The retirement of Nathaniel Lawson from active participation in the management of the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company had come as a complete surprise to his many acquaintances in commercial circles. For while he was frequently spoken of as "Old Nat," it was a familiarity fostered by long and friendly associations rather than declining years. Why a man in his prime and at the apex of his usefulness should drop out of harness so suddenly when he appeared to be in the best of health, was something of a mystery. Not a few missed his genial companionship, and were frank enough to say so on those rare occasions when Nat Lawson now put in an appearance at the Club. For a while rumors were rife, but gradually these subsided as his absence became a custom.

It was to that very end that the founder of the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company made his retirement so literal. There were times when the inquisitiveness of his friends was hard to combat, when the temptation to give expression to the hidden springs of indignation that had been born within him was almost irresistible. So, acting upon his better judgment, he gradually relegated himself to the background of affairs till his tall, distinguished-looking figure was no longer a familiar sight in public places. But if his white hair, his carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard and wide moustache no longer singled him out in gatherings of his former associates his carriage lost none of its alertness, his glance none of its customary fearlessness. Nathaniel Lawson was biding his time.

Like so many successful men who have risen to places of wealth and influence, Lawson had begun as a poor boy, struggling upward over untold difficulties by pluck and determination. In his case, however, the rewards of the struggle had been swept from his reach at the very pinnacle of achievement by what appeared to be an exceptionally bold piece of financial buccaneering. He belonged to the older generation which had grown up accustomed to seeing business carried on by individuals or on a partnership basis; joint stock companies, combines and holding companies had been a development of his later days. It had taken him a lifetime to build up his financial business from very small beginnings, until it had become the big organization now known as the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company. And because it was his nature to be generous and kindly "Old Nat" had fallen victim to misplaced confidence.

In those early years of struggle conservative methods and plain honesty had been not the least of his assets. It was upon these sound principles that he had relied throughout. The small deposits of the working classes, more or less ignored by his early competitors, had given him his start; even now the strength of the Interprovincial lay in its popularity among workmen and farmers, while its aggregate of small savings accounts was tremendous. The people trusted the Interprovincial because they had seen it grow and knew that it was administered honestly. "Catch 'Old Nat' having anything to do with the tricks of high finance!" said they, confidently, and many were the stories which went the rounds of how the "old-fashioned" financier had allowed sentiment to "interfere" with business. And the business had grown apace.

Because of this ingrained sentimental streak in his make-up and because of this inherent honesty he had created some enemies. There were those who looked hungrily in the direction of the Interprovincial and imagined what could be accomplished in a very big way in several different directions if only the man in control of the stock were—say, a little more modern. If it were not for the close tab which that energetic young secretary kept upon things, Lawson would have run the concern into the ditch long ago, whispered the ambitious ones. The young and energetic secretary, J. C. Nickleby, may have been the first to whisper it—very confidentially, of course. For it would ill become so promising a young financier as J. Cuthbert Nickleby to be guilty of ingratitude, and there had been one raw wet night in the spring of a year long past when Nathaniel Lawson had rescued a miserable travesty of a man from the gutter—a night that Nickleby, once his benefactor had set him firmly upon his feet with a new lease of life, no doubt had schooled himself to forget for all time.

At any rate there had come an annual meeting at which Nat Lawson found himself in a quandary. It followed on the heels of a rumor that it was the desire of certain shareholders to inject some "new blood," and thereby new life, into the loan company—that it would be a good thing, in short, for the "revered old Chief" to retire to a pedestal where he could sit as inanimate as a bronze bust upon the official label, "Honorary President," while a younger man took upon his shoulders the burden of the expanded business, and so forth.

The campaign against him had been of a most insidious character and Lawson had pretended with dignity to ignore it, even while his resentment grew to the proportions of great indignation. And all the time he was worried because he could not find a certain power-of-attorney which authorized him to vote a large block of stock belonging to a personal friend who had invested heavily in Lawson's company—Bradford, the arctic explorer, who had gone into the hinterland on a Government expedition, and who was not expected to get into communication with civilization again for about two years. Bradford had left everything in connection with his investment in his friend Lawson's hands. While the status of this stock on the books of the Interprovincial was unquestioned, the power-of-attorney had been given to Lawson personally and had not been placed officially in the hands of the secretary with instructions.

Herein lay the quandary. For when at the annual meeting in question Nat Lawson had tried to vote the stock in the usual way, he was asked for the power-of-attorney by some of the new shareholders and could not produce it. Proxies which Nickleby had manipulated then were thrown on the scale and when the meeting was over, the Interprovincial had a new president by the name of J. Cuthbert Nickleby. In making the announcement, the newspapers had quite a story about "Old Nat" and his career; they printed in full the account which was handed to them regarding the presentation of a gold-headed cane, suitably engraved, and an illuminated address which marked the esteem in which the directors held the retiring president and founder.

Convinced though he was that the power-of-attorney had been stolen deliberately and that the whole thing was a cunning frame-up to get him out of the way in order that certain transactions of which he never would have approved might go through—although convinced that this was the truth of the matter, Nat Lawson had no evidence to prove a case against Nickleby or any of his associates. It would have been a dangerous procedure to give publicity to his suspicions, or to attempt legal action without definite proof of his charges, as this could result only in destroying public confidence in the institution itself without in the least altering the situation. At the worst, the reign of the Nickleby faction could be but temporary, as the situation would adjust itself with the return of the explorer who owned the stock. But it was exceedingly humiliating, and there was always the possibility that those now in control of the Interprovincial meanwhile would undermine the whole financial fabric by loose policies of administration, or even by questionable practices.

These apprehensions were shared by the only two friends whom Nat Lawson had admitted fully to his confidence—President Benjamin Wade, of the Canadian Lake Shores Railway, and McAllister, the keen-eyed editor of the Recorder, which of all the city newspapers was the most consistently independent in politics. Wade was an old friend of long standing, himself holder of a small block of stock in the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company, and it was to him that Lawson had turned for advice in his extremity. Immediately Wade had called into counsel the chief of his railroad's very competent detective staff, Bob Cranston, and thereupon began a series of quiet investigations with the object of obtaining the necessary evidence to depose the Nickleby faction from control of Interprovincial affairs.

Although equally anxious to help, McAllister had no part in Wade's plans; he preferred to work along special lines of his own. He and Wade differed in their theories of the situation, and much to Nat Lawson's amusement they had argued with some heat the first night that they happened to meet at the Lawson home; so that the two were somewhat in friendly rivalry, each anxious to prove that he was right, and each determined to play a lone hand.

It may have been his interest in the case that led McAllister to call so frequently of late at the old-fashioned brick house that stood back from the street, surrounded by spacious grounds and a wealth of carefully tended shrubbery, in the older residential section of the city. No doubt it was this that made him stop for a smoke with the former president of the Interprovincial about three evenings a week on the way to his office in the brightly-lighted Recorder building, where hummed activity during the hours that others slept, in order that the public might have a morning newspaper to prop against the sugar-bowl while it breakfasted.

Even so, it is necessary to add that Nathaniel Lawson had a beautiful and accomplished daughter whose name was Cristobel. It is necessary to record further that being a young woman of spirit, Miss Cristy Lawson had insisted upon taking up newspaper work as a profession when the need of adding to the family resources presented itself. For most of the Lawson capital had gone into the loan company and her father's philanthropic tendencies in the heyday of his earnings had made greater inroads upon his personal fortune than he had realized at the time. Her father's objections to the plan had been overruled finally when McAllister had offered Miss Lawson a position on the Recorder's day staff as "Society Editor," and it was not long before her interest in the work and her natural aptitude for it rejuvenated the Society Page into one of the best features the paper boasted.

Not content with this success, Miss Lawson became ambitious to try her journalistic wings in other directions; but her desire for more important assignments than the reporting of afternoon teas brought down the paternal foot—flat! No daughter of Nathaniel Lawson was going to be allowed to roam the city at all hours. "No night work," her father had insisted. Nevertheless, the young woman continued to hope that this edict would be removed eventually, and she never lost an opportunity of coaxing if she happened to be at home when McAllister was present; but there came a night finally when Nat Lawson grew impatient at her persistence and kindly but firmly put a final period to the topic.

She arrived home from a recital at the Conservatory of Music just in time to serve the refreshments and to listen breathlessly to the conclusion of the evening's animated discussion. Both Wade and McAllister were there and it was evident that they had been "at it again." From the quiet elation in the editor's eye and the corresponding amusement of her father, she judged that McAllister temporarily was having the better of the argument.

"Mac, I don't care a hoot what you've found out!" declared Ben Wade. "You can sit there and talk till this time to-morrow night, but you'll never convince me that the Honorable Milt isn't as straight as the best man who ever went into politics."

"Ah, just so—who ever went into politics," drawled McAllister with a provoking grin.

"Who ever did his duty in public life and became the victim of hidebound newspapers!" retorted Wade. "Milt Waring and I grew up in the same town together—went to the same school, played both hookey and hockey together. Why, I know him inside and out and I tell you he's as straight as a string."

"Your simile is unfortunate, Ben. The straightest string can be tied in knots."

"I see by this morning's papers that Rives has been released from the penitentiary," interposed their host. "Good conduct has got him out three years ahead of time. His sentence was fifteen, wasn't it?"

Wade nodded, but was not to be turned from his tilt with McAllister.

"What have you found out that makes you so cocky to-night?" he challenged the editor with interest.

"You'll read all about it in the Recorder when the time comes. You laughed at me the other night when I warned you that politics was mixed up in this Interprovincial manoeuvring. Watch me prove it. I'll send you a marked copy of the paper."

"Bluff! Listen to him, Nat!"

"I'm not in the habit of bluffing, Wade." McAllister's jaw was set as he patted the edge of the table for emphasis. "I'm responsible to the public and I tell you both right now that as sure as you're born—— Ah, good-evening, Miss Lawson," he finished, rising to his feet with a smile.

McAllister busied himself, clearing a space on the table for the tray she was carrying, and from beneath his shaggy brows the railroad president's shrewd eyes carried a glint of amusement at the evident relief with which the editor welcomed the interruption. A moment more and McAllister might have committed himself to a rash statement.

"And how goes the battle, Cristy? Who won the latest bun fight?" smiled Wade by way of making conversation. "Have you persuaded your father——?"

"Indeed I have not," interrupted Cristy with an exaggerated pout. She looked directly at Ben Wade and frowned, as if the subject were one about which she would rather not be teased even by an old family friend of long and intimate standing. "It is too mean for anything! If, as Mr. McAllister has been good enough to intimate, I am capable of big successes in newspaper work, is it right to hold me back from the necessary experience? To hear Daddy talk you'd think I was a little child——"

"Cristy!" reproved Nat Lawson quietly.

"But I ask you, Mr. Wade, is it fair——?"

"Your father knows best, my child. He probably has good reasons——"

"I do not approve of you working on the night staff. I must ask you not to refer to this matter again. We will not discuss it now, please."

"Allow me to give you another cup of cocoa, Mr. McAllister?"

"Thank you, but I must be getting along," said McAllister, glancing hurriedly at his watch. "I have stayed later than I intended, thanks to the side-tracking of yon railroad president."

"I'll run you down to the office in the car for that," laughed Wade, also rising. "I'm going out of town for a couple of weeks, Nat; but the next time I see you I expect to have some news that will interest you. And I'll give it to you in advance of publication." He slapped McAllister on the shoulder and they bade their host and hostess a jovial adieu.

But once Wade's limousine was speeding down the street the magnate fell strangely silent. He passed a cigar to McAllister and lighted one for himself. For fully five minutes he did not speak a word. He listened in a preoccupied way to the editor's opinion of the new city parks by-law and to that gentleman's surprise interrupted him finally by a statement entirely irrelevant.

"Cristy Lawson is a remarkably clever young woman," he said, gazing thoughtfully at a little electric light in the roof of the car.

"For once I can agree with you entirely," nodded McAllister, flashing a quick glance at the other's upturned face.

"I don't blame her for getting sick and tired of writing your pink-tea items. Why don't you give her a chance at bigger game?"

"You heard what her father said?"

"I did. I want to make sure that you did too."

"What do you mean?"

"Whatever you like," snapped Wade. "There are some jobs that even a clever woman has no business attempting, that's all."

"Why talk in riddles, Ben? What's on your mind?"

"This wonderful graft exposure which you are planning to spring on an unsuspecting public." He rounded on McAllister and looked at him gravely. "How much of it have you told Nat?"

"I have said nothing about it to anybody," replied the editor, plainly puzzled. "Why?"

"My advice is to keep right on saying nothing about it. The less you say the less you'll have to take back."

"We'll see about that in due course," chuckled McAllister. "Do I look like a fool?"

"Appearances are often deceptive. I once knew a fellow who got so slick at gumshoeing that he sneaked up on his own shadow and made a fool of himself."

"Got married at high noon, perhaps?"

"Mac, seriously, I want you to promise me that you won't spring anything without giving me twenty-four hours' notice. It's an unusual request, I know; but I ask it in your own interests." There was no mistaking the earnestness with which he spoke, and McAllister stared at him.

"You—have some inside information to justify it?"

"Yes. I cannot tell you the details just now. I warn you that if your paper attempts the so-called exposure which you have in mind without my co-operation you'll regret it bitterly. I can help you and will be glad to; but only on condition that you warn me when you are ready. Do you promise?"

The limousine had stopped opposite the Recorder building and McAllister alighted slowly. Then he reached in through the open door and shook hands.

"All right, Ben. You're the doctor," he decided.

"Good. You can count on me, then. As a starter I can promise that the photos of the Alderson Construction Company's missing campaign-fund contribution will be delivered to you personally to-morrow night. I'll look you up when I get back in a week's time, Mac. Good-night."

McAllister remained standing at the curb till Wade's car swung out of sight around the corner. Then he struck the pavement with his cane, for it irritated him to be so completely surprised. Wade knew! How much did he know? And how in under the sun——?

"Pyed!" he grunted. "Devil take the man!"

He turned slowly and entered the building to his night's work.