as much for the little unwonted glimpses it gave him of homely comfort and happiness. To the unwilling bachelor there is no time as trying as the day of rest, with its enforced slump from the rush and excitement of the week. Anything was welcome which would make him forget the emptiness and dreariness of his life. And he soon formed a sincere regard for the Minots, while tneir daughter, a child of nine, shamelessly adored him. Besides, he sometimes caught a glimpse of Judith there. Judith's interest in the family was in fart keen and kindly. Mrs. Minot was a pale, shrinking little woman, the record of whose twenty years of privation was evident in hair prematurely white, and an ominous cough. But these, as Judith soon found, were only the outward signs of a deeper and more vital deterioration. In the past she had thought of her friend as a gentlewoman forced by Fate into alien surroundings. Now, to ler surprise, she found her ill at ease in returning to the life to which she had been born. Persistent misfortune

had left her the victim of superstitious whims. Though she hated the sewing which had once been her bulwark against starvation, Judith found that she worked at it diligently, keeping her fingertips still rough and callous—as one knocks wood and cries “unberufen” to propitiate the imps of malevolent fortune. This amused Judith, even while it touched her; but a subsequent discovery shocked and distressed her. To cure the incipient consumption nothing more was needed than a year in the Adirondacks, but to this Mrs. Minot refused to consent —not so much. Judith found, from unwillingness to leave her husband and child, as out of an instinctive fear that if she presumed upon their marvellous new prosperity it would take wings. Once she let Judith persuade her to come to dinner, but when she found that there were to be other guests she did not come. Her greatest happiness was in helping her old neighImhifs of the slums, and even this, Judith suspected, was more than half a rite of propitiation. Despairing of the mother, Judifh turned her attention to the daughter, Gertrude, a wiry, intense child, who had rubl»ed off something of the manner and accent of her former playmates of an East Side public school. To provide her with new companions and prepare her for the ampler life that was now possible, Judith proposed to place her in a

fashionable school, and to this end it was necessary to correct her minor faults of manner, for fear of the ridicule of her schoolmates. But Mrs. Minot would not hear of a governess. Even for her child she feared to claim the luxuries which life denied to so many. The experience gave Judith her first real sense of the blight of poverty. She had often felt that the food she ate, the very stuff’ of the gowns she wore and the paper of the books she read, were won out of the toil of human bodies. But she now realised how much more deeply than this the many pay for the well-being of the few. Time and again she thought with a little shiver what might have come to herself if Fate had done her the turn once so dangerously threatened. Even when women succeeded in business, she realised, they were liable to lose much of their birthright of grace and delicacy. And if she had failed, would she not have been cramped in mind and spirit, as in her outward life? Such misgivings took an acutely personal turn whenever she eame upon Wister in the little house. His manner was casual almost to the point of indifference. but she was none the less con-

scious that it was tinctured with irony. She could not, of course, be aware that the irony was directed mainly against himself, and it provoked her old resentment of him. This was no superficial mood. Her father’s prosperity- had made her mistress again of the remnant of her fortune, but she refused to indulge herself in the many little luxuries dear to the feminine heart, for they w-ould somehow have seemed to her to have come from Wistar. And the realisation that in this she was acting somewhat in the manner of Mrs. Minot did not shake her resolve. Wistar’s misgivings as to the ultimate wisdom of what he had done had, in fact, been powerfully re-enforced by the encounter with Ryan, and now they- received a further impulse. Minot’s gear had already turned out all that either of them had hoped. The ease and accuracy of its control made it everywhere a convenience, and in the crowded traffic of the city streets almost indispensable. Wistar was eager to secure it for the cars of the combination. Penrhyn, however, remained strangely unconvinced of its value, and as Wistar had predieted, Minot’s ideas as to price had grown with success. There seemed likely to be a deadlock between them. To facilitate an agreement, and somewhat also in order to sound the depths of Penrhyn’s purposes, Wistar offered to

sacrifice all his profits in the Minot company.

To this Penrhyn at first appeared to consent; but when, as Wistar had foreseen, Minot demanded a position on the executive committee, and the assurance of being able to carry out his ideas without let or hindrance, Penrhyn would not hear of it; an executive office, he argued, even a directorship, was elective, and could not be promised to any man. When Wistar objected that they themselves controlled sufficient stock to insure Minot his place, Penrhyn rejoined that to admit him they would have to depose a valuable man —Irvingdale bmith. Wistar counted on Mr. Sears’ good sense to prevail; but when the motion was put formally it was lost. Wistar was angry through and through, and no less suspicious than angry. But he controlled himself to the extent of advising Minot to waive the point. All one Sunday morning he lalioured in persuasion. The inventor remained obstinate. First and last his answer was the same. Penrhyn and Sears had promised to give Wistar practical control of such matters, and. on this, the first important issue, they had over ruled him. For Minot to trust to their good faith was to put his head in the lion’s mouth. In spite of Wistar’s growing enthusiasm for the combination, he eould not deny the justice of the objection. He ended the conference with deep foreboding. At the front door he found Gertrude waylaying him. Denied her customary clamber on his knee, she begged him to stay to dinner. -‘You haven’t heard my lesson,” she pleaded. “If you’ll only stay, I promise to say it poifickly!” “How will you say it?” “Oh, Gehrtie, come out on the cuhrb, and see the bihrd fly over the chuhrch I There I ” He sat down on the bottom stair, hat in hand, and with the able-bodied Gertrude on his knee. "But you say it ■perfectly,’ ” he protested, “not ‘poifickly.’ ” Gertrude hid her girlish blushes in his lean, tanned cheek and hugged him with all -er might. His ear was caught by the whisper of silken skirts behind him. “I hope I’m not intruding,” Judith laughed. She had stopped in to see Mrs. Minot on her way home from church, and had counted on getting away without meeting Wistar; but finding that he also had divined the needs of Gertrude and was shai ng her labours she was tempted to pause. “You say it pehr-rfectly,” she said, mocking the Western r which his long residence in the East had not quite silenced. “Some people say it pehfectly — Oh, Gehtie, come out on the cuhb and see the bihd fly oveh the chuhch!” The child eyed the woman with something very like jealousy—she had an odd little face, the face of one destined to adore, with high cheek-bones, a large, well-formed, sensitive mouth and big brown eyes. “I say it per-r-r-fectly!” she cried. Wistar laughed, and, putting her down, went to the door to open it for Judith. “Now he’ll go and go with you,” Gerty protested. “And 1 was trying so hard to make him stay for dinner!” The remark raised a question which Wistar would have avoided. Like another lady, Gerty had protested too much. "If 1 may go with you,” he felt obliged to say. Judith paused, no less constrained. "If you wish.” she answered. "I think you re horrid, Aunty Judith,” the child pouted. “You make everybody love you, and you won’t love anybody!” This was her version of a scrap of conversation picked up from incautious elders. "If you don’t intend to love him, you’ve no business to make him love you! ” Judith blushed, and Wistar laughed. "She can’t make me love her!” he exclaimed; and taking Gerty in his arms he kissed her good-bye. “I love you! Whether you love me or not, 1 love you!” “And I should adore you, even if you hated me,” he answered, as he passed into the street. “What do you think of that ?”

“I couldn’t do that—ever!” Gerty cried after him. “Only naughty people hate!” And she stood watching Judith with stern disapproval as they walked away.

XXII. It was the first time Wistar had been alone with Judith since he had thrown in his lot with Sears and Penrhyn, and each was aware that the child’s chance remark had recalled to the other the word with which they had parted. She was grave, but a satirical smile lurked in Wistar’s cheeks. “I see you realise,” he said, “that you are one of the naughty people!” “I’m not a naughty person!” she said, niore vehemently perhaps than she realised. “But you’re very easily teased!” He looked at her with calm impersonal itv, for his experiences of the past vear’and a-half had roused in him a desire to know her as she was, divested of all the glamour which his love had east about her. The delicate beauty of her girlhood was fresh as ever, though she must now, lie reckoned, be in her twenty-ninth year. If he had not known he would not have believed that she had much more than turned twenty. Her form was perfect in all the free, soft outlines of womanhood. her'tread elastic and sure. Her cheeks were clear and vivid, and the sun smote the brown hair into gold. She was gay, friendly, light-hearted. But was she anything better than that —or anything worse? “There is this one subject,” she. said, after a pause, “upon which you will always find me sensitive. What you have done —as it has turned out—do you regret it? Tell me!” “Under what compulsion ?” he said, quizzically. “I did it for myself—you forbade me to do it for you!” “That is quibble. Among many reasons for telling me I will mention one. 1 am very much in need of a new gown.” She held out her arms, as if inviting inspection. Her manner was light and irresponsible. but he understood very well what she meant to say—that she was as determined as ever not to accept good fortune the source of which was open to question. He had no desire to tell her the sinister turn affairs had taken; and besides, it suited him to take her whimsical mood quite seriously. The gown, he observed with careful inspection. was of black cloth, and though the nap was thin in places, its cut gave distinction to her figure, and its few facings and embroideries of white seemed modish in the extreme. “It appears to me a wonderfully fine gown,” lie said, equivocating between admiration and teasing. “I noticed that even before you called my attention to it.” “But the sleeves!” she cried. “You abandoned. irreclaimable man — the sleeves'.” “Ah. yes, the sleeves! Sometimes I’ve noticed they are more like that, and sometimes less.” “Be serious, and tell me what I want to know! I shall catch you if you quibble, and despise you!” "Is it very desirable to have the sleeves more so—or ought they to be Jess so?” “That has nothing to do with it!” "You knew the supreme importance of sleeves that night when you refused, as you said, to ‘barter your soul’ for them?” “If you really want me to hate you, go on!” His persistence in making it appear that she had pleaded unworthily was trying her patience, as indeed it had every right to do. “In many ways,” he said, choosing his words with care, “things have turned out far better than I ever imagined—quite as well as you believed they would. J have to thank you for a great deal.” She nodded a little “I told you so!” But what she said was: “Is that the whole truth?” “Have I taken my Bible-oath?” "If you respect me, you will tell me.” She said this very earnestly. “Just now it seems that there may be trouble in store.” “I should like to know about it. Not for that reason,” she added, as if to forestall banter. “For other reasons.” He briefly outlined the situation, minimising its gravity, and, of course, saying nothing about the suspicions that centred in Ryan, "But they promised in such matters to follow you,” she said with clear comprehension. He nodded negligently. “That ends my new gown!” “Oh, I a« sorry!” he cried. "Please take my poe» little joke—-as a joke. Th»f. is only kjpd!”

“But if it came to a matter involving your principles, then there would be serious trouble?” He did not answer, and they walked on in silence. Winter had worn on into spring, and the outdoor life of the town was beginning. In Madison Square there were the usual number of curbstone preachers holding forth to knots of park loafers, curious passers-by, and workmen in their Sunday best. As they passed near one of these they heard the word “Trusts,” and glancing aside at the speaker, recognised Andrews, his red whiskers and imperial, and pale, pasty face thrown into relief by a far from customary suit of solemn black. With a touch on Wistar’s arm, Judith signalled him to stop. 'The man seemed quite sober, and was speaking with apparent conviction in language unwontedly grammatical. But it was none the less evident that he was enjoying his eloquence to the full, strangely compounded of illiteracy and magniloquence. As his shallow, excited eyes swept over his hearers he recognised Wistar, and his face lighted. “I see among ye,” he cried, “a man I used to know—the most hon’able, the squarest. He used to be an independent merchant—an independent gentleman. But a trust was promoted. The octopus reached out its slimy clutches to gather him in.” Wistar turned in disgust to go, but Judith caught his sleeve. “How exciting!” she exclaimed. “I do want to hear what he thinks of us!” Andrews saw her interest, and expanded with delight. “He made a stand for his independence, for his manhood. But you know the way of the ink-squid! It envelops its victim in a cloud of murk that blinds him, the eftluvera of its own corrupt body!—theft, treachery, deceit! Perhaps you say he was a fool—that the wise man, wfien he reco’nises the perlution of the ink-squid avoids its life-sucking tentacles! But the inksquid is cute, it is wary! It cast its blinding cloud about James Wistar before he was on to the game. The darkness became a false light. He welcomed his fate. To-day, as he stands among ye, he is no longer a man, though he appears the most upright. His blood has become the blood of the nauserous creature that devoured him; his stren’th, its stren’th! Slowly, but with a certainty truly turrible, he is reachin’ out to strangle and. devour his feller-men. who he once regarded as friends, as bro-, thers. Wealth and power are liis’n. Beauty stands by his side, and is proud to stand there!” Every eye was now fixed upon the two, and with a common impulse they turned and went away. But the words of eloquence followed them. “All the more he is a plague-sore on the body politic!” Before either spoke, they had reached the business section of lower Fifth Avenue, and were walking in its canonlike shadows. Then she said, “Is there one atom of truth in what he charges? Do you feel that you have been in the least false to yourself?” He thought quickly, and then, “For the present,” he said, “no.” In front of them the Washington arch loomed up, bowered in the greening yellows of early foliage. Always since he had known her here as a girl the sight of it awakened the old melody in his heart —all the more poignantly sweet now for the minor cadence into which it had fallen with the lapse of years. He had only to catch a glimpse of it from the elevated, or the platform of a Broadway trolley, to revive the sense of all life had ever promised him. And once more, as he neared it, she was at his side! As they turned into the Square disillusion stalked upon him. Two men were approaching in the path that leads across the eastern end, in one of whom they recognised Penrhyn. “Hello!” said Wistar with what unconcern he could command. “He has been downtown at work on Sunday. In New York that is rare proof of diligence!” “Not he!” Judith laughed. “More likely lie is just out of bed, and on bis way" to the club for breakfast! He lives over there in the Benedick.” Wistar had not known this, and the discovery recalled the night when he had seen Andrews in the self same path. Occurring separately, the two incidents of their walk down the avenue might have l>een forgotten, but coming thus rapidly in succession they took instant meaning. The harangue he had just heard was

wild enough for the most part, but certain words re-echoed in his mind, and recalled the time when he himself had so unfortunately used them —theft, treachery, deceit. How had Andrews got such an idea, if not by being a factor in the business of that night? And who would have employed him, if not Penrhyn? If there had been treachery then, moreover, might not his present difficulty with Minot have an even more sinister explanation than he suspected? As Wistar bowed to Penrhyn in passing a sardonic smile stole into the corners of his mouth. Then he started in surprise. In Penrhyn's companion he recognised Pedey Ryan, hero of the deadly blow-gun and the bloodless revolution, disguised in a flowing frock coat and sleek top-hat. Between these men then’ could be only one bond of connection; and. as Pedey bowed in response to Wistar’s salute, his expressive face wore, all Unconsciously, a look of deprecation, almost of apology. "Rubber” had ceased to be the synonym of curiosity, and become that of vigilance—indeed, of fear. It was clear enough now, why at the outset Penrhyn. instead of clearing out with his promoter's profit, had taken office in the combination, why he had so persistently refused to accept Minot as a member.of the executive committee. The plot against Wistar bad been deeper and more subtle than he had charged, even in the heat of anger—the stake immeasurably vaster. And placed as he was now, on the inside and subject to the will of the majority, his power to combat it was crippled. When they came to her door, Judith asked Wistar to lunch. The least she could do, she said, was to offer as much for his company as Gertrude. “Thank you,” he said, with the negat;ve inflection. “I mean it!” she protested. “If I am willing to be—not naughty—at least you might let me!” The new fear in his mind had deepened his Sabbath lonesomeness. She at lest, if she knev what he knew, would be on his side. And it was not so long since he had feit anything like the touch of her beauty, her comradeship! In his heart he knew that she was all he had ever dreamed her, and more. The old instinct to prostrate himself before her eame back on him. Life offered this one moment of happiness, why not seize it? But the temptation was brief. He would not bend again until he stood straight in the eyes of all. “Thank you.” he repeated. “You mean that as a reproach to me." she said. For the first time in his life he fell that she was seriously striving for his goodwill. “If you don’t mean it so,” she added, “you will do as I ask.”

He did not misconstrue her motives. Die coquetry of vanity was a thing unknown to her, but she was full of coquetry of the affections; he had seen her stop on the streets to win the confidence of a mongrel who slunk from her. Still he stood firm. “I was thinking of what Andrews said—of the darkness in which 1 had laboured that night. When it is finally cleared. 1 shall, if I may, claim acquaintance with you.” "But ,in the meantime,” she still pleaded, "if I forgive you?” “I must decline,” he said, and left her, though not before he had seen her cheek flush at what, in spite of himself, he had implied. XXIII. Of the revelations of that Sunday morning, none impressed Wistar more deeply than the fact that he had not known where Penrhyn lived. He knew every turn in the thread of the least important screw in liis machines, but he was ignorant of the most obvious fact with regard to his most powerful associate. Tn the old days he had somewhat proudly said that his business was with men who manufactured motors, not stocks; but he now realised with humility that everything depended on meeting on their own ground the leaders of this once despised industry of finance. To inquire into the conditions in the rubber country, and even to find out whether the productive forests were in a way to be monopolised, was a work he could and must entrust to his subordin ates. But he was obliged to proceed in person to get a line on Penrhyn’s associates and resources, and especially on his more intimate personal equation—his character, his methods, the kind of fight he would make. For as yet the evidence of the man’s duplicity was only circumstantial. Wistar’s sense of honour, indeed his sense of expediency, forbade him to make any pretence of friendship. But there was a way in which he eould meet the man as an enemy. The year before. Penrhyn had played on the Willowbrook polo team, which had non the championship from his own club, the Cedartop. Why shouldn’t he make his old place on the team? It is a ginie that tries men’s souls. To get into condition lie entered the squash-ball tournament of the Racket Club, and was not displeased when, at last, he came face to face with Penrhyn. They met in the third round. It was a warm day in early summer, and they played in the lightest costume—sleeveless gauze shirts and linen running breeches. As they entered the red-walled court each east a quick, comprehensive

glance at the other. Wistar was long and spare, with straight, powerful legs, wide reach of the sinewy arms, huge, bellowslike thorax, and thick, muscular torso. Penrhyn was of smaller stature, well knit, and with knotty muscles, full of spring. The young financier played a brilliant game, full of difficult and unexpected strokes that brought burst after burst of applause from the gallery. He won tlie first set easily. But towards the end of the second VVistar’s steadiness and endurance began to wear him down. ‘•Hang your legs and lungs!” said Penrhyn with rueful pleasantry. “I’m larding the lean earth. You’ve got me now where you want me!” “Not if you ring in any more of those miracles!” “Miracles!” Penrhyn cried with frank disgust. “The man who plays squash has no need of miracles!” As they took their positions for the final game he tapped the floor with his racket. “Here’s where friendship ceases!” he said, laughing. To Wistar it seemed rather where friendship began, for it was his nature to think well of the world, and Penrhyn had been a model of modesty in success, of good temper in adversity, and, of sportsmanlike earnestness and fairness everywhere. Though plainly all in, he played with grit and tenacity; yet even with the match hanging in the balance he twice corrected the decision of the marker, insisting that Wistar take a point where a let had been called. Was it possible that Wistar had been mistaken in his man ? The question cost him four points straight; but he pulled himself together and won the match without difficulty. Penrhyn shook his hand cordially. “I couldn't have won the semi-finals, anyway,” he said; “and I think you stand to do so.” The compliment was perhaps excessive, for in his next match Wistar had to meet one of the best players in

the club, who, as it turned out, disposed of him in two easy games; but it was none the less generous and good-natured. They bathed in adjoining showers, dressed and dined together, and afterward, at Penrhyn’s invitation, went to the theatre. It was years since Wistar had spent as pleasant an evening; and after a long and cooling nightcap at the club he half believed that he had done the man injustice. ■ Before many weeks Wistar had occasion to alter this judgment. At a meeting of the executive committee Penrhyn proposed to increase the next dividend.

“That would be a drain on our surplus,” Wistar objected. His plans for the industdy, now dear to his heart, required a large reserve of capital. “My idea is to reduce the dividend. The time is coming when we shall have to stand off these foreign fellows.” “That’s right!” Irvingdale Smith put in cheerfully. “It is up to you to give them a black eye. But there are other ways to do it.” “Other ways than by making our cars as good and cheap as theirs?” Wistar pointedly queriod. “What ways?” “We’ve got a bang-up system of garages,” Smith answered with unabated cheerfulness. “From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, we store and care for a good majority of all our rivals’ cars. We waste a lot of time and opportunity in doing it so well.” Wistar was not unjustifiably proud of these garages, and of the fact that the service in them was as liberal and efficient toward the cars of American independents and foreign makers as toward their own. “Wasted!” he said. “A good part of our earnings we make off the cars of our rivals!”

“But suppose we gave our own cars the preference? Wouldn’t the public find that the best of reasons for buying them ?”

In plain terms, this meant that work on the cars of their rivals should be delayed, scamped and overcharged. Nothing so disgusts a motorist with his machine as to have it make long sojourns in the shop, followed by big bills and a speedy return of disaster.

“I am as eager as any inan to win ont in this fight,” Wistar exclaimed. “But the only policy that will succeed in the long run is the policy of fairness and liberality. Who will get the black eye, I should like to know, if the public finds us out?” “If we can’t trust our own managers not to peach on us,” said Smith with cool insolence, “there’s something rotten in your management,” “You are aware, I suppose,” said Wistar, his voice falling and deepening as his anger rose, “that in spirit what you propose is identical with all that is most noxious in trust management—secret rebates, secret price schedules, and all other devices of predatory competition in restraint of trade!” “I don’t know anything about what you call spirit,” Smith retorted. “There is no law that compels us to favour the cars of our rivals, and there is every reason why we should not favour them.” “Favour them!” Why not put sand in their bearings and soap in their carbureters ?” “Not a bad idea,!” Smith laughed. Then he added, in the tone of compliment, “You would make an excellent manager if you put your mind to it.” Wistar smiled grimly. “Excellent or not, I am the manager. And in this matter I decide!” Billy growled approval. “I object!” Smith cried, his cheery good humour vanishing. “You are our chairman, not our kindergarten lady. You have no power except what wc delegate to you!” The terms upon which he had entered the combination had been different, and it was now that Wistar looked to find the Penrhyn he had known in the squash court. “In the matter of the garages,” Penrhyn said, “I guess we’ll have to give Wistar his head.” And Smith was obliged to acquiesce. Then Penrhyn added: “But it’s different with the dividend. That concerns the financial end. I make it a motion.” As chairman of the committee, Wistar was obliged to put the motion, and the votes were three to one.

It is an approved Machiavellian precept to concede what yon have to gracefully, so as to make the concession a sugar-coating for the pill of successful coercion. Wistar perceived that there were two Penrhyns—one for polite con versation, and one for things that mat tered. In announcing the dividend to the public Penrhyn resorted to a useful bit of J’>fK>cry. He spread the report that the management was intending to reduce it, and then sprung the increase as a surprise. In the resulting fluctuations in the stock, Wistar had every reason to believe, Penrhyn turned a pretty penny. The incident took added significance when Wistar got his first reports from the rubber country. All signs portended that some one was trying to engross the industry, and, moreover, was straining his resources to do so. The polo championship was now well under way, but Wistar saw that there was little to probe in the character of his associate. He was convinced, in fact, that with the expiration of liis term of office he would have to fight for re-election. There were two ways of fighting. One was to form a faction of stockholders to support him and his policy. This was a slow, difficult, and delicate matter, and one in which he could not go far without publicly accusing his associate. The other way was to increase his holdings of stock. Though chief shareholder, ho was far from owning a majority. He at once instructed his broker to buy in all he could without running up the price, and furthermore to negotiate with such of his customers as might be willing, for a consideration, to part with their holdings. Among these the broker mentioned a picturesque and anomalous person with wild eyes and red trimmings to his face, who had invested two thousand dollars on margin when the securities were first listed on the stock exchange. Wistar named him at once—H. Desmond Andrews; and the broker laughed at tho memory of the 11. Desmond. One by one lie was completing th* chain of circumstance which bound Penrhyn to this man, convicting him M

gross dishonour. As yet he felt that he was not justified in using his evidence to discredit his rival, even privately among the directors and stockholders. But he left no stone unturned to complete it, and to this end employed a detective agency to keep close watch on Andrews. During the early games of the polo championship he often saw Judith in the crowds on the club-house verandahs, and as often he thought, not without satisfaction, that to her eyes at least the evidence already at hand would Im* sufficient. But could he tell her? Not though the happiness of her life hung in the balance—then least of all. Could he even bring his excuse for the mistake of that fatal night with regard to her father—whose duty it would be to tell her? He puzzled his mind for ilays over this ease in casuistry. But in his heart he always knew that he could not be a bearer of tales. And the conviction was growing on him that in spite of all appearances her father had not been guiltless. XXIV. If Penrhyn had shared Wistar’s desire for better acquaintance he could not have done more to satisfy it. Through the earlier periods of the polo game he had played second forward for Willowbrook. and with unfailing and dash: but the the opening of the final peri<xl the game was a tie, and he shifted to first forward. This brought him face to face with Wistar. whose steadiness and brain-work had made him captain and l»ack of the Cedartop four. The natural inference was that Willowbrook had staked their chances of victory on new tactics: but during the last interval he had seen Penrhyn ride up to the brilliant crowd beyond "the edge board, ami speak to a young woman in whom for the first time he recognised Judith. Was it possible that the man bhd paid him the compliment of jealousy? The world of sport has little esteem for what it calls the grandstand player. Wistar could have wished Judith a thousand miles away. He cursed the luck that now', at the crisis of the game, had given him the glimpse of her face, alight with interest and ex-, citement. and prettily framed in a billowy boa of white feathers, thrown about her shoulders in defence against the cool wind that was blowing in from the ocean. PenrhyiV’ had now mounted a Mack Algerian barb. Sirocco, trained on Mediterranean polo fields, for which he paid a fabulous price, upward of three thousand uollars. It was a huge pony, that would strain every finger of fourteen hands, and its wide eyes bespoke as much of intelligence as ever gets into an equine skull. It had courage, too, to stand up against the fiercest scrimmage, and its •peed in the open was unexcelled. Wistar’s mount was named Jenny, which name she had brought with the brand on er flank from a Texas range. Jenny, however, was a perfect lady, and in Wistar’s fond esteem the best polo pony he had ever owned or known. True, he had read of better animals, ami notably a heroine of fiction who was not only familiar with the tactics of team play and kept the score in mind, but acted as captain of her quadruped mates, and would probably have advised the famous player and captain who rode her if his understanding had been quite, instead of almost, equine. Byt Wistar was sceptical. He iiad himself frequently had «Kva-i«m in the thick of a rapidly shifting content to make sure how the game st»*wl by a glance at the dangling es-ore ball**: and there were only two points on which he trusted Jenny implicitly. < »ne was to be fond sugar, and stand by the man who gave it to her: and the other was to mind his hand and follow the ball. He suspected the tasteful little lady. in fact, of labouring under the illusion that the three-inch ephere of white wx« an extra delevtable lump: but. whatever the peculiarities of her horsetserw. she tampered after it with the eager endurance of a terrier and the speed of a grevhound: and that was all he asked of Jenny. The only < hanre of snatching the \ iet< ry by The hardest riding and th*' a.i urate team play. But Wistar had even more to contend with than he femed. Penrhyn was plunging Ki* spurs with every turn d»-*p into Sirocco’s velvet Hank, already covered with bbssl, an«i was charging the heavy animal hither and yoc like a madman. The trick of riding an opoooent off. which no dangerous frnm the club-house, fa» in reality, the safest Maaw<*uvrea>

You have only to slip alongside your, man, lock the shoulder of your horse forward of his saddle, and you can swerve him as if by a hand on his bridle. Time and again, in the play that followed, Penrhyn came at Wistar full speed at an angle of forty degrees, dashing Sirocco’s powerful and pointed shoulder into .Jenny’s side. Such tactics are calculated to throw* a fright into any but the steadiest—horse and man; and the only condition of success is that the umpire shall be lax, or not looking. “If you do that again.’’ Wistar cried, “I’ll demand the penalty of a foul!” “Why not take your doll and go home?” Penrhyn answered, sweeping by. “This game is polo!” There are football players who regard it as the game to slug an opponent, “knee' him,” or twist his neck, provided the chance of being penalised is less than the chance of putting him out of the game; and there are polo players of a similar conviction. It is all a question of whether one prefers to live by the traditions of sportsmen or the letter of the rules. In another minute, as Jenny bounded after the ball. Penrhyn repeated the assault. The only defence against such play is the defence offensive. Reining up at an angle. Wistar broke the shock upon the faithful Jenny by opposing his own lean, pointed knee against Penrhyn’s thigh. “Ouch!” said Penrhyn; and Sirocco faltered at the unexpected impact. Jenny’s strong point was quickness and certainty on her feet. She fairly leaped from the .collision and dodged across the field after the spherical lump of sugar, overtaking it near the edge board. With a clean, forward draw Wistar played it into position for a try at goal, and Jenny followed it with hoofbeats that sent the turf flying. Wistar’s men did not fail him. One after another they rode off three of the enemy, while he swung at a gallop into position for the stroke. The end of the game was at hand, but it was a matter of seconds to snatch the victory. Penrhyn. disconcerted by the unexpected shock, had wisely refrained from following Wistar’s first dash, and now, burying his spur into Sirocco’s bleeding flank with every stride, he galloped straight down the field at the ball, converging upon Wistar at a broad angle. Wistar saw him out of the tail of his eye, and Jenny saw him, too. for she dug her little hoofs into the turf as she had never dug them before. Twenty-three seconds flat was her mark for the quarter, and she was in full swing of her best pace. She kept even with the stallion, stride for stride. As long as she did so it was, according to the rules of the game. Wistar’s ball. To the goal was a drive of seventy-five yards, but he had done better a score of times; and his nerve was never as steady as when his blood was boiling. And it was boiling now. for as Sirocco closed the angle between them with greyhound strides, he saw the blood flying from the raw* spot left by the incessant spur. Nearer and nearer the two horses swept, until Penrhyn so narrowly threatened a collision that even the other players rose in their stirrups in anxiety. It flashed upon Wistar that his rival’s game was to fluster him and frighten Jenny with the fear of a tumble. In a stride or two Penrhyn would have to swerve, or foul him openly and flagrantly. The thought steadied him. Jenny could not have this comfort, and already she had suffered many a rude shock: but with pluck undaunted she held her course firm ami true ami never abated her stride until Wistar threw the lines on her neck. Then, at this signal for the stroke, she slackened into an even steady gallop. As Wistar raised his stick he heard Sirocco’s hoofbeats—now at his very side, still regular, firm, and quick as ever. His heart leaped, but his shoulder swung true. Then came a blow from the side that lifted Jenny off her feet. In another instant both horses and rider- tumbled together upon the turf. Penrhyn swung free of the saddle; but Wistar. who had held his eye throughout steadily fixed upon the ball, felt the hot. lathered «ides nf Jenny rolling over him. with the weight of both horses. He was awakened by the first dash of water on his face, and raising his head he saw the ball lying where it had lain. "A dubrty trick, a sthinkin’ Iri-h trick,” said Wistar’s groom, as he -pla-h---ed the water. “His horse is the better gin tieman. ” The umpire had pressed through the crowd of dismounted player*. “Have you anything to »ay t” Wistar managed to

“In my official capacity, only that the play was a foul, and that Cedartop has a free try for goal.” Wistar struggled to his feet and called for a new mount. There was a knifelike pain inside him, and his head was swimming. But Penrhyn was by, speaking words of plausible apology. He stepped into the saddle, and no one offered to dissuade him. Then he rode out to the ball, and Penrhyn faced him, at the prescribed ten yards. The two looked at each other, quite as if nothing had happened.

Shooting a goal in the heat of play, at the full, easy swing of the gallop and with a dear field in front is one thing, and a sitting shot in the face of four opponents, accurately placed and alert, is quite another. It was for this difference, beyond question, that Penrbyn had ventured. The fall had unsteadied Wistar’s nerves. He paused before the stroke, and swept his eye slowly about the field. There were people there—he had not halfrealised how many. They seemed strangely hushed. Beyond was a low-lying English house, its half-timber sides showing faintly through a mantling growth of ivy. and its roof bowered in elm trees. It looked very peaceful. On the horizon was a Hake of quiet blue, where the Atlantic lay serenely, as if in the lap of two sand-dunes. Wistar almost forgot the pain that was knifing his vitals. Then he closed his eyes half a moment, and remembered. Once he had faced an unbeaten eleven in blue, when all the fellows looked to him and his comrades . . . He didn’t feel the pain at all now.

Opening his eyes, he gauged the lie of the ball and the length of his stick. Then he lifted his arm above his head, and brought it downward, swinging it firm but relaxed upon the pivot of his shoulder. He hit hard and true, and as the sound was heard across the silent field, Penrhyn rose in his stirrup to block the ball. It soared free above his head, flying straight for the goal. Halfway in its course it fell upon the turf, bounded once or twice, and then rolled slowly and more slowly. Once again there was the scurrying of ponies. Cedartop galloping to protect the ball in its course. Willowbrook to eheek it. The advantage of position lay with the defence. and five yards from the fatal line the Willowbrook baek overtook the ball and swung his stick for a back hander. Thus far the instinct of the game had carried him; but now he paused, and with his stick held high in air, and to the amazement of the multitude, rode on, side by side with the ball. At the goal line the white sphere hopped in the air, and then lay still, scarcely a yard beyond. The generosity of the sportsman had risen above the zeal of the partisan. It was as if he had presented to Wistar the victory so fairly won. The crowd read his purpose like a flash, and from four sides burst forth an acclaiming shout. It was not “the game,” but sportsmanship it was. Wistar’s first thought was of Jenny — whether she was suffering, too, poor lady. He found her by an automobile, companionably nosing a young woman in a white feather boa—having evidently led the indulgent groom there for that purpose. Wistar rode up and asked if she was hurt. “Sure, she’s fresh as a daisy. How is it with yourself, sir. may I be asking?” "Oh, I do hope you are not injured!” Judith exclaimed. “It was very rough play, and we’re so glad you won!” Penrhyn cantered up to them. “My dear man! My dear man!” he said. “I did my best to hold the beast, but he was mad with excitement.” “Howld him! Look at his flank!” said Hickey. But he knew his place, and he said it under his breath. "You were wrong. Stanley,” Judith was saying, "very wrong, ever to think of riding such an animal!” Jenny was still nosing the white feathers. "She thinks they may be sugar,” Wistar apologised. "I forgot to give her the lump she expected when I changed mounts.’’ He reached into his pocket and found nothing but powdered granules. Jenny herself had crushed the last domino. "Poor old girl.” he said, stroking her mobile nose, “did we make you spoil your own sugar? Sever mind! There’s more in the locker.” And taking the bridle from Hickey he led her away. It was a fortunate pretext, for the knife inside him kept turning, and the white feathers spread before his vision, filling it from the green of the grass to the blue of the zenith with what now teemed to him wavering lamps of sugar.

f XXV. ? flow many weeks that pain lasted iP’istar did not know. Through the long flays and longer nights of his fever a single idea haunted him. obsessed him. Sooner or later he would have to lock horns with Penrhyn in a final struggle for control of the combination; and there was more than an even chanee, he .foreboded, that in that struggle he would -be defeated, and Minot and others of his •kind ground under foot. In such an event he saw but one recourse, and that the blackest —to quit the trust and join the weaker faction in the fight for decency and law-. That he would be able to wreck the combination he had little tloubt. He had made its strength, and better than anyone else he knew its weakness. It was to avoid such a fight that he had entered it, and the result of all he had done would be to aggravate his plight. To plunge Judith's father from ■hope to despair would have been bad enough; but his heart grew sick at the thought of what it would mean to dash him from success and power to ruin. She had called him the cave man, and accused him of seeking to fell them all with his club. As his fever mounted and the pain in his side cut deeper, the idea grew on him that he might have to do just this. One evening he awoke with a sense of physical relief. The pain was no longer inside. It was outside, in soft linen bandages. He was suffering from a horrible nausea, and his tongue was so thick that he could utter nothing; but little by little his mind cleared, and he recalled with terror a nightmare under which he had been labouring—recalled it with terror and relief, for he now knew it was only a nightmare. Judith had lain dying in a dingy hall-bedroom, her struggle against poverty ended; and as she saw him she looked upon him as the author of her fate, and turned her eyes, pitiful and full of hatred as he had never seen them in life, toward the tawdry wall. A beam of watery sunshine, struggling in, brought the glints to her hair, though palely. Then, of a sudden, he had seen a clot of crimson, where she had got the wound of which she was dying—a blow from the cave man’s club. He opened his eyes to expel the agonising vision, and saw by his bedside the woman in striped gown, white apron and cap,. Then he understood.; It was a long time before lie cohft speak,-but at last he asked her thiekly: “Did you have to go in far ? What did you find “We went in so far,’ the nurse said cheerily, "that we saw the tail-feathers of your soul.’’ Her theology was orthodox. in spite of a rigidly scientific training. “But we sewed you up tight, so there’s no chance of its escaping this time." Wistar smiled. “What did you find was the matter —before you sewed it up?" One doesn’t allow a patient’s mind to dwell on the details of his malady. “There was a bow of blue ribbon on it,” she said, “and it had come untied.” M istar was silent a long time and then, "Blue ribbon?” he asked. "Baby blue—it was a pure soul. We tied it up neatly in a love-knot.” “I should have preferred a square bow," he said. "It s a spell we laid with the loveknot—so now your -sweetheart can’t lose you." He thought of Judith. “I’m afraid,” he said, sadly, “that the operation will not prove successful.” The nurse did not understand. “In two months,” she said, “you will be on your feet again.” Two months! His old fears swarmed back on him. Glancing about, he recognised Billy and Minot on the other side ot the bed. “Hello!" he said. “I must see you fellows on business.” At the word they faded into darkness. Then the nurse said. "Hush! Go to s eepj and stroked the fine, lank hair on his forehead. He went to sleep, but ln , dream 9 he fighting a fight in W > there was a most perplexing mingling of motor cars and ponies. And the prize was a white feather boa. . XXVI. Almost before he recovered from the nausea of ether, Wistar took advantage ot the telephone by his bedside to get u<dl w *th the affairs of the combinn,,'? n ~7 fi r ”t surreptitiously, when the , ? r a , moment had left him appartorrXi R n 8” an< l then with her enH P rnvPd a * feared, fa. ’ d U P- h ,s agencies one by one, aa St. Loujs and Omaha, and by a

few leading questions ascertained that Penrhyn and Smith had assumed his office and were already introducing their methods. Minot was soon a frequent visitor, and he elicited from him similar intelligence. Penrhyn was using the power of the combination to fight the independents with the well-known tactics of predatory competition. There was strong evidence that he was even preparing to infringe on Minot’s patent, relying on the power of money and the technicalities of the law to protect him. And the ultimate end of it all, as was becoming clearer and clearer in the reports from South America, was to gain a virtual monopoly of the industry throughout the world. Before his accident Wistar had had hopes of being able to control the coming election of officers. For weeks he had been quietly increasing his holdings of stock. Now he had a stock tieker installed in his bedroom, and day by day directed his campaign by telephone. He was powerfully aided here by the very seriousness of his illness, for Wall-street in general, and Penrhyn in particular, had grown accustomed to regard him as out of the running; and with professional conservatism the surgeons had understated the hope of his recovery. To make success secure and indubitable, however, he felt that it was necessary to gain strong adherents among the stockholders. And here his illness crippled him far more than it helped him in his operation in the market. One may buy or sell by telephone anything from a paper of pins to a billion-dollar trust; but corporation politics is a matter of personal contact and influence. Some of the stockholders he knew well, and when he called up these they were sympathetic, and agreed to stand by him. But somehow he felt they were influenced less by their reason anil personal preference than by consideration for his illness. With a great majority, even of the largest stockholders, he was unacquainted. Time and again he tried to imagine himself urging his cause into a vulcanite receiver, but he only succeeded in appearing in his own eyes what is known as a squealer, and. perhaps, also a prig. In this crisis Wistar felt himself forced to measures of desperation. His financial resources, he felt sure, were greater than Penrhyn was aware. In behalf of the industry which for two years he had held in his own ten fingers, and which was his one real interest in life, lie was willing to risk his last dollar if need be; but even at that he felt himself forced to an expedient which in the old days he would not have thought possible to him—he began making his purchases on margin. It was not a new experience. Once a doctrinary trust buster, he had liecome the heart and soul of a gigantic consolidation, which awakened in him large ambitions. Now, labouring in a life-or-death struggle for honour and righteous power, he took up with methods which he had always abhorred as the invention of the stock-speculator and the predatory manipulator of markets. By so doing he multiplied many times his purchasing power, so that he was able to double, perhaps to treble, the holdings of any of his associates. It is true that in this he took no great risk. Large as his purchases had been, they had been so skilfully distributed over so many weeks that they had advanced the price of securities by a very few points. If he won there might be a slight reaction; but, with the situation in his own hands, there would be no permanent loss. If he failed to secure control he would be the first to know it, and so have the drop on the market when it came time to sell. In the matter of mere dollars he was, in fact, virtual master of the situation. He had been accustomed to say that the big men of Wall Street played with marked cards, with loaded diee. Well, that was just what he was doing now. If he had any twinges of conscience at backsliding from his ideals they were silenced by the fact that, as the last resort, there was only one other course open to him—to abandon the combination and range himself against it with Minot and the rest of the independents. This he was unwilling to contemplate, for, not to mention the new ambitions of the past two years, it would certainly mean that he must work that very injury to Judith to avoid which he had, in the first instance, joined the combination. . Yet, great as was his wealth, it became gradually evident that, even at the most liberal estimate of the aid he might command from his friends, it was not

great enough. The securities of American Motor were valued by the hundreds, not tens, of millions. Whether by hook or by crook, it was presently manifest that he would not be able to secure enough stock to control the approaching election of officers. When the outlook was darkest, however, fortune placed in his hands an unexpected resource, in fact, a trump card. It had taken his detectives only a few days to discover that, while Andrews was living in a manner which for him was positively sumptuous, he had no steady employment and no source of income beyond the meagre Sunday gleanings from his hat, passed in Madison

Square. With the first of a new month, however, they saw him make a midnight journey f Penrhyn’s rooms, which was immediately followed by a period of riotous living. A single occasion of this sort might be a coincidence; but when it was repeated once and again it became evident that the man was living by blackmail. The chain of circumstantial evidence was now complete enough to justify the most incisive action. Wistar promptly summoned Minot and desepatched him on an errand of diplomacy to Mr. Sears. (To be continued.)