THE bell of the telephone on the desk of the alert city editor of the New York Planet rang twice. The alert city editor did not instantly answer it. He was reading a love-letter not meant for his eyes. It had been sent in with his mail by mistake. The bell rang again.

“Yes?” he said, angrily. “Who? Oh, hello, Bill!” There was a pause. Then: “Shall we? Why, friend, he's already started. Thanks awfully! Sure thing!”

He swung round and cast a roaming glance about the big room. It was Sunday, the sacred day when nothing happened.

“Parkhurst!” he called.

Parkhurst, one of the Planet's star men, sauntered over to the desk. He had planned to do other things with his time this nice Sunday afternoon. Monday-morning stories are not apt to be exciting. Therefore he limped pathetically in anticipation of the excuse he proposed to make to get off. He was Williams's chum.

“Jimmy,” said the city editor, with his habitual air of giving assignments as though they were decorations awarded for distinguished services, “I just had Bill Stewart, of the Hotel Brabant, on the telephone. He says there is a man there who has seven million dollars in gold-dust in the engine-room of the hotel. Klondike mine-owner. Does not believe in banks, I guess. Takes mighty big stocking to hold the cash—”

“Do you want me to write the story?” interrupted Parkhurst, coldly. It was his way of showing his city editor his place.

“Coal-Oil Johnny up to date! Don't fall for any press agent—”

Parkhurst forgot the excuse he was going to make. His limp vanished. The story promised well. He hastened to the Brabant and saw the room clerk, Stewart, who had tipped off the city editor.

“Yes; he is in,” said Stewart. “But if you think it is another case of Coal-Oil Johnny you've got another guess coming. Not that he is a tightwad; he is liberal enough with his nuggets, the bell-hops say. But he is no fool. And yet—think of it!—he takes into Seattle with him from Nome eight or ten millions of gold-dust! There he hires a special train to bring him and his gold-dust to New York. He arrives at the Grand Central in the early morning. They hustle round and find seven trucks to carry the boxes of gold-dust for him. He follows in a taxicab. He comes straight to this hotel—”

Stewart here swelled up his chest. It made the reporter say, amiably:

“It was considered a good hotel once; but news travels slowly in the frozen North.”

“He comes up here, registers, and then expects me to let him take the whole fifteen tons of gold up to his room. What do you know about that? Well, then he wanted to hire a whole floor so as to distribute the weight. But you know it is a highly concentrated weight. No floor would stand it. Gold is the heaviest thing there is.”

“It is,” agreed Parkhurst, hastily. “It is, dear friend. That's why I never carry more than a couple of tooth-fillings with me, and—”

“Let me tell you,” cut in Stewart, full of his story. “So, being Sunday and no banks open, we arranged for him to keep the gold-dust down-stairs in the engine-room. And it is there now, a hundred and fifty boxes, worth, he says, about eight million—”

“Lead me to it before you hand in your bill,” entreated the reporter.

“There are eight Old Sleuths, with sixteen automatic pistols, on the job of keeping hungry newspaper men from the nice little paper-weights, Jimmy,” said Stewart. “I am so kind to Mr. Jerningham myself that I think he will remember me in one of those wills you fellows are always writing about—don't you know? How a fabulous fortune is left to the polite hotel clerk who was so nice to the stranger in the spring of eighteen seventy-four?”

“What's the full name?” asked the reporter. “There it is!” and Stewart pointed to the autograph in the hotel register.

“Alfred Jerningham. Nome and New York. Suite G.”

There followed the names of the eight bullion guards and his two personal servants.

“Looks like a school-boy's writing.”

“He is about forty,” said the clerk.

“Then it means he probably stopped writing for publication when he was about fourteen. That is the immature chirography of a man who is more at home with a pick than with a pen. And, furthermore—”

“Here he comes,” interjected Stewart. “I'll introduce you.”

J. Willoughby Parkhurst, the reporter, was startled by the change in Stewart's face. It had taken on the ingratiating soul-sweetness of one who enjoys your story with all his faculties—the complete surrender of self, soul, and hopes of heaven. The clerk exuded gratitude from every pore.

“Gosh!” exclaimed J. Willoughby Parkhurst in amazement, and turned quickly to see who it was that had made Stewart's greed-stricken face turn itself into a moving-picture film of all the delights.

A man was approaching—a man of about the reporter's height, square-shouldered, smooth-shaved, strong-chinned, with an outdoor complexion, and the clear, clean, steady eyes of a man without a liver. There was a metallic glint to the gray-blue of the iris that made the eyes a trifle hard. The lips were not only compressed, but you guessed that the compression was habitual. Even a private detective could have told that this man had made up his mind to do one thing, and therefore he would do it. There was no doubt of it.

“Oh, Mr. Jerningham!” The name issued like a stream of saccharin out of the eddying smiles on Stewart's face.

“The expectation of twenty millions of gold, at least, on that face!” thought Parkhurst, more impressed by the smile than by the cause thereof.

“Here is that nugget I promised you.” And Mr. Jerningham dropped four-and-three-quarter pounds troy of gold into the clerk's coy hand. “It is the largest I ever found in six years' mining on the Klondike.”

The reporter later told the city editor—he did not print this—that Stewart, as he got the nugget, showed plainly on his face his disappointment that Jerningham had not come from the South-African diamond-fields. A carbon crystal weighing four pounds and three-quarters—that would have been worth a real smile! But the clerk said, gratefully: “It's very good of you. Thank you ever so much! I'd like to introduce to you my friend, Mr. Park-hurst.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance, sir. Parker, did you say?”

The Klondiker spoke coldly. It made the reporter say, subtly antagonistic:

“Parkhurst!”

“Any relation to—”

“Haven't a relation in the world.”

“Shake again, friend,” said Jerningham, warmly. “I am in the same boat myself!”

They shook hands again.

“Do you want to be very nice?” asked Jerningham, almost eagerly, of the reporter.

“It is my invariable custom to be that,” Parkhurst assured him, gravely.

“Dine with me to-night.” Jerningham looked expectant.

“I have an engagement with my friend the bishop,” said the reporter, who hated clergymen for obvious reasons. “But—let me see!” Parkhurst closed his eyes the better to see how he could break his engagement. “I'll send regrets to the bishop and dine with you with pleasure.”

“Mr. Parkhurst is on the Planet” put in Stewart. It was the way he said it!

“Ah, yes,” said Jemingham, vaguely.

“In fact, Mr. Jemingham,” said Parkhurst, “I was sent to interview you.”

“Huh?” ejaculated the Klondiker, blankly. It was plain he was virgin soil.

“All to myself!” thought J. Willoughby, with a mental smack of the lips. Then he began, in that congratulatory tone of voice with which practised interviewers corkscrew admissions out of their victims: “We heard about your trip from Seattle, and about your—er—baggage. Would you mind telling me a little more about it? We could”—with a honeyed grin at Stewart—“sit down in a nice little corner of the cafÉ and have a nice little chat.”

“I don't mind—if you don't,” said Jemingham, with one of those diffidently eager smiles of people who are doing you a favor and do not know it.

The reporter led the way to the cafÉ, selected a small table in the farthest corner, beckoned to a waiter, pointed to a chair, and nodded toward the Alaskan Monte Cristo.

“Thank you!” said Jemingham, with real gratitude, and sat down. Then he looked at his watch, saw that it was only four o'clock, and said to the waiter, “A cup of tea, please.”

“Huh?” It was all J. Willoughby could rise to. A miner and tea? What about the free champagne for the hundreds? A tea-drinker would not scatter walnut-sized diamonds along the Great White Way.

“I got used to it. My pal was English. We found it preferable to whisky in the Klondike.” Mr. Jerningham made no effort to disguise the apologetic tone.

“I'll have the same,” cleverly said J. Willoughby. Then, to clinch it, “Of course you know that in the exclusive clubs to-day men drink more tea than liquor!”

“It's the proper thing—eh?” said Jerningham, with a sort of head-waiter deference that made the reporter stare in surprise. “I am glad you told me that.”

“Oh yes. It is no longer good form to get load—er—intoxicated. It's one of the few good things we've got from England—tea-drinking,” the reporter said. “And, Mr. Jerningham, to get back to our subject, just how did you happen to go to the Klondike?”

“It began in New York,” said Jerningham, and drew his lips together. It was clearly not a pleasant memory.

“It did?” You could tell that J. Willoughby was grateful. “Well, well! And—” He frowned as though a date had escaped him. He really suggested time to the miner, for Jerningham volunteered: “When I was twelve years old.”

“That's about twenty years ago,” ventured the reporter in the affirmative tone of voice that inevitably elicits contradiction and the exact figures from the victim.

“Thirty-two years ago, sir.”

“Well, well! And—How did you say it began?” The reporter put his hand to his ear to show that his hardness of hearing had prevented him from getting Jerningham's previous answer to the same question.

“My father!” Mr. Jemingham nodded twice, to show that those two words told the whole story.

“Ah, yes! And then?” The reporter looked as if instant death Would follow the non-receipt of information; and Jerningham, as though against a lifelong determination to be silent, spoke—and frowned as he spoke:

“My father! He was a coachman in the employ of old David Soulett, who was the son of Walter and the father of Richard and David the third, and of Madge, who married the Duke of Peterborough. Old David Soulett—the second, he was—was my father's employer. My father was English. He came to New York when he was eighteen. He went straight into the Souletts' stable, became head coachman, and lived with the family for fifty years. They pensioned him off. I grew up with the boys—called one another by our first names. Do you get that?—by our first names!”

Jemingham compressed his lips tightly and nodded. His eyes filled with reminiscence—sweet, yet sad.

“You did, eh?” said the reporter.

If J. Willoughby had been addicted to slang he would have used the same wondering tone of voice and would have exclaimed, “What do you know about that!”

“And that is why I went to the Klondike!”

There are times when a man's voice and attitude show that he is speaking in italics. This was one of the times. Having said all there was to be said, he turned to the tea with a gesture of such determination that Parkhurst leaned over, half expecting to see a dozen starving grizzly-bears jump out of the cup. Then the thought came to the watchful reporter that the grim-shut lips merely expressed that some memory was bitter. He asked, very sympathetically, “Did they send you away?”

“They did not send me away. They did nothing! They were! That's all. It was enough.”

“Yes, of course!” The reporter agreed with Jerningham absolutely. “But I don't quite see the exact reason, as you might say.”

“They were!” explained Jerningham as one might talk to a child. “They were Souletts, rich by inheritance, in the best society. They had everything I did not have. So I went to the Klondike.”

“Yes?”

“Is it not clear?”

“No!” said the reporter, grateful for the chance to use the plain negative.

“They were in the Four Hundred. They were gentlemen. They were good-looking, pleasant-mannered, kindly-hearted fellow-Christians. But if they had not been the sons of David Soulett, and if David had not been the son of Walter, and Walter the son of the first David, they wouldn't have been in the Four Hundred, or in the Four Thousand even. Policemen at the corners used to touch their hats to them as they drove by and seemed really glad to get a pleasant smile in return. You felt the cops would never have dreamt of taking a Soulett to the station-house—always to the Soulett mansion. New-Yorkers used to point to it—the Soulett mansion—with an air of pride, as though they owned it! Clerks in shops would send for the proprietor if one of the Souletts walked in, and later they would brag how they said to David Soulett, they said; and he said, said he—and so on. And why? Why, I ask you?”

“Why?” repeated the reporter, hypnotically.

“Because an ignorant old cuss couldn't read or write and had to go to digging graves in Trinity churchyard for a living. It was old David's proud boast that he put away one thousand six hundred and thirty-two people, including the very best there were in literature, art, science, theology, commerce, and finance, besides nineteen murderers, thirty-eight pet slaves, and one dog of his own. A very snob among grave-diggers, laying the foundation for the nonsnobbishness of his great-grandchildren! Digging graves, you see, turned his mind to soil. The only thing that didn't burn up or evaporate or shrink was soil. Genius for real estate they call his madness to-day. But it was an obsession. He bought a farm in what is now the swell shopping district; and another where the Hotel Regina is; and another beginning where the Vandeventer houses are. The old lunatic's mad purchases are now worth one hundred and fifty million dollars; and he himself is an ancestor, with fake portraits showing an intellectual-looking country squire. Grave-digger—that's what! But the money really began with him and the near-gentleman with Walter, who knew the best families because his father buried them one after another. By the time the real-estate market got to going in earnest David was born—of course a gentleman! What did it? Unearned money!”

“Yes. But what's digging graves got to do with your going to the Klondike?”

“Everything. It gave me the secret of it—the unearned part. Don't you see?”

“No.”

“My dear sir, I loved the company of the Soulett boys and I enjoyed the society of their equals. So I naturally desired to become their equal. To become a gentleman I had to become rich. But the money must not be earned; so I couldn't make it in trade—which, moreover, was too slow. The careers of butcher, plumber, and liquor-dealer, that might have made me rich quickly, were closed to me by the social disqualifications they carry. And the careers of Jim Sands and Bill Train in Wall Street were too malodorous; besides which, you can't make very much money on the Stock Exchange without treading on influential social toes. Hence the Klondike. Do you see now?”

“I'm beginning to.”

“Well?”

“Do you mean,” said the reporter, to get it straight, “that you went to the Klondike to make money so as to climb—I mean, so as to go into society?”

“Exactly so! Yes, sir! And I tell you, Mr. Parker—”

“Park-hurst!” said J. Willoughby, with a frown of injured vanity.

“Mr. Parkhurst, a man has to have some strong motive to enable him to conquer success. In all my wanderings for twenty-five years, prospecting in Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, the Southwest, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington, and finally all over Alaska, I had but one object in mind, one purpose. It sustained me. It gave me courage when others despaired; it kept me marching onward when others fell by the wayside and died or became sheep-ranchers. I had no thought for amusement, none for pleasure, none for love. I simply kept up my search. It was the search for happiness that the old knights used to go out on. It was a search, Mr. Parker-hurst, for the yellow admission ticket to the Four Hundred!”

“Have you found it?” J. Willoughby could not help it.

“Let me tell you,” pursued Jerningham, ignoring the question. “I used to read the society columns of the New York papers whenever I felt myself growing discouraged; and that always revived me. Up in the Klondike I had saved fifteen hundred dollars and I paid one thousand dollars in gold-dust for a six-months-old copy of a society paper which had an account of Mrs. Masters's ball. To me, 'among those present' meant more than a list of gilt-edge bonds. I've got it yet.”

He paused to take from his pocket-book a tattered clipping and showed it to the newspaper man with a mixture of pride and tenderness and solicitude lest it be harmed, as a father shows the only extant photograph of the most wonderful baby in captivity.

“I thought my name would fit in very nicely between the Janeways and the Jesups. It was a good investment, that one thousand dollars, for I felt I had to get a gait on, and that very same day I went on that prospecting trip to the Endicott Mountains which changed my luck for me. Everything came my way then—I mean, in mining. I am getting six hundred thousand dollars a year out of my claims; and that is because I believe fifty thousand dollars a month enough for a bachelor. More would be—er—sort of ostentatious. Don't you think so?”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed J. Willoughby Parkhurst, with a shudder.

“When I marry I'll make it one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a month.”

“I agree with you,” said Parkhurst—“because, really, two cannot live as cheaply as one.” He thrilled when he thought how he would play up that promised income in his story.

“That's what I say,” Jerningham said, gratefully. “Of course there's the seven millions and a half of gold-dust I have brought with me. It's downstairs.” His grim mouth became more determinedly grim than ever. This man was the kind that gets what he wants, with or without money. He will not climb, thought Parkhurst; he will vault into society. He asked Jerningham:

“Have you really got that much down-stairs? I mean,” he hastily corrected himself, “have you no fear of the danger of going about with that much loose change?”

“No. It's guarded by men who are getting big pay for being honest. You can buy honesty—if you treat it as a luxury and pay for it as such. Each box weighs one hundred and fifty pounds, for convenience in handling. Would you like to see the stuff?” He could not hide a boyish eagerness—not at all offensive—to impress his new friend. J. Willoughby Parkhurst forgave him in advance, and to prove it said, heartily:

“Very much indeed!”

“Very well. Please come with me.” And he led the way to the engine-room. They went down two flights. At the door of the engine-room they met the engineer, who bowed with an obsequiousness that indicated sincere gratitude and renewed hope—as of a man who has received a handsome gratuity and is expecting another.

In the middle of the concrete floor, of the engine-room, piled up in an amazingly small mound of boxes, was the gold.

“Each box has about fifty thousand dollars in dust,” explained Jerningham, with what one might have called a matter-of-fact pride. “Would you like to open one?”

“I don't want to put you to any trouble—not for worlds; but I do want to see the inside of one like anything.”

“No trouble. I say, Mr. Wilkinson,” to the hotel engineer, who had followed them, a deferential smile fastened to his face, “could you get me a hammer and chisel and a screw-driver?”

“Certainly, Mr. Jerningham,” said the engineer, with obvious pride at being part of an extraordinary adventure. He reappeared presently with the tools and a burly assistant. They pried off the steel hoop and cracked off the sealing-wax from over the heads of the screws that held the lid in place. They then unscrewed the cover—and there before their wide-gaping eyes was a boxful of yellow Yukon gold.

Jerningham smilingly looked at J. Willoughby Parkhurst and waved his hand toward the treasure—a gesture that said Help yourself!—only it said it humorously. And so the reporter smiled indulgently and plunged his hand in it.

“How heavy!” he exclaimed, involuntarily. He had meant to be witty, as penniless people always are in the presence of great wealth to show that they are not impressed.

“It will be light enough to blow away here,” said Jerningham so seriously that nobody smiled—indeed, everybody hoped for a blast in the direction of his own pocket. Put Jerningham merely said: “Thank you. Will you screw it on again?” And the engineer did. Jerningham did not stay to see the rescrewing finished. He took Parkhurst's arm and walked out. The reporter told him:

“I can't help thinking it was imprudent. The detectives now know they can open the boxes and—”

“It isn't likely that all eight will be dishonest at the same minute. That's why I got eight instead of four. But, even if they all wanted to, how much could they get away with? With the contents of one of the boxes, fifty thousand dollars? Well, that isn't much. I can't afford to let that gold be a bother to me. I brought it along so that it could be my servant—not for me to be its slave.”

“I've heard others make that selfsame remark,” said J. Willoughby, cheerfully, “but they never struck off the aureate shackles!”

“My friend, it's not in striking off shackles; that is always difficult. The secret is in not letting them become shackles!” said Jerningham, grimly. “A man does not confidently expect during twenty-five years to strike it rich some day without very carefully thinking of what he is going to do with the gold after he gets it.”

II

The story, as James Willoughby Parkhurst wrote it, and even as the Planet printed it, was a masterpiece. It was far more interesting than a fake. The truth often may be stranger than fiction, but it is seldom so exciting. With the generous desire to repay Jerningham's hospitality with kindness, to say nothing of an eye for the picturesque, the reporter made his victim an Admirable Crichton. Parkhurst's Jerningham was very distinguished-looking, which every woman knows is better for a man than being handsome. He not only was “probably the richest man in the world,” but a fine linguist—indeed, a philologist. You saw Jerningham digging in his gravel-bank by day—-spadeful after spadeful of clear gold-dust—and at nights reading Aristophanes in the original by the flickering and malodorous light of seal-fat lamps.

On the same day that Jerningham learned that his own wealth was practically inexhaustible, and decided to limit his income in order that gold might not be demonetized, he—the philologist in him—discovered also amazing analogies between certain Eskimo and Aleutian words and their equivalents in Tibetan. This and a monograph on “Totemism in the Light of Its Undoubted Babylonian Origin,” he would read in London before the Royal Society. Of Jerningham's ancestry the article said that the erudite Croesus was “of the Long Island Jerninghams.”

At three separate and distinct places in the article, each time differently worded, but the intention and purpose thereof being the same, the writer said that for generosity, lavish extravagance, capacity for spending, and deep-rooted belief that there was no difference between gold coins and stage money, the learned Klondiker was a combination of Monte Cristo, Boni de Castellane, Coal-Oil Johnny, and Alcibiades—only more so. But his feverish efforts were all in vain—he only grew richer! If he decided to give a million to a newsboy who was polite, that same moment he would be sure to get a cablegram from one of his superintendents that the vein had widened to three miles and the assays jumped to three hundred thousand dollars a ton.

Parkhurst finished by saying that Jerningham had no use for women. In divers countries world-famous sirens had sung to him—in vain. He was the kind that registered zero, even though plunged to the chin in Vesuvian lava. So the dear things might as well save time, breath, and muscular exertion; he would have none of them, no matter what their age, color of hair, temperament, accomplishments, or even faces might be. He was arrow-proof and Cupid had given up trying. Still, there must be One—somewhere!

When J. Willoughby Parkhurst went to the Hotel Brabant on Monday morning in the hope of a second-day story, he was not sure how Jerningham would take his masterpiece. He was going so early in the hope of shunting off the head-line artists of the afternoon papers, for all that he had begged Stewart to fix it so that nobody got to Jerningham before the Planet man turned up.

As he entered the lobby he saw in a corner lounge five reporters from the yellows, three photographers from same, a professor from the Afternoon Three-Center, and a “psychological portraitist,” feminine and fat, but dressed with unusual care and even piquancy, from a magazine. He saw Jemingham's finish—not!

The competitors were too busy talking to see J. Willoughby Parkhurst, author of the day's sensation, walk up to the desk and greet Stewart affectionately. They did not see J. W. P. turn sharply, approach a well-built, square-shouldered man, with an outdoor complexion, who had just emerged from the elevator, and shake hands warmly.

After one and a half seconds of dialogue, consisting of “Good morning!” and “Good morning!” J. Willoughby cleverly realized that Mr. Alfred Jemingham could not possibly have read the article. On general principles he took the Klondiker to one end of the corridor, out of sight of the other reporters.

“I am very anxious to make arrangements to store my gold in some bank's vaults. I don't know any bank—that is, I have no account in any; and I wondered if I needed to be introduced.”

Jemingham looked anxiously at Parkhurst.

“Of course!” said J. Willoughby, and immediately looked alarmed. “Of course! They are very particular—very! The good ones, you know. A man's bank is like a man's club—it can give him a social standing or it can prove he hasn't any.” He looked at his Klondike friend with a frown of anxiety.

“I never thought of that side of it. But I can see there is much in what you say. I should like to put the gold in the VanTwiller Trust Company.”

“Fine! I think I can help you. I'll call up our Wall Street man and he will make the trust company take it—unless he thinks there is another still better. Let's go to your room and telephone from there; and we'll tell Stewart to tell the telephone operator not to bother us—what?”

J. Willoughby intended that Jemingham should be the sole and exclusive property of the Planet. From Jerningham's sumptuous room he called up the office, ordered a corps of photographers to the battlefield to take pictures of sundry loads of gold on trucks on their way to the great vaults, escorted by the Planet's special commissioner in one of the armored automobiles which the Planet supplied to its bright young men.

Then he called up Amos F. Kidder, the Planet's financial editor; and Kidder, who, of course, knew the president of the VanTwiller Trust Company, Mr. Ashton Welles, hustled thitherward and made all arrangements, including the securing of the trucks owned by Tommy O'Loughlin, who did all the gold-trucking for W. H. Garrettson & Company, Wolff, Herzog & Company, and other gold-shipping banking firms. Photographers were duly stationed at the various points by which the aureate procession would pass.

Mr. J. Willoughby Parkhurst had the boxes of gold-dust taken out by the ash-and-cinder exit, caused his fellow-reporters to be “tipped off” by hall-boys that the gold would be taken away at twelve-thirty sharp to the Metropolitan National Bank vaults, and then took Jerningham in the Planet's automobile and followed the trucks.

In Wall Street Parkhurst introduced Jerningham to the waiting Kidder, and Kidder introduced Jerningham to the waiting Mr. Welles. The gold was carried down to the vaults. Jerningham separated twenty boxes from the heap.

“I'd like to have these cashed,” he said, with that delightful humor of all very rich men. And everybody within hearing laughed, as everybody always laughs at the so-delightful humor of all very rich men. There was not a clerk in the trust company who did not repeat the historic remark at home that night.

Word of what was happening went about, and soon the great little narrow street was blocked by people who wished to see six or eight millions go into a place where there were one hundred and fifty. But there was this difference—the one hundred and fifty already there would stay there; but a handful or two of the six or eight might be distributed among those present by the latest Coal-Oil Johnny from the Klondike. The hope of a stray nugget or two kept two thousand busy people about the doors of the VanTwiller Trust Company nearly two hours.

As for Jerningham, the trust company was to send the twenty boxes of gold-dust to the Assay Office and credit Mr. Jerninghan's account with the proceeds of the sale thereof. Two days later Mr. Alfred Jerningham had to his credit in the VanTwiller Trust Company $1,115,675.28; and in the vaults boxes containing, as per his most conservative estimates, gold-dust valued at six millions and a half. And everybody knew it—the Planet saw to that. Great potentialities in that golden fame of Jerningham's—what?

III

The Planet's official version of the Jerningham affair, and the flood of sensational literature turned loose on the community by the other papers, made the Klondiker's name as familiar to New-Yorkers as a certain breakfast-food advertisement.

His daily mail was enormous, especially after the newspapers said that he was looking for a house in which to entertain. “The richest bachelor in the world,” he was called, and the real-estate agents acted accordingly. So did no end of unattached females of dubious age, but of not at all dubious intentions. Also it became known that he needed a social secretary to guide him in two things—the two things being whom to invite and how to spend six hundred thousand dollars a year in entertaining those who were invited by the social adviser.

The applications came by the dozen—in the strictest confidence. If somebody had said this aloud in the hearing of society, society would have laughed scornfully. A gentleman was always a gentleman, and could never, never be secretary to a parvenu! But, for all that, there were scores of well-born men who appeared willing enough—don't you know?—to help spend the six hundred thousand a year. Or else some historic names were forged by dastards. The Planet's society editor, who would never allow herself to be called editress, proved invaluable as a living Who's Who, and demonstrated her worth to her paper by making connections that would further her work; for she was much sought by people who wished introductions to Mr. Jerningham.

They would trade with her—items for letters.

It helped all concerned that not only Parkhurst, but the rest of the kind-hearted space-grabbers, informed the world that the possessor of the income of six hundred thousand a year was a fount of erudition, and withal a man of the world, with exquisite manners—invulnerable to the optical artillery of the fairest sirens on earth. And always the six hundred thousand dollars a year to spend, so that the beastly stuff would not accumulate and choke up the passages of the palace he proposed to build! That was how Francis Wolfe came to be introduced to Mr. Jerningham by J. Willoughby Parkhurst, and how the position was delicately offered to him, and how F. Wolfe delicately accepted.

A fine-looking, well-built young fellow, this Frank—dark-eyed, black-haired, with a wonderfully clean pink but virile complexion that made him physically very attractive. In those Broadway restaurants that have become institutions Francis Wolfe was himself an institution. His debts were discussed as freely as the cost of gasoline. And yet the chorus contingent and their lady friends, consisting of the most beautiful women in all the world, not only preferred, but publicly and on the slightest provocation proclaimed their preference for, Frank Wolfe penniless to almost any one else—short of millions. But if Frank Wolfe was the chorus-girls' pet, Mr. Francis Wolfe was the only brother of Mrs. John Burt and Mrs. Sydney Walsingham, and favorite nephew of old Mrs. Stimson. And everybody knew what that meant!

J. Willoughby Parkhurst left them alone, even if he was a reporter.

“If you do not mind talking business,” said Jerningham, with a deprecatory smile.

“Not at all,” eagerly said young Wolfe, who was consumed by curiosity to listen to the golden statistics. “In fact,” he added, with a burst of boyish candor, “I'd be glad to have you.”

“You are a nice boy!” said Jemingham, so gratefully and non-familiarly that Frank could not find fault with him.

“I need a friend,” continued Jerningham. “I know friendship cannot be bought. It grows—but there must be a seed. It may be that after you know me better you will give me your friendship. That is for the future. I also need a man! A man whom I can trust! A man, young Mr. Francis Wolfe,” he said, with a sternness that impressed young Mr. Francis Wolfe, “who will not laugh at me!”

Frank was not an intellectual giant, but neither was he an utter ass. He said, very seriously, “Go on!”

“I am willing to pay such a man twenty-five thousand a year—” He paused and almost frowned.

“Go on!” again said young Mr. Wolfe, looking the Klondiker straight in the eyes.

“Twenty-five thousand dollars—to begin with!”

“Yes?” said young Mr. Wolfe, quite calmly.

“The duties of such a man—and keep in mind I mean a man when I say a man!—entail nothing whatever of a menial or dishonorable character; nothing to which a gentleman could possibly object. But it would necessitate a certain spirit of good-will toward me. I am not only willing, but even anxious, to pay twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and all traveling expenses, to a clean-minded young man who, for all his wild-oat sowing, is a gentleman and will learn to like me enough not to laugh at me when I intrust him with the secret desire of my heart.”

Before Frank's thoughts could crystallize into the definite suspicion that Jerningham wanted to be helped to climb socially, Jemingham went on so coldly that again young Wolfe was impressed:

“You will admit, Mr. Wolfe, that a man who has prospected all over North America from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Circle, and who has, unfortunately, been compelled”—he rose, went to his bureau, brought out two revolvers of a rather old-fashioned kind—“compelled against his will to draw first”—he showed the young man about a dozen notches in the handle of one of them—“one who fears no man and no government and no blackmailer; who owns the richest placer mines in the world—is not apt to be an emotional ass!” There was a pause. But Jemingham continued before young Wolfe could speak: “Neither is he a damned fool—what?”

Mr. Francis Wolfe felt he had to say something, so he said, “I shouldn't think so.”

He felt that Jemingham was not a man to trifle with—a tough customer in a rough-and-tumble fight; a man who had taken life in preserving his own; altogether a man, a character, who would make an admirable topic of conversation with both men and women—therefore a man to be interested in.

“Do you know Mr. Ashton Welles?” asked Jer-ningham, almost sharply.

“Not intimately.”

“Do you know Mrs. Ashton Welles?”

“Same answer.”

“Ever dine at their house?”

Frank thought a moment. He had dined at so many people's houses. “No,” he answered, finally. “Could you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Are your relations with Welles such, or could they be cultivated so, as to make him invite you—not me—you!—to dine at his house?”

“Look here, Mr. Jerningham,” and young Mr. Wolfe's face flushed, “a fellow doesn't do some things for money; and this is one—”

“I know it! Not for money. For friendship, yes! That's why—you understand now, don't you?” He looked so earnestly at young Wolfe that Frank absolved him of wrong-doing.

“No, I don't!” said the young man.

“Did you ever know Randolph Deering, who used to be president of the VanTwiller Trust Company?”

“Do you mean Mrs. Welles's father?”

“Yes.”

“I don't recall speaking to him more than to say 'How do you do?' I don't remember when or how I met him.”

“Do you know Mrs. Deering, Mrs. Welles's mother?”

“No.”

“Do you know anybody who does?”

“I suppose I do.”

“Anybody who would give you a letter of introduction?”

“I don't know. If my aunt or my sisters know her it would be easy. But, of course, I should have to know first why I should want to meet her.”

“Of course. Did you ever hear anything about Mrs. Welles's sister, Naida Deering?”

“Didn't know she had a sister.”

“Then, of course, you never saw her.”

Francis Wolfe thought a long time. His mind did not work very quickly at any time. At length he said: “I don't think there could have been a sister, for I never heard of her having any; indeed, I distinctly remember hearing that she was an only child. Maybe she was a cousin or—er—something of the sort.”

“No; Naida was a sister; a good deal older and—But we are drifting away from business. Will you accept my proposition to be my—er—adviser in certain matters on which I think you are qualified to give advice, and accept twenty-five thousand dollars a year?”

“Do you mind if I speak frankly?”

“Certainly not. Speak ahead.”

“Are you offering me this—er—salary when, of course, I know I am not worth a da—a cent in business; I mean, isn't it really in exchange for what I may be able to do for you in a—a social way? You know what I mean.”

“No, sir!” said Jerningham, decisively. “Not for an instant! I do not, dear Mr. Wolfe, give an infinitesimal damn for what is called society.”

“But I thought Jimmy Parkhurst told me—”

“I cannot help what Jimmy Parkhurst told you; but I tell you that I like interesting people, and I don't care who or what they are socially. I hate bores—whether they are hod-carriers or dukes. If I can meet people who will instruct me when I want to learn, or amuse me when I want to laugh, I'm satisfied. And I can always meet that kind without anybody's help. You know how it is.” Then he spoke perhaps thirty words in a foreign language that Frank thought must be Hungarian. “You remember your Latin, of course. That's from Petronius.”

“I thought so!” said Frank Wolfe, the pet of the chorus-girls, laughing to himself. Remember his Latin! He? Haw!

“It is from his 'Cena Trimalchionis.' The arbiter elegantiarum knew what social climbers might be expected to do, though I neither boast of my money nor do I eat with my knife. The Latin of the 'Cena' is difficult—too slangy, full of the sermo plebeius.”

“Yes, it is,” agreed Frank, so gravely that it was all he could do to keep from laughing at himself. This Klondiker was not only a gun-fighter and richer than Croesus, but also a highbrow! Could you beat it?

“Will you accept my offer? Will you try to be my friend?”

“Suppose I find I can't?”

“I'll be sorry. The money is nothing. The inability to make a friend will be my real loss.”

“Well, we might try six months.” He looked inquiringly at Jerningham. “I don't exactly know what you wish me to do.”

“Become my friend! You yourself said some things cannot be done for money by a gentleman; but there is nothing—so long as it is not dishonorable—that a gentleman may not do for a friend. Shall I explain a little more?” He looked anxiously at young Mr. Wolfe.

“Yes—do,” said Frank. It occurred to him that this singular man was in reality proceeding with a curious delicacy.

“Just as soon as you feel you know me I will ask you to help me. Mrs. Deering is now abroad. Mrs. Welles may be of help to us. Mr. Wolfe, now that I am not so poor as I was, I want to find Naida Deering, the only woman I ever loved—and, God help me, the only woman I still love!”

Jerningham rose hastily and walked up and down the room, his face persistently turned away from Wolfe. He walked to a window and stared at the sky a long time. Finally he turned to the young man, who was watching him, and said, with profound conviction:

“Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur!”

Young Mr. Wolfe at first felt like saying, “Yes, indeed!” which would, as a matter of fact, have been a very pat retort. But he weakened and said, “What is that quotation from?”

“Publilius Syrus. Mr. Wolfe, I must find her. And of course I can't employ a private detective. You understand?”

“Yes. That is true,” said Frank.

“In her youth something happened.” Young Mr. Wolfe sat up straight. Here at last was something really vital! Jerningham proceeded: “She was a high-strung girl—pure as gold. Her very innocence made her indiscreet. There was no scandal—no, indeed! But she disappeared. And now, when I have more than enough money for the two of us, I wish to find her. If I don't—of what possible good are my millions? Tell me that!”

Jerningham glared so angrily at young Mr. Wolfe that young Mr. Wolfe felt a slight spasm of concern. The Klondiker had a metallic gray eye that at times menaced like cold steel.

“Excuse me!” said Jerningham, contritely. “My dear boy, do you know what it is to go chasing over the landscape for years and years in the hope of striking it some day so as to be able to go back to your native city and marry the one woman in all the world—particularly when she was one whom her parents, not understanding her nature, practically disowned? In all my prospecting what I wanted was to find Naida's mine—gold by the ton—so I could buy back her place in society!”

There was such determination in Jerningham's voice and look that young Wolfe felt a thrill of admiration and, with it, a distinct masculine liking.

“That's a great story!” he said. “I never heard of your—er—Miss Naida. She never married, I suppose?”

“I don't know! I don't know! She promised to wait for me. The Deerings used to live in Jersey; and living in Jersey when I was a kid wasn't what it is to-day. They were not prominent in society. Of course the Deerings kept it quiet. I think Mrs. Welles may know where her sister is—the sister who is never mentioned by her own flesh and blood! Mrs. Deering, of course, does; but she is abroad somewhere. I must find Naida, I tell you—and—” Jerningham was silent, but Wolfe saw that he was breathing quickly, as though he had been running. Frank never read anything except the afternoon papers, love-letters, and the more romantic of the best-sellers. He now very laboriously constructed a romance of Jemingham's life that became so thrilling it took away his own breath. It made him feel very kindly toward the new Jerningham—everybody feels kindly toward his own creations; and so he said, in a burst of enthusiasm:

“By George! I'll help you!”

And thus was begun the pact between the two men.

IV

On the very, next morning Mr. Jerningham, instead of going to Wall Street as was his custom, went instead to Mrs. Charlton Morris's Agency for Trained Nurses.

An empress—no less—sat at a desk. She was not, however, one of those empresses who change the destiny of nations by their beauty. She had merely an arrogance more than royal.

“I should like to see Mrs. Charlton Morris,” said Jerningham, briskly.

“I am Mrs. Morris,” she said.

You at once perceived that she was even more than imperial. She was a woman of forty, dark, slender, with shell-rimmed, round lenses that gave her that look between a Chinese philosopher and an ancient owl, which those tortoise-shell goggles always do. You also obtained the impression that a completely successful operation had removed Mrs. Morris's sense of humor.

“I should like, if you please—” began Jerningham; but Mrs. Morris interrupted with an effect as of thrusting an icicle into the interior mechanism of a clock.

“I beg your pardon, but we must know with whom we are dealing. What is the name, please?”

“I prefer not to give you mine yet.”

“Oh no, sir; I must know.”

“Suppose I had given you a false one, how would you have been the wiser?”

“Oh, but also you must give me the name of your doctor.”

“He sent me here.”

“And who is he, sir?”

From her voice and her look you gathered that she was in charge of a hospital and was obtaining indispensable clinical data.

“Madam,” said Jemingham, very coldly indeed, “you talk like the census man. Would you also like to know my age, sex, and color?”

“We never,” retorted Mrs. Morris, imperturbably, “do business with strangers.”

“Do you want me to get a letter from the President of the United States? I know him pretty well. Or from my bankers? They are known even in Brooklyn.”

“We are here to supply trained nurses to people whose physicians we know.”

A trained nurse must have unfailing good humor—it is part of her professional requirements. But a purveyor of trained nurses may permit herself much dignity, as though her mission in life consisted, of fitting nurses to cases—the best nurse for the worst case.

“My doctor,” said Jerningham, “is Dr. Jewett.” It was the name of a very great surgeon.

“Ah, yes. Surgical case! Yes! I have Miss Sennett and Miss Audrey. Dr. Jewett knows them very well.”

“Kindly wait a second! I must see them myself. And it is not a surgical case. It is no case at all—yet. Show me the girls!”

“Sir, this is not an intelligence-office; but—”

“I know there is no intelligence in this office. This is merely the anteroom of a hospital and you are the superintendent. By rights you ought to be on the faculty. I am perfectly willing to pay for any loss of time or trouble to which you and the young ladies may be put.”

“Must she be young?” asked Mrs. Morris.

Her voice was at least thirty degrees below zero, for all that there was no devilishness about Mr. Jerningham. He said:

“Yes; and good-looking—not a girl in her teens, but a young woman. I should say, without meaning to be personal, about your age, Mrs. Morris.”

It was plain that Mrs. Morris had almost superhuman control over her facial muscles—she did not beam on him!

“I understand,” she said, in a quite human voice. This man was, after all, neither rude nor blind. “A woman—”

“About thirty—or a little less,” said Jerningham. He looked at Mrs. Morris's face and nodded confirmatively.

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Morris, genially. First impressions are so apt to be unfair!

“I'll be more than satisfied with one of your age and good loo—and—er—appearance “—here the Morris smile irrepressibly made its dÉbut—“and also tactful. It is an unusual case. It will necessitate going to Europe.”

“With the patient?”

“For the patient,” said Jerningham, and waited.

“If you will tell me a little bit more about the case—” said Mrs. Morris, encouragingly. She had just taken a good look at the pearl in the scarf of this delightful judge of ages—at the lowest estimation, five thousand dollars!

“My—I—We have reason to believe that a—friend is ill in London. Kidneys. We wish her to take care of herself. She is a woman of fifty-odd. We want a nurse, refined, well-bred, good-looking, and competent—like yourself; so that she could be a companion and at home among wealthy people. You know what I mean.” He paused.

“Perfectly, sir!” said Mrs. Morris, veraciously. Did she not know Mrs. Morris?

“It would be nice to find such a nurse—and, if possible, also one to whom the fact that she is going to visit England, and possibly other countries, may be a sort of compensation for her sudden departure from New York. Of course she will be paid all her traveling and living expenses—first-class all through—and her regular honorarium. I believe it is thirty-five dollars a week. As I am leaving New York myself soon, I'll pay in advance, and will leave instructions with my bankers to honor any of your drafts, Mrs. Morris. It will be a good opportunity for the young lady to know London—and you know how attractive it is—and Paris!”

“Yes, indeed,” acquiesced Mrs. Morris, suddenly looking like Baedeker.

“The young lady—I am sorry you could not go in her place! Yes, I am!—will live at the same hotel with the patient and become acquainted with her—and advise her to see a physician regularly—a specialist in kidney diseases. We think her only daughter ought to be with her. But you can't say anything to either of them, because if the mother doesn't think she is ill the daughter cannot know it, either. We only suspect it is Bright's. You can't afford to wait until you have to go to bed with Bright's—can you?”

“No, indeed!” gravely agreed Mrs. Morris, specialist.

“So now you know what sort of a girl I wish—one who will be there if the trouble should take a sudden turn for the worse; one who will induce the old lady to consult a physician. Do I have to give a preliminary fee?”

“Not at all. Call this afternoon at four and I'll try to have one of my best nurses here. She is—well, quite young; in fact”—with what might be called a desiccated archness—“she is a little younger than I and quite pretty. I call her handsome!”

Some women are so sure of their own position that they do not fear competition.

“Thank you! I'll be here at four, sharp.” And Mr. Jemingham went away without having given his name to Mrs. Morris.

At four o'clock Mr. Jemingham called at Mrs. Charlton Morris's agency and had an interview with Miss Kathryn Keogh. Mrs. Morris gave them the use of her own little private office; Jemingham very impressively waited for Miss Keogh to sit down and then did so himself.

He threw at Miss Keogh one of those inventorying looks that women find so difficult to appear unconscious of, probably because they know their own weak points.

Miss Keogh was beautiful—and when an Irish girl is beautiful she is beautiful in so many ways! She had the wonderful complexion of her race and a mouth carved out of heaven's prize strawberry. Her eyes were an incredibly deep blue when they were not an incredibly deep pansy-purple, and they were abysses of velvet. In the darkness, without seeing them—just by remembering them—you loved those eyes. In the light, when you could see them, you simply worshiped! Her throat was one of those paradoxical affairs, soft and hard, which made you think at one and the same time of marble and rose-leaves—Solomon's tower of ivory, crowned by the glory of golden-brown hair, so fine that you thought of clouds of it!

If you looked at her eyes you suspected, and if you looked at her throat you were certain that you, a respectable married man, had in you the makings of a criminal—the crime being bigamy. Also you would have sworn to her only too cheerfully that she was the only girl you had ever loved. With one look, remember!

Jemingham looked at her with a cold, impersonally appreciative eye, as he might have scrutinized a clock that was both beautiful and costly.

Miss Keogh understood it perfectly. It piqued her, accustomed as she was to instant adoration. Yet it was not entirely displeasing. This man knew as a connoisseur knows—with his head. That he had not permitted the silly heart to disturb the critical faculties was less flattering, of course. It deferred the inevitable triumph and thus would make it sweeter.

“Has Mrs. Morris told you what I should like you to do?” Jemingham's voice was coldly emotionless, and his gray eyes showed frosty lights.

“She has told me what you doubtless told her. But I must confess I am not very clear in my own mind,” answered Miss Keogh.

Her voice was what you would have expected an artistic Providence to give her. It complemented the lips. If you closed your eyes and heard the voice you saw her eyes and felt the heavenly strawberries on your own lips!

Jemingham had not taken his cold eyes off her. He asked as if she were anybody—a woman of forty, for example, “Will you listen to me carefully?”

“Oh yes!”

“I provide transportation, first-class, to London. I pay you thirty-five dollars a week for your services and allow ten dollars a day for hotel expenses, and so on. At the end of the case your contingent fee will depend upon your success. We don't want to skimp—but we are not throwing away money. It may be one hundred or five hundred dollars. But forget all about it.”

“I have—in advance,” said the marvel, calmly.

Jemingham looked at her steadily. She looked back unflinchingly and yet not at all defiantly as a lesser person would.

“If you accept my offer you will go when in London to Thornton's Hotel—an old-fashioned but very select hotel—where you will find a nice room reserved for you; I will cable for it. It will cost you a guinea a day—for the room and table board. You will thus have five dollars a day for cabs and incidentals. In that hotel lives Mrs. Margaret Deering, an elderly American widow, who looks healthy enough. We fear she is not so strong as she looks, and don't want her to be alone. But she will not take hints. I wish you to make friends with her, so that if she should become ill enough to need attention you may see that she gets proper care and induce her to cable to her only daughter.” He stopped and looked at Miss Keogh inquiringly, as if to convince himself that Miss Keogh had understood.

“What,” said Miss Keogh, calmly, “is the rest of it?” Her eyes were very dark. They always seemed to deepen in color when she frowned. She always frowned when she concentrated—all women do, notwithstanding their dread of wrinkles.

Jerningham stared at her. Then he said, “The lady is not insane.”

“Nervous?”

“Not yet!”

“Ah!” Miss Keogh nodded her head. Her color had risen somewhat.

“Is there anything in what I have said so far that makes you unwilling to take this case?” asked Jerningham.

“Nothing—so far,” she said, looking steadily into his cold, gray eyes. She was, of course, Irish.

“Very well. You can save her family much worriment by suggesting to Mrs. Deering that she ought to have a trained nurse in constant attendance.”

“By the name of Keogh?” interjected the most wonderful.

“No. You are supposed to be a young lady with an income of your own. You might explain that you took up trained nursing to help your only brother, a physician.”

“Very well. And—”

“After you meet Mrs. Deering you might make judicious remarks about her health.”

“For example—”

“Well, at breakfast you say: 'You didn't sleep well last night, did you?' If she says no, you can immediately suggest a physician. If she says she did, you say: 'Well, there is something wrong with you! Did you ever have your kidneys examined?' A simple remark in the proper tone of voice sometimes does it—like, 'Whatever in the world is the matter with you, dear Mrs. Deering?' You understand?”

“If you mean that I must suggest to her that she is ailing—”

“Precisely. The idea is not to frighten her to death, my dear young woman with the beautiful but suspicious eyes, but simply to induce her to send for her only daughter, so that afterward the two will not be separated. And the old lady, I may say for the benefit of your still suspicious eyes, is not very rich, though the daughter is. So your imagination need not invent any devilish plot. I think you can accomplish your work in six weeks. For every day under the six weeks you will receive five pounds. That's twenty-five dollars a day. That is intended, Miss Keogh, to make you hurry. But you must be tactful.”

“Make it a fixed sum. You look like a clever man.”

She looked at him challengingly. He stared back, and gradually a look of admiration came into his eyes. He said, with a smile of appreciation:

“You win! You are certainly the most wonderful girl in the world! I'll make it one thousand dollars, win, lose, or draw. But the quicker the cablegram—”

“—grams,” she corrected—“plural. For greater effect at this end!”

“—grams!” he echoed. “And now you must come with me to the bank to get your letter of credit and some English money. I'll pay in advance.”

He rose. Miss Keogh motioned to him to sit down again. He did so, and looked at her alertly. It might have disconcerted some girls—but not the only absolutely perfect one. Not at all!

“There remains something,” she said.

“What?” he queried, sharply.

“You forgot it!” she told him, with one of those utterly maddening smiles of forgiveness with which beautiful women rivet the fetters and make one grateful.

“What? What?” he asked, impatiently.

“Why?” she answered. “That is what! Why?”

Her beautiful head nodded twice with a birdlike gracefulness. Her eyes were very blight—and very dark! Her cheeks were flushed. Her ripe lips, slightly parted, were overpoweringly tempting.

Jerningham stood up again and stared fixedly at her as though he would read miles and miles beyond her wonderful eyes—into the very depths of her soul! He approached her and held out both his hands. After a scarcely perceptible hesitation she placed hers in his. He shook them with profound gravity; then bowed and raised her right to his lips—and kissed it twice. Still holding her hands in his, he said to her, earnestly:

“My dear child, you are the most wonderful woman in all the world. You are simply the last word in utter perfection. I am a millionaire, but not a crook. I am forty, but still strong. I have never been in love with a woman; but I now know I could be. If you ever wish to marry for the ease and comfort that great wealth gives, or if you ever feel like using your wonderful gifts to make a man who has both money and brains become an important personage in the world—just say the word. There is nothing—nothing, do you hear?—that we could not do together, you and I. My name is—” He paused and looked at her as if to make sure again.

“Yes?” she said, in her most heavenly voice. She released her hands, but her eyes never left his. “Jerningham.”

“The Klondike millionaire who—”

“The same!”

“Ah!” said Miss Keogh, calmly, but her flowerlike cheeks were azalea-pink, and her eyes were full of light. She had read the Planet's articles. She did not remember how many million dollars Jerningham was supposed to have; but she did remember how the fairest of the fair had tried—and failed!

“Remember—any time, with or without notice. My offer is open until you accept it or definitely refuse it. Perhaps I never could make you love me; but I know I could love you if I let myself go.”

“You have not answered me,” said Miss Keogh. “Ask again,” he smiled.

“Why?” There was no smile in her eyes.

It made him serious. He answered:

“For friendship.”

“To a woman?”

“To a man.”

“Again I ask, Why?”

There was a pause. Then he said:

“Mrs. Ashton Welles is the only daughter of Mrs. Deering.”

“And—”

“She is twenty-two.”

“And—”

“Her husband is fifty-two. That's all!”

“Is it?”

“So far as I am concerned, it is—really!”

“Is Mr. Ashton Welles your friend?”

“No. But he is no enemy, either.”

“No? But you have a friend, a Mr. Wolfe—a Mr. Francis Wolfe?” She knew it from a newspaper item.

But Mr. Jerningham jumped up from his seat. “Marry me, dear girl! Marry me, I beg of you! You are the only woman in the world! You are the most beautiful ever created and, beyond all question, the cleverest. You are a genius! Why isn't all mankind on its knees worshiping? Will you marry me? Wait! Don't speak. I know what your answer will be.”

“You do?” She smiled inscrutably.

Imagine the Sphinx—if the Sphinx were Irish and very beautiful—with those eyes and those lips! Guess? You couldn't guess where your soul was—or whose!

“Yes, I do,” answered Jerningham, confidently. “I will write it on a piece of paper and prove it. But first tell me this: Will you take Mrs. Deering's case?”

She looked at him, and said, “Yes.”

“Very well.” He wrote something on one of his cards, doubled it so she could not see what he had written, and gave it to her, saying, “Now answer me: Will you marry me?”

She looked at him a long time. He met her gaze squarely. Presently she said, very seriously:

“Not yet!”

“Look in the card,” he said, also very seriously.

She did. It said: Not yet!

A vague alarm came into her purple-blue eyes. She was on the point of speaking, but he held up his hand, and said, earnestly:

“Please don't say it. We'll meet in London. You will enjoy the Continent later on. Now let us go and get your letter of credit, and see whether you like the stateroom that I ordered reserved.” They did.

On the next day Jerningham's limousine took Miss Keogh and her hand-luggage to the steamer.-Jerningham was there to see her off. She had invited a dozen of her friends to do the same, and they were there—all of them women and most of them frankly envious, for her stateroom was full of beautiful flowers and baskets of wonderful fruit—quite as if she already were a millionaire!

As she said good-by to Jerningham there was in her eyes a look of intelligent, almost cold-blooded, gratitude which seemed to embrace Mr. Jerningham's kindness, his thoughtfulness, and his bank account.

“I wish you a very pleasant voyage!” he said. “Think over my offer. When you get to London will you mail these letters for me? Remember, you are to cable if you need anything, money or advice—or a husband. And cable at once if Mrs. Deering cables. Good-by! Bon voyage!”

When Miss Keogh came to open the package of letters she found in it thirty-three, stamped with British stamps, on stationery of Thornton's Hotel'! They were addressed in a woman's handwriting to various business houses, some of which she recognized as manufacturers of medical goods and agents of mineral waters of the kind used by people who suffer from kidney diseases. It made her think that if—between the deluge of medical prospectuses and Miss Keogh's efforts—Mrs. Deering did not cable for her only daughter it would be a wonder! Jerningham was neglecting nothing to succeed.

Frank Wolfe's first task in his new and now famous job consisted of helping Jerningham buy two automobiles. Then, when the weather permitted, they toured Westchester County and Long Island.

Usually they took along some of Frank's men friends. It was pleasant work—-at the rate of twenty-five thousand dollars a year.

Jerningham did not again refer to his love-affair, and Frank could not very well allude to it; but it was perfectly plain to the young man that within a very short time their friendship would be sufficiently strong to justify Mr. Jerningham in asking Frank to help actively in the search of the vanished Naida Deering.

One day Mr. Jerningham waited in vain for young Mr. Wolfe. They had planned to go to Mount Kisco to look at a farm that was offered for sale, Mr. Jerningham having developed the usual millionaire's desire to own an estate. At one o'clock the telephone-bell rang. Jerningham answered in person. He heard a feminine voice say that Mr. Wolfe regretted that a severe indisposition had prevented him from going as usual to Mr. Jerningham's rooms, but he hoped to be sufficiently recovered to have that pleasure on the next day.

Jerningham merely said, “Say I hope it is nothing serious—and ask him, please, whether there is anything I can do.”

Silence. Then: “He says, 'No—thanks!' It is nothing very serious.”

“Tell him not to come down until he has entirely recovered and to take good care of himself. Good-by!”

If Mr. Jerningham heard the tinkling music of an irrepressible giggle at the other end of the wire he did not show it. His face was serious as he found an address in the telephone-directory. He called up the Brown Lecture Bureau and made an appointment to see Captain Brown, the manager, at 3 p.m. At that hour, to the minute, he was ushered into the private offices of the world-famous manager of the lecture bureau.

“Captain Brown?”

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

“I should like to know what lecturers you have available at the moment,” said Jerningham.

The Klondiker did not look like the chairman of a church entertainment committee or like a village philanthropist. So Captain Brown asked:

“Where is the—er—Is it a club?”

“No. It is myself. Here in New York.”

“Well, we provide speakers and lecturers, not exactly entertainers, to—”

“I know all that. I wish to know whom you could send me to entertain me. Let me see! Is Commander Finsen, the explorer, here now?”

“Yes.”

“And his terms?”

“It depends upon where it is.”

Evidently Jerningham did not think Captain Brown realized what was wanted, for he said, earnestly:

“Captain Brown, get this clearly fixed in your mind, if you please: I am anxious to hear some of your lecturers by myself alone, in my own apartments. I wish men who have done things—men who are, above all things, brave and resourceful. I don't want decadent poets, but explorers, gentlemen adventurers, humanists, or scientists, who have a knack of imparting their knowledge in such a way as to interest men who are neither old nor scientific. I am perfectly willing to pay your usual rate. What's the odds if one of your clients spends an evening with me or whether he spends it in Norwalk, Connecticut, or Boundbrook, New Jersey? Do you get me?”

“Oh, perfectly. I might suggest—”

Here the genial manager ceased speaking to smile, grateful that so unusual a man as Jerningham should condescend to listen. It was a habit—this thankful smiling—that came from having dealt with geniuses for thirty years. Then Captain Brown permitted himself to suggest a dozen or more men who had very interesting stories to tell. Jerningham asked him to make a memorandum of the men and their specialties, and agreed to call on Captain Brown when he needed entertainment. After Captain Brown had given him the names and prices, Jerningham gave his own name and address.

Captain Brown looked grieved. He read the newspapers. He might have asked double the fees from the Alaskan Monte Cristo!

On the next day, when Mr. Francis Wolfe showed up with never a trace of anything but good health on his pleasing face, Jerningham invited him to spend the next evening in the apartments and hear Finsen tell how he had discovered the tribe of Antarctic giants, the shortest of whom was seven feet three inches; and how he had captured alive, thirty-three white bears. He asked Frank to invite five friends who might be interested, first, in dining with Jerningham and Commander Finsen, and then in hearing Finsen spin his yarn.

Frank gladly undertook to find the audience.

So they had a very nice little dinner, with just enough to drink and no killjoys in activity. And later, in Jerningham's little sitting-room at the hotel, they heard the great Dane, who was a prosaic viking with iron muscles and pale-blue eyes that made you uncomfortable for reasons unknown, tell them all about his remarkable voyage of discovery and his hunts—no end of things that he could tell them, but could not tell a mixed audience: perfectly amazing details, of which Frank and his friends talked for weeks.

Then there was a little midnight supper, at which they all told stories that left no unpleasant aftereffects.

One day after luncheon Jerningham, who had been in a particularly jovial mood, suddenly became very serious. He aimed at Frank one of those searching looks that seemed to go to the young man's soul. Then he said:

“My boy, I'd like to say something to you.”

“Say it.”

“I shall probably hurt your feelings, so you must be prepared to keep your temper well in hand.”

“You ought to know me better than that by now, Jerningham,” retorted Frank. He had grown not only to like, but even to admire, this strange miner.

“Wolfe,” said Jerningham, slowly, “you are one of those unfortunate chaps who are cruelly handicapped by perennial youth. It is doubtless a pleasing thing to feel at fifty as you did at twenty. Nevertheless, it is bad business. It is all very nice to shun responsibility, but it makes you careless; and you can't expect to saddle consequences on your guardian after you are twenty-one. A boy of forty can't be trusted to take care of his own property.”

“I can take care of mine,” laughed Frank, “without any trouble.” His property was about minus thirty thousand.

“Your property now—yes. But suppose you had a million or two left you—or even more? Do you know what would happen to those millions, and do you know what would happen to you?”

“I know—but I won't tell.”

“Will you let me tell you?” asked Jerningham, so earnestly that Frank almost stopped smiling.

“I'll hear you to the bitter end.”

“The millions would go from your pocket into the pockets of—well, you know whose pockets! And your life would go into the Big Beyond by the W. W. route.”

“I bite. What's W. W.?”

“Wine and woman. You would last perhaps five years. You would die a dipsomaniac at thirty or thereabout. The chief folly of fighting booze when you are rich is that it renders wealth utterly futile.”

“How?”

“Well, you can get just as drunk on ten dollars a day as you can on one thousand dollars—with this difference, that in the one case you would have to get drunk on whisky by yourself and in the other you might get drunk on vintage champagne in the company of paid parasites. The morning after is the same in both cases: you don't remember any more of the ten-dollar jag than of the thousand-dollar orgy! When a drunkard sets out to squander a million all he really does is to carry a sign on his back with letters a mile high—the sign reading, 'I am a d———d fool!”'

Frank took it good-naturedly because he liked Jemingham and because he was not a millionaire. It really would be asinine to be a millionaire and try to drink all there was; so he said, amiably:

“Having downed the Demon Rum, then what?”

“I'll put it up to you this way: I have no family and I may never marry. I certainly won't if I don't find my first and only sweetheart. Suppose I felt like leaving you some of my money? You are a nice boy, but you also have been a D. F., and you must admit that no man likes to see his friend trying to beat all D. F. records. Don't get mad and don't look indignant! I want to make a proposition to you: I'll agree to deposit to your account in a trust company one hundred dollars a day for every day you don't touch a drop! I don't want to reform you. I merely want to train you—in case! There will be some times when you will forfeit that. It will amount to paying one hundred dollars for a Martini. It will become a luxury.”

“Too expensive for me!” said Frank, seriously. “And, my boy, it is more than being on the water-wagon—it's being able to stay on! Booze is so foolish! I want to give you some business matters—for you to handle for me.”

“You know what I know about business—”

“Can't you do as you are told? Don't you know enough to look clever and say, 'Sign here!' in a frozen voice?”

“Oh yes. But—”

“I know you will miss your evenings at first. But I'll tell you what to do. I am no killjoy. Well, you spend as many evenings as you wish with me. Invite as many friends as you please—sex no bar. Will you?”

“Jemingham, you are a nice chap. I'll do it. But you must not think of that one hundred dollars—”

“Tut-tut! Can't you understand that I want to do it—that I love to see your bank account grow? Run along now. I want to read Lucretius.”

From that day Francis Wolfe became Jemingham's inseparable companion. Every night they went to the theater together or else they spent the evening in Jemingham's rooms, listening to celebrities. Their evenings soon became famous. Indeed, people began to talk about Frank Wolfe's reform. Even his fairest and frailest friends, knowing that Frank forfeited one hundred dollars a day by falling off the water-wagon, kept him firmly on the seat—and borrowed the hundred. In due time the miracle reached the ears of Frank's sisters and of his aunt, Mrs. Stimson. They had a talk with Frank. They were first amazed, then delighted, when they saw Frank and when they heard about Jerningham's intention of making him his heir.

Thus it came about that, out of gratitude for the man who was making a man of their brother, Mrs.

John Burt and Mrs. Sydney Walsingham accepted Mr. Jerningham's invitation and attended one of the lectures at the Klondiker's apartments. The little supper that followed was a great success. Mr. Jemingham talked little, but extremely well—as when he said to Mrs. Jack in a low voice that he loved Frank Wolfe and some day everybody would be sure of it!

“I am merely training him. But don't think I am asking the impossible. I wish him to know enough to hold on to what I'll leave him.”

Of course after that Mr. Jerningham was not only in society, but even in a fair way of becoming a fad. Gerald Lanier, the short-story writer, said that Jerningham was society's gold cure and had climbed into the inner circles on a ladder made of tightly corked wine-bottles; in fact, he wrote what his nonliterary friends called a skit—and Frank's friends a knock—entitled: “How to Capitalize Intemperance.” But that did not hinder Jerningham from receiving invitations from families with thirsty younger sons.

VI

One morning Jemingham, who had seemed preoccupied, said to Frank:

“I wonder if I can ask you—” He paused and looked doubtfully at Frank.

“What?”

“A favor.”

“Of course. Why, you can even touch me if you want to.”

“I wonder if your—if Mrs. Burt would invite Mrs. Ashton Welles to dinner?”

“I guess so. I'll ask her.”

“That way you could meet Mrs. Welles, and—”

“You mean,” said Frank, trying to look like Sherlock Holmes, “I could ask her about your—about her sister?”

Jerningham jumped to his feet in consternation.

“Great Scott, no! No!” he shouted.

“Why, I thought—”

“You can't ask her that until you know her so well that you can take a friend's liberty. Promise me you won't ask her until I myself tell you that you may! Promise!”

There was in his eyes a look of such intensity that young Wolfe was startled.

“Of course I'll promise.”

“You must make friends with her first. She must learn to like you—”

Francis Wolfe smiled a trifle fatuously. It was merely boyish. A little more, however, would have made the smile ungentlemanly. Jerningham continued, very earnestly:

“Listen, lad. She will have to do more than merely like you—she will have to trust you. And the only way to make a young and pretty woman trust a young and not unattractive man is by having that man never, never, never fail in respect of her. He may be in love with her, or he may only pretend to be in love with her; but he must act as if he regarded her with such awe that he dare not make direct love to her. Do you get it?”

“Yes. But—”

“There is no but. She must first like you, which is not difficult; and then she must trust you as a true friend, which is, to say the least, a slower matter. Be a brother to her. Do you think you like me well enough to do this for me now?”

Jerningham looked at young Wolfe steadily—a man's look.

Frank said: “I'll do it gladly. And my sisters—”

“They must never know about—about Naida!” interrupted Jerningham, hastily.

“Of course not. But they will do anything for me—and for you, too!”

That is the true story of how it came about that Mrs. Ashton Welles was taken up by the Jack Burts; and how she met Francis Wolfe; and how Mrs. Stimson invited Mr. and Mrs. Ashton Welles to one of her old-fashioned and tiresome but famous and very formal dinners; and how Frank again took in Mrs. Welles. Thereafter they met often. At some of these dinners they met Jerningham.

The Klondiker paid his court to Mr. Welles. Indeed, he seemed to have for the president of the VanTwiller Trust Company an admiration that closely resembled the worship of a matinÉe girl for an actress like Maude Adams. It was an innocent sort of worship, but, nevertheless, not displeasing. In men it sometimes makes the worshiped feel paternally toward the worshiper.

Jerningham developed a habit of going every day to the trust company; and he made it a point always to see Ashton Welles, if only to shake hands. One morning he told Mr. Welles he desired advice about an investment. Jerningham, it must be remembered, had on deposit with the trust company over a million dollars, and there were six or seven millions in gold-dust in the company's vault.

“Mr. Welles, I—I,” said the Klondiker, so earnestly that he stammered—“I should like to buy some VanTwiller Trust Company stock, to have and to hold as long as you are president.”

There was in Jemingham's eyes a look of that admiration that best expresses itself in absolute confidence in the infallibility of a very great man. Welles was a very cold man; but flattery has rays that will thaw icebergs.

Welles nearly blushed and smiled one of his politely deprecating smiles—as if he were apologizing for smiling—and said:

“Why, Mr. Jemingham, I'll confess to you that I myself think well of that stock. I guess we'll keep on paying dividends.”

Jemingham smiled delightedly—the king had jested! Then he said:

“I'll buy as much as I can, but I don't want to put up the price on myself. Who can give me pointers on how to pick up the stock quietly? Do you think I should see Mr. Barrows or Mr. Stewardson?”

He looked so anxiously at Mr. Welles that Mr. Welles said, kindly:

“Oh, see Stewardson. I'll speak to him, if you wish.”

“Thank you! Thank you, Mr. Welles,” said Jer-ningham, so gratefully that Welles felt like a philanthropist as he rang the bell to summon the second vice-president.

“Mr. Stewardson, Mr. Jemingham, wants to buy some of our stock. I want you to help him in any way possible.”

“Delighted, I'm sure!” said the vice-president, very cordially. He was paid to be cordial to customers.

“If I had my way I'd be the largest individual stockholder,” said Jerningham, looking at Welles almost adoringly.

“I hope you will,” said Welles, pleasantly. “Mr. Stewardson will help you.”

Jerningham and Welles shook hands. Then Jerningham and Stewardson left to go to the vice-president's private office.

VII

The remarkable Miss Keogh was one of those remarkable people who are really remarkable. Within three weeks came a cablegram from her to Mr. Jerningham to the effect that a letter had been sent by Mrs. Deering to her daughter—the first. Mrs. Deering had begun to doubt her own health. Then came cablegrams from her to Mrs. Welles; and in a few days, before Ashton Welles could think of a valid excuse for not letting his wife go to England, Mrs. Welles told him to engage passage for her on the Ruritania.

It was very unfortunate that he could not accompany her; but the annual meeting was only three weeks away, and the minority, never strong enough to do real damage, always was devilish enough to be very disagreeable to the clique in control. Ashton Welles, after the extremely stupid fashion of all strong men, had always kept the absolute control of the company's affairs in his own hands. It was the one thing he refused to share with his subordinates. He was a czar in his office. He was, in reality, the trust company—or he so believed and so he made others believe. His vice-presidents were merely highly paid office-boys, according to the gossip of the Street, which was not so far out of the way in this particular instance.

Ten minutes after Mrs. Ashton Welles engaged Suite D on the Ruritania, due to sail on the following day, Jerningham said to Mr. Francis Wolfe:

“My boy, I should like you to go to London on business for me—and for yourself. You've got to represent me in a deal with the Arctic Venture Corporation. You will have my power of attorney and you will sign the deed for one of my properties, as soon as they have deposited two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to my credit in Parr's Bank. And also you will call on the prettiest girl in the world—the prettiest, do you hear?—who unfortunately is also the brightest and cleverest. Her name—” He paused and looked at Francis Wolfe meditatively, almost hesitatingly.

“Go on!” implored Francis Wolfe.

“Her name is Kathryn Keogh and she is stopping at Thornton's Hotel. She will help you find Naida. Miss Keogh is a friend of Mrs. Deering.”

“She is Irish—eh?” asked Frank.

“Mrs. Deering?”

“No; the peach—the—Miss Keogh?”

“She is of the Waterford Keoghs, famous for their eyes and their complexions. But business first. You are not to fall in love with Miss Keogh until after my two hundred and fifty thousand pounds are safe in bank. I'd go myself, but I have a still bigger deal on here in New York. I've taken the liberty to engage a stateroom on the Ruritania, sailing tomorrow, and a letter of credit has been ordered for five thousand dollars. Have I taken too much for granted?”

“No; but you know perfectly well that I don't know a thing about business, and I'd be afraid—”

“My solicitors in London will call on you when they are ready for you. I shall give you a memorandum for your own conduct; you will find there instructions in detail—just as though you were a ten year-old boy; but that is really for your own protection, and I don't mean to imply that your mind is ten years old—”

“No feelings hurt,” said Frank, who in reality was much relieved to learn that the chances of his making a mistake had been intelligently minimized.

“I'm glad you take it that way. Now we'll go down-town to Towne, Ripley & Co. and give them your signature for the letter of credit; from there we'll go to the British Consulate and have my own signature on my power of attorney certified to by the consul, and then you can skip up-town and say good-by to your friends.”

Frank left Jerningham at the consulate and went home to pack up and arrange for his more pressing adieus. Jerningham went into a public telephone-booth and called up the offices of Society Folk. When they answered he asked to speak with the editor.

“Well?” presently came in a sharp voice.

“This is Mr.—er—a friend.”

“Anonymous! All right. What do you want?”

“To give you a piece of news.”

“We verify everything and take your word for absolutely nothing. I tell you this to save your telling me a lie.”

“That's all right. You'll find it true enough. I—”

“One minute. Where is that pencil? All right! Now the name of the woman?”

“How do you know I want to—”

“All you fellows always do. What's her name?”

“Mrs. Ashton Welles.”

“The wife of the president of the VanTwiller—”

“Correct!” said Jerningham.

“Now the name of the man?”

“Francis Wolfe,” answered Jerningham, unhesitatingly.

“The chorus-girls' pet?” asked the voice.

“The same!”

“Has it happened yet? Or do you merely fear it? Or is it a case of hoping?”

“I don't know what you are driving at.”

“Then you don't read Society Folk”

“Well, I don't—regularly. All I know is that Frank has been very assiduous in his attentions lately. He's shaken the Great White Way and hasn't been in a lobster-palace in two months. He and Mrs. Ashton Welles are sailing on the Ruritania tomorrow.”

“Under what name?”

“Their own.”

“Thank you, kind friend. Thank you!”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because we can now use names. Does Mr. Welles also go?”

“Of course not!”

“Excuse me for asking such a silly question. What other crime has he committed besides being old?—I mean Mr. Welles.”

“Stupidity is worse than criminal.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“When does your paper come out?”

“Day after to-morrow. Much obliged. You are a friend in need. Don't ring off yet. Listen! You are also a dirty, low-lived, sneaking, cowardly dog, and a general, all-round, unrelieved, monumental—” It was the one way the editor had of showing that he was better than his anonymous contributor.

Jerningham, of course, went on board the Ruritania to see Frank off. Ashton Welles was also there to say good-by to his young and beautiful wife. It was their first separation, and Welles did not like it. He seemed to feel her absence in advance; it was really that, as the hour drew near, he realized more vividly how lonely she would leave him! They have a saying in Spain that a man may grow accustomed to bearing sorrow, but that nobody can get used to that happiness which comes merely to disappear immediately after. A cigar manufacturer from Havana had once quoted this to Ashton Welles, and Ashton Welles was impressed less by the saying than by the fact that the Spaniard was so serious about it. But now he remembered it.

He was very uncomfortable and this discomfort made his mental machinery act queerly; it seemed to tint his thoughts with strange, unusual hues that made them almost morbid. He would have felt contempt for his own weakness had he not been so full of half-angry regret at being left alone in New York—this man who never had possessed an intimate friend; who not even as a boy had a chum!

Of course it was only a coincidence that young Mr. Francis Wolfe was to be young Mrs. Ashton Welles's fellow-passenger; and it was also a coincidence that Mr. Wolfe's stateroom was just across the passageway from Mrs. Welles's suite. Indeed, neither of the young people had picked out the cabins—but there they were. And there, in Ashton Welles's mind, was another unformulated unpleasantness.

Frank's sisters were so proud Frank was going to put through an important business deal that they showed it. But if they were glad that Mrs. Welles was also going they did not show it. They recalled Frank's desire to meet the pretty young matron whose husband was thirty years older, and they were rather ostentatiously polite to her. Ashton Welles, in his disturbed state of mind, somehow felt that the attitude of Mrs. John Burt and Mrs. Sydney Walsingham was one of blame-fixing; but he could not definitely understand why there should be any blame to fix! He dismissed his semi-suspicions with the thought that women had petty minds. His wife was very pretty and Wolfe's sisters were not as young as they used to be. And youth is a terrible thing—to lose! It is hard to forgive youth for being, after one is past—well, say, past a certain age. And to prove that he himself had nothing to fear—absolutely nothing—he even smiled and said to young Mr. Wolfe:

“I feel certain, of course, that if Mrs. Welles should need anything—”

It was the season of the year when east-bound liners carried few passengers. The young people were bound to be thrown together a great deal.

“Of course, Mr. Welles. Only too delighted, I'm sure!” said Frank, very eagerly.

He was a fine-looking chap, with that wonderfully clean, healthy pink complexion which suggests a clean and healthy mind. His eyes were full of that eager, boyish light that makes the possessors thereof so nice to pet, small-child wise.

Ashton Welles received an impression of Frank Wolfe's face that was photographic in its details.

The floating hotel moved off slowly. Ashton Welles, on the pier, watched the fluttering handkerchief of his wife out of sight. He had the remembrance of her beautiful young face framed in Siberian sable to cheer him. She certainly looked heavenly. She had cried at leaving him. She had waved away at him vehemently, and there was the unpleasant suggestion that always attends such leave-takings—that the parting was forever. A frail thing—human life! A little speck of vitality on the boundless waste of grim, gray waters! And she seemed so sorry to go away from him! And she waved and waved, as if she, also, feared she might never see him again! And Francis Wolfe stood beside her, very close to her, and waved also—to Jemingham, who stood beside Ashton Welles.

Ashton Welles accepted Jerningham's invitation and rode to his office in the Klondiker's sumptuous motor in the Klondiker's company. Ashton Welles looked at the flower-holder. Instead of the white azaleas he saw two white handkerchiefs waved by two young people.

“You are very friendly with young Wolfe?” said Ashton Welles, carelessly inquisitive—merely to make talk, you know. All rich old men who marry young women have ostrich habits. They put an end to danger by closing their eyes to the obvious. That is why they always discover nothing.

“Rather—yes. I think he is a fine chap—one of those clean-cut Americans of the present generation that European women find so perfectly fascinating.”

Ashton Welles instantly frowned—and instantly ceased to frown.

“Yes,” he said, and grimaced, thinking it looked like a smile. “What business is taking him to London? I thought he was a young man of—er—elegant leisure.”

“He was that until very recently; but he has turned over a new leaf. He has forsworn his old and, I suppose, rather disreputable companions. I find him rather serious.”

“What has changed him?” Ashton Welles was foolish enough to be brave enough to ask. When a question can have two answers—one of them disagreeable—it is folly to ask it.

“I don't know,” answered Jerningham, as if puzzled. “He has acted a little queerly and secretive-like; but it is, I admit, a queerness that other young men would do well to imitate, for it has made him cease drinking, and cease—er—you know. I rather suspect it is his sister, Mrs. Burt. He is very fond of her. A man will do things for a good woman that he won't for his best man friend, or for his own sake. You saw him. There is no viciousness or dissipation in that face. Damned handsome chap, I call him!”

“H'm!” winced the glacial Ashton Welles. He could not help it.

There came upon him a strange mood, almost of numbness, that made him silent against his will. He answered by nods—the nods of a man who does not hear—to Jerningham's chatter. He gathered in some way that the Alaskan Monte Cristo was talking of buying VanTwiller Trust Company stock, and that he would ask Stewardson how much he could borrow on the stock.

“Yes—do!” said Ashton Welles as the motor stopped in front of the imposing entrance of the trust company's marble building.

They stepped out; Welles excused himself almost brusquely and went into his own private office to think all the thoughts that a millionaire of fifty-two thinks when he thinks that he married at fifty a girl thirty years his junior, with cheeks like flower petals and eyes like skies, who is going to spend the best part of a week on a steamer in the company of a man who is much worse than handsome—young!

Mr. Jerningham, who did not seem to have noticed the near rudeness of Mr. Ashton Welles, promptly sought the second vice-president and asked how much the company would lend on its own stock.

“It is against the law for us to lend money on our own stock,” said the vice-president, who did not add that this provision had prevented many an inside clique from eating its pie and having it too.

“Will the banks loan money on V.T. stock?” asked Jerningham. He had already bought three thousand shares at an average of four hundred dollars a share.

“Well, I guess so.”

“On a time loan?”

“No trouble in borrowing three hundred dollars a share, I should say.”

“That is not much,” objected Jerningham.

“No, it isn't. But—May I ask you a question?”

“Two if you wish,” said Jerningham, with one of his likable smiles.

“Why should you need to borrow a trifle, with all the millions in gold you have down-stairs? Or are they only gold bricks you've got in your boxes?”

This was, of course, meant in jest; but Stewardson thought in a flash the trust company did not know for a positive fact that Jerningham's iron-bound and wax-sealed boxes had real gold-dust in them.

“Let me tell you something, Mr. Stewardson,” said Jerningham, with that curious earnestness people assume when they discuss matters they do not really understand—“let me tell you this: The time is coming—and coming within a few months!—when good, hard gold is going to command a premium just as it practically did during the Bryan free-silver scare in 1896. I am going to save mine. I want to have it in readiness to take advantage of—”

“But present conditions are utterly different—”

“They are always different—and yet the panics come! You thought that after 1896 there would never again be any need for clearing-house certificates; and yet, in 1907—”

“They were unnecessary—” began Stewardson, hotly.

He had been left out of all conferences among the powers at that trying time, and naturally disapproved their actions.

“But they happened, just the same! I know myself. If I cash in now I'll buy something with the money. I don't want to buy now. No, sir! If I should happen to need a million or two I prefer to borrow it for a few weeks until my next shipment comes in. There will be two millions coming in about the middle of next month. I've sent word to get out as big an output as possible. See? You bet your boots Wall Street is not going to get either my cash or my mines, as they did Colonel Cannon's. You know he was The Mexican copper king' one day and That jackass from Chihuahua' the next! See?”

The vice-president looked at him and said “I see!” in a very flattering tone of voice; but in his inmost mind he was thinking that such a thing was precisely what doubtless would happen to Mr. Alfred Jemingham, late of Nome. It is always the extremely suspicious, too-smart-for-you-by-heck! farmer who buys the biggest gold brick.

“They'll find out I'll never let them change my name into That blankety-blank-blank from Alaska!'” And Jemingham put on that look of devilish astuteness that buyers of stocks always put on when they buy at top prices.

He left the vice-president of the VanTwiller Trust Company and called on the vice-presidents of several other trust companies and banks, and found out that he could borrow, more than three hundred dollars a share on his V.T. stock. And he did—then and there. He impressed the genial philanthropists on whom he called as being a child of Nature—a great big boy playing at being a financier. There was in consequence much smacking of financial lips. It was morsels like this naÏve and honest Alaskan miner with the millions that helped to reconcile men to living the Wall Street life.

VIII

On the day after the Ruritania sailed Ashton Welles, whose first wifeless evening at home had not been pleasant, found on his desk a marked copy of Society Folk. These were the four marked paragraphs:

The man who first said there was no fool like an old fool had in mind that form of folly which consists of the purchase of a beautiful girl by a man who endeavors to span a difference of thirty years in age by means of a bridge of solid gold. It is unnatural, unwholesome, and even immoral. The sordid romances of high life that begin in a Fifth Avenue jewelry-shop are apt to end in a Reno divorce-mill. Why shouldn't they?

A girl who marries once for money is always ready to marry again for more money—or for more love—for she always wants more than the desiccated ass who first bought her can give her.

A girl of twenty who is famous for her good looks is always a beautiful young woman, no matter what else she may be. But a man close to sixty, whether he is the head of a big trust company or a poet, is nothing but an old man. Speaking of remarkable coincidences, is it not odd that both Fool and Financier should begin with an F? And Frailty, too, whose other name is Woman?

If there are some things that gold cannot do it is perfectly wonderful how many things love can do! It bridges all chasms with kisses, and solves all riddles—with glances. It even defies the high cost of living and makes men think themselves demigods. It has been known to make champagne drunkards swear off long before they are bankrupt. It even now depopulates the lobster-palaces. It turns dining-room navigators into fearless vikings, braving the wild Atlantic and its midwinter gales in order to be by their lady-loves. It may even reform Tammany leaders—for we know it can transform young asses into handsome Lancelots.

Among the passengers on the Ruritania, sailing for Liverpool at this unfashionable season of the year, were Mrs. Ashton Welles, who has the gorgeous Suite D all to herself, and young Mr. Francis Wolfe, who is content with the more modest stateroom across the way. Frank's friends are always singing his praises these days. He never looks at a chorus-girl save from the middle of the house, and has not taken anything stronger than Vichy in long weeks. If we were not averse to advertising male beauty shows we would remark that young Wolfe is the handsomest bachelorus-girl save from the middle of the house, and has not taken anything stronger than Vichy in long weeks. If we were not averse to advertising male beauty shows we would remark that young Wolfe is the handsomest bachelor who ever sidestepped matrimony.

It takes more than money to keep the Wolfe from the door—eh? What?

The Ashton Welles who finished reading the beastly paragraphs of Society Folk was not the same Ashton Welles who began them. He was no longer an efficient financier, but a man benumbed, whose brain had turned to plaster of Paris. His mind at once lost all elasticity, all power to functionate. And, since he could not think, he could not act. That wonderful world, which financially successful people create for themselves with so much pride, tumbled about his ears. Out of the chaos made by a few printed words, only one thing was certain—he suffered!

Men are always wounded in a vital spot when they are wounded by jealousy, and Ashton Welles was particularly vulnerable because he lived in only two places—his office and his home. He did not have other houses of refuge to which his soul could retreat—like music or literature or art—in case of need. He had been so busy winning success that he had not had time for anything else. He had worked for the aggrandizement of the personal fortune of Ashton Welles. When circumstances and that reputation for luck, shrewdness, and caution, which is in itself a golden sagacity, finally placed him, still a young man, at the head of the VanTwiller Trust Company, David Soulett, one of the directors, remarked: “Welles has married the company; but we don't yet know whether he is to be the company's husband or whether the company is to be his wife!” And a fellow-director, who had been in profitable deals with Welles, retorted, “Well, I call it an ideal match!”

Welles brought to the company what it needed and the presidency brought to Welles many opportunities—none of which he neglected. He saw the deposits increase tenfold—and his own fortune twentyfold. What might not have been politic in an individual playing a lone hand was altogether admirable in the head of a financial institution—his cold-bloodedness, for example, and the dehumanized attitude toward life habitually assumed by the principal cog-wheel in that intricate aggregation of cog-wheels known as a modern trust company. Being an excellent money-lender, he was an uninteresting human being. You lose much when you win money—for gold is hard and cold, and the enjoyment of life calls for softness and warmth. It is the appalling revenge capital takes on its self-called masters.

As he approached his fiftieth year Welles began to find that his isolation might be splendid, but that it was also damnably uncomfortable. Did you know that in certain millionaire households, where everything always runs very smoothly, the master gets to long for a burnt steak or the spilling of soup by the very competent servant? Welles, accustomed to the wonderfully comfortable life of a very rich bachelor in New York, desired a home where everything need not be so comfortable. And as his fortune became a matter of several millions it began—as swollen fortunes always do, also in revenge!—to take on the aspect of a monument, something to admire during the monument-builder's lifetime and to endure impressively afterward! With the desire of permanence came the dream of all capitalists that makes them dynasts of gold—an heir to extend the boundaries of the family fortune! It was inevitable that Ashton Welles should grow to believe that, though the trust company's deposits were in other people's names, they really belonged to Ashton Welles, because they were merely the marble blocks of the Welles monument. The name of Welles must never cease to be identified with the work of Ashton the First!

Wherefore the need of an heir became almost an obsession with him, and with it came a quite human dissatisfaction with hotels and clubs, and trained nurses in times of illness. When a capitalist realizes clearly that, apart from his money-lending capacity, he has absolutely no power to bring tears to human eyes, he grows jealous of his own money. He wishes to be feared, though penniless, just as he would be loved, though a pauper. All these desires combined to force Ashton Welles into a decision. He had kept up a desultory sort of friendship with Mrs. Deering, the widow of his predecessor in the presidency of the trust company, and Anne Deering was the girl he knew best of all—though he really did not know her at all.

The Deerings had not been fortunate in their investments; in fact, the Deering holdings of Van-Twiller stock had been benevolently assimilated at one-fifth of their value by Ashton Welles himself during one of those panics that make reckless persons cease being reckless ever after. It was not very difficult for Anne Deering to be made to feel that she could save her mother's life and assure ease and comfort for herself forever by marrying Mr. Ashton Welles, who at fifty was one of those men whom old friends invariably classify as well-preserved. To be just, he was really distinguished-looking and had a sort of uniform urbanity that made him at least unobjectionable.

He was also very rich. She married him. She learned to like him. He grew to love her!

She was a doll—beautiful and utterly useless; but it was this very uselessness that made Ashton Welles worship her. This financier, who in his office was not only a skilful bargain-driver, but preached and practised the religion of efficiency, in his home plunged into an orgy of utterly juvenile lovemaking. He reveled in his wooing, which he had to do after his marriage. He did not merely desire to have a wife—he must have a wife of an extreme femininity; she must be one of those womanly women who exist only in the imaginations of men of a tyrannical cast of mind. His life having been for years exclusively a money-making life, he became very selfish. And he continued to find his greatest pleasure in pleasing himself—only that he now best pleased himself by being a boy sweetheart; by achieving his puppy love at fifty and deeming it marvelously rejuvenating and therefore altogether admirable.

Very well! Now imagine that man, living for two years amid those pitifully evanescent illusions so cherished by middle-aged men of money who marry very young women of looks—imagine that man suddenly informed that he is no longer to be anything but an old man! And not only old, but deserted! Imagine that selfsame man brought face to face with the invincible Opponent of all old men—youth!

To Ashton Welles, sitting in his office, surrounded by glittering millions, there came the deadly chill of age—doubly cold from being surrounded by gold. In the twinkling of an eye all young men suddenly became redoubtable warriors, love-conquerors, irresistible as a force of nature—and as heartless! He was beaten by the universal victor—Time!

He stared fixedly at a photograph of his wife in an elaborately chased silver frame, but he did not see her. He saw ruins, as of a conflagration—the smoking dÉbris of a destroyed home; and heaps of ashes—ashes everywhere! And in the rising puffs of smoke he saw faces of men—of young men—of very handsome young men!

Stewardson, the vice-president, walked in—the door was open, as usual. He saw his chief's face and was shocked into a quite human feeling of consternation.

“Great heavens, Mr. Welles, what is the matter?”

“Nothing!” said Ashton Welles. He suddenly felt an overwhelming impulse to hide his face from the sight of his fellow-men. He thought his forehead must show in black letters—Fool! and—and—and ten thousand terrible legends that changed with each beat of his heart, and told what he had been and what had happened; and—yes—what was bound to happen!

“Nothing! Nothing!” he repeated, fiercely.

“Nothing, I tell you!” He was certain all the world knew his disgrace.

“Shall I call a doctor?”

“No! No!” he snarled. Call in the entire world and gloat at his discomfiture? He glanced at the vice-president. The impolitic alarm on Steward-son's face exasperated him. “What do you want? Damn it, what do you want?” It was almost a shriek.

“I wanted to consult with you about that Consolidated Cushion Tire bond issue—”

“Yes, yes! Well?”

“Have you decided whether to—”

“Yes! I mean—no! I mean—Wait! Ask Witter. I dictated a memorandum to him, I think. Yes, I did!”

He was making desperate efforts to speak calmly; but he stopped, because Stewardson, a dastard of thirty-two, suddenly grew to resemble young Mr. Francis Wolfe! Stewardson saw the gleam in Ashton Welles's eyes and felt that the president must have hated him all his life!

“I'll get it from Witter,” he said, and hastily left the room.

Welles stared wide-eyed at the open door for perhaps a full minute; always he saw ruins—smoke and ashes—ashes everywhere! And then he started up and squared his shoulders. He rang for an office-boy and said to him, “Tell Mr. Witter I've gone for the day”—Witter was his private secretary—and left the office.

He could not bear even to think of going home, for he now had no home! Therefore he went to Central Park and walked aimlessly about until his unaccustomed muscles compelled him to sit down. There he sat, thinking! After three hours he had grown sufficiently calm to believe himself when he called himself a fool for being jealous. Having convinced himself of his folly, he clutched eagerly at every opportunity to close his own ears to the whisperings of his own doubts. At length he went to his house, dressed as usual, and went to the Cosmopolitan Club to dine.

IX

A few minutes after Ashton Welles left his office, stabbed to the soul by the poisoned paragraphs of Society Folk Jemingham sought Stewardson and told him he had decided to send some more gold-dust to the Assay Office. His own attendant, a young man, dark-haired and blue-eyed, who properly answered to the name of Sheehan, accompanied him. Stewardson, whose nerves had not recovered from the shock of Mr. Welles's behavior, decided that he, also, would go to the vaults.

“I want ten boxes sent to the Assay Office,” said Jemingham.

“Certainly, sir,” said the superintendent of the vaults, very obsequiously. To show how eager he was to please, he asked, “Any particular boxes, Mr. Jemingham?”

Immediately a half-formulated suspicion fleeted across the mind of the second vice-president of the VanTwiller Trust Company. How did they know what those boxes contained? How did they know that all of them were full of Yukon gold? How did they know anything about this man or about his treasure—his alleged treasure?

Almost immediately afterward, however, he reproached himself. Why, the man had deposited over a million—the proceeds of twenty of the boxes!

“Oh, take any ten,” said Jerningham—“the first ten. They are the easiest to take out.”

“The last ten!” said Stewardson, hastily, obeying an impulse that came upon him like a flash of lightning.

Jerningham turned and asked: “Why the last ten? They are away back, and—”

“I have my reasons,” smiled Stewardson—the smile of a man who knows something funny about you, but does not wish to tell it—not quite yet. It is the most exasperating smile known.

Jerningham looked at him a moment. Then he said, coldly: “Why not pick them out haphazard—one here and another there, as if you were sampling a mine and wanted to make sure they hadn't salted it on you?” He turned to the men and said, “Pick out ten at random, no two from the same place; and be sure they are not full of stable litter!”

Stewardson flushed, and whispered apologetically to the superintendent, “The more the boys work, the more grateful he will be.”

“Oh, he is very generous, anyhow,” said Sullivan, the superintendent, watching his helper and Sheehan pick out the ten boxes at random.

Stewardson accompanied Jerningham up-stairs and then excused himself long enough to say to a confidential clerk: “Follow Mr. Jerningham and his ten boxes of gold-dust, and find out what he does, how much he gets, and every detail of interest. Don't let him see you.”

The clerk found out and later reported to the vice-president that the ten boxes all contained Alaskan gold-dust, and that their value was $531,687, the boxes averaging a little better than fifty thousand dollars each. Stewardson then had the remaining boxes counted. There were one hundred and twenty-one left. They were worth over six million dollars. Jerningham ought to have the gold-dust coined and then deposit the proceeds in the trust company. The company would allow him two and a half per cent.—or maybe three per cent.—on the six millions. That would be one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year. The company could then loan the entire six millions, not having to bother with keeping a reserve like the national banks, and, the way the money-market was, the money could be loaned at five per cent. That would be three hundred thousand dollars a year.

Men properly must end in dust; but dust, when gold, should end in eagles. He would speak to Jerningham about it—one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year that Jerningham was not making—which was silly! And one hundred and twenty thousand a year the company was not making—which was a tragedy!

Ashton Welles sent word to the office on the following morning that he would not be down until late, if at all. He did not send word that he had decided to consult his lawyer about the Society Folk article. He had received eight marked copies, addressed to him at his house in different handwritings, and he did not know that on his desk at the office there were a dozen more. Friends always tell you about anonymous attacks anonymously. They wait for them.

Jerningham seemed disappointed when he learned, at ten-thirty, that Mr. Welles might not come to the office at all. Stewardson came upon him looking disgruntled. That did not deter the vice-president from broaching the subject nearest his heart. “I'd like to ask you one question, Mr. Jerningham. Of course I know you must have a reason—a very good reason, too—”

“If the reason is good I'll confess,” said Jerningham, pleasantly.

“Well, I'd like to know what your reason is for not sending all your gold to the Assay Office?”

“My reason is that I want to make a lot of money later by not sending the gold to the Assay Office now. Remember my very words!”

“But how are you going to do it?” Stewardson could not help asking, because he was so puzzled that his sense of humor was paralyzed.

“By having the gold—that's how.”

“That's all right! But why don't you change it into coin? That way you can have it at a moment's notice.”

“My dear chap, do you know how many hours it will take the Assay Office, after I take my dust in there, to give me a check for the proceeds? I get ninety per cent, of the value at once. If I cash this gold now I'll spend it. I know it! I never could resist the temptation to spend—it is my one weakness. And if I spent it what would I have to show for the hardships of thirty years?”

“But why don't you deposit it with us? We'll allow you two and a half per cent. Or if you make it a time deposit we can do better than that by you. You know you can always get gold for it if you ask us for it.”

“I can, can I?” laughed Jerningham, with a sort of good-natured mockery. “How about 1907 and your old clearing-house certificates—eh? What?” Stewardson was nettled. So he permitted himself the supreme, all-conquering argument of business: “But you are losing one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year by leaving your gold uncoined and undeposited.”

“I won't lose a year's interest, because it isn't going to take a year for the big panic to come.” Stewardson laughed—a kindly laugh. “For pity's sake, don't wait for that! Panics have a habit of not coming if expected. Just now everybody is bluer than indigo. You'd think the United States was on its last legs. Invest at once, and don't wait for the bargains at the funeral that may never come.”

“How sound is this institution?” Jerningham looked Stewardson full in the face.

The vice-president answered, smilingly, “Oh, I guess we'll weather the storm.”

“Then I'll buy more stock. Mr. Welles advised me to buy all I could get hold of. A wonderful man—”

“Yes, indeed,” acquiesced Stewardson, solemnly. “Wonderful! Great judgment!” pursued Jeming-ham, with a sort of boyish enthusiasm that made Stewardson think his superior had designs on the Klondike gold in the vaults. “He is so clear-cut—and never, never loses his head! To tell you the truth,” and Jerningham lowered his voice, “I used to think he was an icicle—the sort of man nothing can disturb; but, for all his calmness and imperturbability, he has a great warm heart and a great big brain!”

Stewardson had never before heard anybody accuse the president of the VanTwiller Trust Company of having any heart at all. Why had Welles taken the pains to pose before the Klondike miner as a philanthropist? And why had the imperturbable Ashton Welles been so perturbed the day before?

“Ablest man in this country!” said Stewardson, his mind wrapped in the folds of his unformulated mysteries and his own half-asked questions.

“So I'll get a little more of the stock,” said Jerningham.

“Go ahead! You can't go wrong,” Stewardson assured him; “in fact, you ought to send some of your gold to the Assay Office and—”

“What will you lend me on my gold—on the six millions I've got down-stairs?” asked Jerningham, with a frown. He looked intently at the vice-president with his cold, gray eyes, and Stewardson somehow fancied he saw a challenge in them; but he was an old bird at the game. He laughed and said, jovially:

“Not a penny!”

“I know it. It shows you how incompetent all these financial institutions are. You think you are doing your duty by being suspicious—what? Well, you don't unless you are intelligently suspicious. Never mind; you are only the vice-president. I'll buy the stock just the same.” And Jerningham laughed, exaggeratedly forgiving, and went away.

Later in the day, when Stewardson thought he might sell his own holdings of VanTwiller Trust stock to Jerningham and trust to luck to pick it up again here and there at a lower figure, he called up a firm of brokers who made a specialty of dealing in bank and trust-company stocks. He was surprised to learn that V.T. stock was scarce and thirty points higher. The vice-president called up specialists and heard the same story—the floating supply had been quietly bought.

“By whom?” he asked Earhart.

“You know very well!” retorted the last broker, in an aggrieved tone of voice.

“I do not!” Stewardson assured him.

“Well, it all goes into your office.”

“Mine?”

“Yes—yours! And it's paid by your checks. The name signed is Alfred Jerningham. Are you going to cut a melon? Just whisper!”

“Oh!” and Stewardson laughed. “What a suspicious man you are, Dave!”

In the alarmingly inexplicable frame of mind in which Ashton Welles was Stewardson did not feel like speaking to his superior about Jemingham's investment. There was no reason why the Klondiker should not buy all the VanTwiller Trust Company stock he could pay for; but a day or two afterward the vice-president learned that Jerningham had secured control, by purchase outright or by option, at prices ranging from three hundred and ninety-five to five hundred dollars a share, of twenty-two thousand shares. That was important for two reasons: In the first place it was more than Jerningham could pay for even if he sold all his gold-dust; and, secondly, such a block in unfriendly hands might work injury to the controlling clique. He decided to see the president; but he was told that Mr. Ashton Welles was engaged at that moment.

Jerningham was talking to him. They had exchanged greetings with much cordiality.

“Have you heard from Mrs. Welles?” asked the Alaskan.

“She hasn't arrived yet—”

“I know it. But I received a wireless from young Wolfe—”

“What did he say?” asked Ashton Welles before he knew it.

Jerningham looked mildly surprised. He answered:

“It was a funny message. He asked me to go to his room and get his trunks, and send all his belongings to London, as he had decided to stay there indefinitely.”

“Yes?” It was all Welles could say.

“So I wired back, 'Are you crazy?'”

“Did he answer that?”

“Yes.” Jerningham paused. Then he laughed.

“What did he answer?” queried Welles.

“Oh, he is crazy, all right. He answered, 'Yes—with joy! Please send trunks to Thornton's Hotel—'”

“What?” Ashton Welles rose to his feet, his face livid. It was the London hotel where Mrs. Deering lived, the hotel to which Mrs. Welles was going!

“What's the matter?” asked Jerningham, in amazement.

“N-nothing!” said Ashton Welles, huskily. He gulped twice. Then, having spent thirty-five years in Wall Street making money, he explained, “I've got a terrible toothache!” And he put his hand to his left cheek.

“I'm sorry!” said Jemingham so sympathetically that Welles, for all his distress—and nothing is so inherently selfish as suffering—felt a kindly feeling toward the man from Alaska. “Could I ask your advice about a business matter?”

“Certainly!”

Ashton Welles tried to smile. It was ghastly, but Jemingham did not remark it. He said, placidly:

“I've bought quite a little bunch of VanTwiller stock because you are its president, Mr. Welles. On my honor, that is my only reason. I've paid good prices, too; but you are worth it—to me!” And Jemingham beamed adoringly on the efficient president of the VanTwiller Trust Company.

Ashton Welles said, “Thank you!” and even tried to feel grateful to this queer character from the frozen North who was so naÏve in his admiration—and envied him for not having a young wife who had sailed on the same steamer with an exceedingly attractive young man.

“I guess I'm all right in my purchase—what?”

“Oh yes!” said Welles. He was thinking of the Ruritania. It did not even occur to him that this Monte Cristo might be worth while to pluck.

“Thank you. I hope I didn't bother you. Good morning, Mr. Welles.”

“Good morning, Mr. Jemingham. Er—come in any time you think I can be of service to you.”

As Jemingham was leaving the president's office he almost bumped into the vice-president.

“You've bought quite a lot of our stock,” said

Stewardson, full of his errand. His voice had an accusing ring.

“Yes. I was just speaking to Mr. Welles about it.”

“And what did he say?”

“Ask him!” teased Jerningham, with a smile, and went away.

Stewardson felt it his duty to do exactly as Jerningham had mockingly suggested. It was an abnormal situation. That being the case, there was no regular provision—no indicated chapter and verse—for meeting it. The principal function of a chief in business is to supply answers to puzzled subordinates.

Ashton Welles was sitting back in his swivel chair. He was staring fixedly at a hook on the picture-molding that had been left there after the picture was taken away. He was thinking that if he employed private detectives in London he would have to hire them by cable. There are suspicions a man cannot help having and yet cannot set down in plain black and white. He cannot hint when he writes, for written instructions must always be explicit and categorical. That is why no love-letter of which the real meaning is to be read “between the lines” is ever satisfactory to the recipient.

Ashton Welles turned his head and, still frowning, asked Stewardson, sharply:

“Well, what is it?”

“It's about Jerningham. You know he has been buying our stock. But I thought you ought to know—”

He wished to tell the president what a big block the Alaskan had already secured. But the president, from force of habit, perhaps, or possibly by reason of the irritation of his nerves, assumed the usual financial attitude of omniscience:

“I know all about it,” he said. “Anything else you wish to say to me?”

“No, sir!” answered Stewardson, who felt rebuffed and now would not have turned in an alarm of fire if he had seen the place beginning to burn. He was, after all, human.

You cannot, in your lust for absolute power, make your subordinates into sublimated office-boys or decorative figureheads without paying the price some time. Stewardson was justified in assuming that Mr. Welles was worried about business—it was perfectly obvious; and it was a natural suspicion, also, that said deal must threaten destruction to the company since Ashton Welles was so eager to have poor Jerningham buy so much VanTwiller stock. Therefore Stewardson and his intimate friends, in order to be on the safe side, very promptly sold out their own holdings—to poor misguided Jerningham's brokers.

Of course other people who did not wish Welles well heard about it, and the whisper ran about the Street, getting blacker and blacker as it ran, until everybody knew something had happened—everybody except the directors of the VanTwiller Trust Company. And when the transfer-books closed for the annual meeting of the stockholders it was found that Mr. Alfred Jerningham owned, by purchase or option, and had irrevocable proxies on, a little more than twenty-eight thousand shares of the stock. This, together with the twelve thousand shares owned jointly by Patrick T. Behan and Oliver Judson, the street-railroad magnates, and the blocks controlled by the Garvin brothers, Tammany contractors, and Mayer & Shanberg, F. R. Chisolm, John Matson & Company, and others of the Behan-Judson clique, which once tried to secure control of the company and were foiled by Ashton Welles, made a combination that was bound to win at the annual election.

Jerningham ceased going to the VanTwiller Trust Company because Ashton Welles had sailed for London on the receipt of a cablegram that read:

Leaving for Continent. Mother and I cannot return before three months. Will write soon.

Anne.

Instead of calling on his friend Stewardson, Jerningham preferred to spend hours and hours conversing with Patrick T. Behan, “the most dangerous man in Wall Street!”—and the slickest. But on the day before the election Jerningham did call on Stewardson and offered to sell his holdings of VanTwiller stock at six hundred dollars a share.

“Why, I thought you—” began the vice-president.

“I know you did. I wanted you to. But six hundred dollars is only twenty-five dollars a share more than Behan, and Judson, and Garvin, and the rest of those pirates have offered me. I've decided not to be a stockholder of the trust company; so just get your friends together and tell them if they want to retain the control they can give you a check for me—six hundred dollars a share on twenty-eight thousand, one hundred and twenty-three shares. Put it down—twenty-eight thousand, one hundred and twenty-three shares. Good day!”

“Wait! I want to say—”

“Don't say it! Write it! I'm still at the Brabant,” said Jerningham, coldly. “I advise you to get at Mr. Welles on the steamer by wireless. Good day!”

“But, I—” shouted Stewardson.

Jerningham paid no attention to him and walked away.

Later in the day negotiations were resumed. In the end Jerningham accepted a little less; but the deal yielded him a net profit of about two million dollars. He insisted upon being paid in gold coin. This convinced Stewardson and the other victims that Jerningham was out of his mind; but there is no law that enables officers of a trust company to imprison a gold maniac or to take away his gold, particularly when his lawyers stand very high in the profession.

Five minutes after getting the gold coin in his possession—and drawing every cent of it—Jerningham told Stewardson he would leave the dust in the VanTwiller vaults. That reassured Stewardson, who otherwise might have suspected Jerningham of various crimes. He then sent two cablegrams to London. One was to

Kathryn Keogh,

Thornton's Hotel, London.

Your services are no longer needed. Go ahead and have a nice time! Thanks awfully! Jerningham.

The other was to Francis Wolfe—same address. It read:

You ought to marry Kathryn Keogh. Never mind anything else. I am disappearing for good. God bless you both, my children! Letter follows.

Jerningham.

Francis Wolfe showed his cablegram to Miss Keogh and Miss Keogh did not show hers to Francis Wolfe.

A week later Frank asked Miss Keogh to read a letter he had received from Jerningham, and to tell him what to do.

This was the letter.

Dear Boy,—We needed a million or two out of Ashton Welles, and the only way we could see of getting it was by selling to him what he already had—to wit, the control of the VanTwiller Trust Company. From previous operations the syndicate I have the honor to represent had accumulated enough cash to render this operation feasible; but Welles watched the trades in VanTwiller stock so closely that we could not have bought a thousand shares without blocking our own game. So we planned our operations very carefully, as we always do. And because I like you I will tell you how we went about it—that you may profit by our example.

First, I had to become instantly and sensationally known as the possessor of vast wealth. The mere deposit of a million or two in a bank would not do it. We must have the cash and a stupendous cash-making property—hence the mines in the Klondike. Purely mythical mines, dear lad! We sent to Alaska, bought $1,686,000 of gold-dust, put it in boxes, and put a lot of lead in other boxes—now in the VanT. vaults!—thereby increasing our less than two million into more than eight—and nobody hurt thereby! Then the shipment to Seattle, so that every step could be verified—and the special bullion train to New York; and the eccentric miner—myself—with his gold—no myth about the gold—what? in a New York hotel; and of course the reporters were only too willing to help and to magnify our gold-dust.

The Planet's articles were our letters of introduction to the trust company and to Wall Street. Could not have done better—could we? But how to catch Welles off his guard? By breaking it down, of course. Best way? By rousing jealousy. That's where you come in. Mrs. Welles must go to England with you on the same steamer. How? By winning your friendship and rousing your romantic interest in an unhappy love-affair—that would, moreover, explain my interest in Mrs. Welles. Of course there never was any Naida Deering for me to be interested in!

But you had to meet Welles's wife. How? By means of your sisters. How did I make friends of them? By reforming you and making you my heir.

How did I make Mrs. Welles take the same steamer that you did? By having her mother cable for her. How did I do that? Ask Miss Keogh.

I admit that much of what we were compelled to do was not gentlemanly; but, after all, our only crime is the crime of having been business men—buying something at four dollars and selling it at five or six dollars.

Take my advice, dear boy, and stay on the water-wagon! If you marry Miss Keogh I think you can show this letter to A. Welles and ask him to give you a nice position in the trust company.

I am sorry I cannot see you again; but believe me, dear boy, that we are very grateful for your efficient assistance. We would send you a check—only we need it in our business. Tell Jimmy Parkhurst to tell you and Amos F. Kidder all about it.

Yours truly,

The Plunder Recovery Syndicate, Per Alfred Jerningham.

But it was a long time before Frank Wolfe returned to New York—without Miss Keogh, who flatly refused to marry him. Jerningham had disappeared, leaving absolutely no trail. Parkhurst introduced Frank Wolfe to Fiske, but all that came of it was that Fiske added a few fresh notes to his collection.