The next morning when David glanced at the envelopes the postman had handed him he saw that one letter was from Mr. Jordon. He was ripping it open eagerly when he noticed the envelope beneath it bore the handwriting of Helen Chambers. He dropped Jordon's letter and excitedly opened the other. Its cordiality set him afire. She was just back in town for the winter, she wrote, and the following afternoon she would be at St. Christopher's. Would he care to come to meet her at about four for an hour's walk?

Would he! He had not seen her since the early summer—and how he had hungered to see her, speak with her, feel her near presence! He walked across the office, in which he was alone, half a dozen times before he took up the letter of Mr. Jordon. Mr. Jordon asked that Mr. Rogers and his associates be at the office of Mr. Chambers at three o'clock that afternoon. He hoped that they would be able to reach an agreement on terms and close the matter up.

David, the letter in his hand, was rushing into the living room to read the news to Rogers, when he saw, through the open hall-door, the ample form of the Mayor passing out. He captured the Mayor and led him in to the side of the couch on which Rogers was lying.

"Listen to this, will you!" David cried, and excitedly read the letter. "Did you take in that sentence at the last?—'I hope that we will at length be able to agree on terms.' Now what do you think that means?"

"It means," said the Mayor, explosively, "that they've woke up and see that you ain't never goin' to come down to them, they've got to come up to you! It means that you've won!"

Rogers's sunken eyes flamed, and he stood up. "It seems so!" he breathed.

They all seized hands. "This don't mean much to me personally, for I've only got a little in it," said the Mayor, "but I certainly have the glad feeling on your account, Rogers. You can clear right out to a land where the air was made for breathin' purposes. Here in New York the air ain't good for much except fillin' in lots. Yes sir, Rogers, I'm certainly glad!"

They talked on excitedly, as men do who are but a step from success. David was glad, too, on Rogers's account, for he saw afresh how thinly disease had sculptured his cheeks and nose, and how deeply it had chiselled about the eyeballs, and to what a slender shaft it had carved the neck. Also he was ablaze with gladness on his own account. Success, but a few hours off, meant the partial clearing of his name. His mind exulted over the details of the scene to-morrow afternoon when he would tell Helen Chambers he had the means to pay his debt to St. Christopher's.

In the course of the morning Mr. Harris dropped in. He asked for Rogers, but David said that Rogers was out. For half an hour the detective talked about the houses in which he was interested, now and then slipping in a guileless question about Rogers. But David was on his guard; he matched his wits against Mr. Harris's, and when at length the detective went away David was certain he was no wiser than when he came.

At half past two the Mayor thrust his head into the office and, seeing Kate was there, beckoned David into the hall. The Mayor had never before been at elbows with a real money king, so for him the meeting was a new experience; and despite his ire toward Mr. Chambers he was prompted to make his appearance before royalty in fitting court costume.

"D'you think I look all right?" he asked, anxiously.

David surveyed the Mayor's bulky figure. There was a silk hat with not a single hair in disarray, a long light overcoat, a pair of fresh gloves that were staringly tan, and the most gorgeous vest in the Mayor's closet. David could have wished that the whole scheme of dress had been pitched in a lower key, but he criticised nothing but the vest.

"If that's all you kick about, then I'm O. K.," the Mayor said complacently, smoothing a yellow glove over the silken pinks. "You've give me some good points, but when it comes to vests, friend—well, you ain't got no real taste for vests."

He walked to the door and looked out. "There comes our carriage," he called. "Get Rogers and we'll be movin'."

"Carriage!" cried David.

"Sure. D'you think we're goin' to let Chambers and his bunch think we're a lot o' cheapskates? Not much. We're goin' to do this thing proper."

"But Mr. Chambers himself uses the street cars."

"Well, he can afford to," the Mayor returned with equanimity. "We can't."

When David walked with Rogers to the carriage he would not have been surprised had the Mayor handed them for their lapels a bunch of roses knotted with ribbon. They settled back against the cushions and suspense silenced them—and with hardly a word they rumbled over to Broadway, down into Wall Street and up before Mr. Chambers's office.

As they stepped from the carriage, Rogers's thin fingers gripped David's hand like taut cords. Clasp, face, and the feverish fire in his eyes told David how great was the strain Rogers bore. This was the climax of his life.

David returned the pressure of his hand. "It'll be all right," he whispered reassuringly.

They went up the broad steps into a tiled hallway, and turned to their right to the entrance of the private banking house of Alexander Chambers & Co. An erect, liveried negro, whose stiffly formal manners suggested a spring within him, admitted them into a great light room, in which, behind a partition of glass and bronze grating that half reached the ceiling, sat scores of men working swiftly without appearance of speed. A word and a lifted finger from the black automaton directed them to the far end of the room. Here a man with the bearing of a statesman, Mr. Chambers's doorkeeper, bowed them into three leather-seated chairs, and carried their names into Mr. Chambers's private secretary.

They did not speak; the nearness of the climax awed even the Mayor. And to add to the suspense throbbing within him, David began to wonder how he would be greeted by Mr. Chambers, whom he had not seen since his ante-prison days.

Almost at once the doorkeeper reappeared, and with the subdued air that characterised the place, led them into a large office. The keen-faced secretary rose from a desk, ushered them through a door and into another office. At the great desk in the center of the room were Mr. Chambers and Mr. Jordon.

The two men rose, and David's wonder as to how Mr. Chambers would receive him was at once relieved. An inclination of the head and a quiet, "Glad to see you, Mr. Aldrich"—that was all; nothing in his impassive face and manner to suggest that he remembered the prison-gap in David's life.

The Mayor had announced during the carriage drive that if "Chambers holds out his hand to me to be shook, I won't see nothin' but the ceilin'." But there was no opportunity thus to humiliate Mr. Chambers, for his response to the introduction was but a brief nod. So the Mayor could only declare his independence by opening the front of his overcoat, like a pair of doors, upon his brilliant waistcoat, and by gazing into Mr. Chambers's face with aggressive hauteur.

Mr. Jordon shook hands all around. "Well, I hope we'll settle things up to-day," he said. As to how things were going to be settled, he had not the slightest doubt. He was certain the afternoon would force Mr. Chambers to his way of thinking. A few minutes before Mr. Chambers had asked his opinion as to the result of the conference, and he had said, "They'll not give in; we've got to pay what they ask." Mr. Chambers had said nothing—which had not surprised him, for he knew it was instinctive with Mr. Chambers, even in such small matters as this, to let the completed act announce his purpose.

They all sat down, David, Rogers, and the Mayor in three leather-bottomed chairs which stood in front and to the right of Mr. Chambers's desk. To the left, in a row, were half a dozen other chairs. Mr. Chambers leaned slightly forward and folded his hands on his desk's plate-glass top.

"Let us go straight to the point of this matter," he began, addressing Rogers, who sat between David and the Mayor. "Mr. Jordon tells me you refuse to consider any sum less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the land you control. Is that correct?"

"It is."

David's shoulder against Rogers told him that Rogers's lean frame was as rigid as the chair that held it.

"This then is your ultimatum?"

"It is."

"Just as I told you," nodded Mr. Jordon, who was at Mr. Chambers's elbow.

Mr. Chambers pressed a button beneath the desk and the door opened before his secretary.

"Please show in the others," he requested quietly.

The secretary bowed and the door closed.

"The others?" breathed Rogers; and he and David and the Mayor looked at each other.

"The others!" exclaimed Mr. Jordon. "What others?"

Mr. Chambers sat silent, with unchanged face. The next instant the door, opening, answered the question. Into the room hesitantly filed the five owners of the land Rogers controlled. Rogers, David, and the Mayor, and also Mr. Jordon, rose in astonishment. The five stopped and stared at Rogers's party; plainly the surprise was mutual.

Mr. Chambers, remaining in his seat, motioned the new-comers to the chairs at the left of his desk. "Be seated, gentlemen."

"What's this mean?" David asked, catching Rogers's arm.

Rogers turned toward him, and for an instant David felt he was gazing into the abyss of fear. Then the arm he held tightened and Rogers looked toward his five clients and nodded.

"Good afternoon. I'm glad to see you," he said in an even tone.

They sat down again, and Rogers's eyes fastened on the finely wrinkled face of Mr. Chambers—as did every other pair of eyes in the room. They vainly strove to read the purpose behind that inscrutable countenance. The purpose was simple enough. By bringing together the two elements of Rogers's crowd, each ignorant that the other was to be present, unprepared with common replies, he had thought he might possibly play them against each other in a way to bring them to his price; and if not, he would at least have them all together, and so be able to make an immediate settlement upon their terms. He had had a faint hope that Mr. Hawkins might discover something significant, but a note from the detective during the morning had contained no single new fact.

Mr. Chambers did not give the surprised group time to readjust itself. "I have called together all parties interested in this transaction in order that we may more effectively reach an agreement, and in the hope that we may obviate the necessity for future meetings."

He fastened his gray eyes upon the five owners, who were looking very much at a loss, and spoke coldly, calmly, as though his decision were unchangeable and his words immutable facts. "First I desire to say that you gentlemen and your agent have a very inflated idea of the value of your property. The price is one we cannot, and will not, pay. If you want to take what we offer, very well. If not, I assure you that we shall run no streets, water-mains, sewers or gas pipes near your tract. We shall leave the neighbourhood of your property entirely unimproved. You will recall that our land lies between yours and the car line; we shall forbid anybody living on your land crossing our land. Nobody else is going to buy your land under these conditions. You can sell it only to us."

The owners, struck while off guard, were dazed; and David, Rogers, and the Mayor, who had expected the exact opposite of this talk, were completely taken back.

The cold, dominant voice went on. "Such being the situation, does it not seem better to accept our price, which is a fair price, than to have your land made unsaleable, to have your investment tied up for years to come?"

He centered his personality upon the weakest of the five. "I'm sure you think so, do you not?"

The man blinked—then nodded his head.

"But—" began Rogers.

"And you, I'm sure you think so," Mr. Chambers demanded of another owner.

"Ye-e-s," said the man.

This was child's play to Mr. Chambers, who had browbeaten and overpowered even the directors of great corporations. He tried to rush his plan through, before the men could recover.

"It is plain you are all agreed. You see how your clients stand, Mr. Rogers. It certainly seems the only course to settle this matter at once upon the basis of our offer, which seems to them fair and just."

Rogers saw that awe of the great financier and his intimidating statments had fairly stampeded his clients. Fighting down the momentary sense of defeat, and not heeding Mr. Chambers's words to him, he fixed his great burning eyes on the five men.

"Gentlemen!" he said desperately. They shifted their gaze from Mr. Chambers to him. "Gentlemen, I want to assure you that if we hold out we will get our own price. I happen to know they've just bought a piece of ground beyond ours; without ours it will be worthless to them. They've got to have our land! You understand? Simply got to have it!"

The Mayor lifted an emphatic yellow hand toward the owners. "Of course they have! And don't you listen to no bluffin'."

Rogers continued to talk for several minutes; and gradually confidence and determination came into the manner of the five. At the end Rogers turned to Mr. Chambers.

"We shall stand out for our price," he said firmly.

Mr. Chambers had wrecked railroads in order to buy them in at a lower rate, but the similar procedure which he had threatened did not seem worth while here. He had tried his plan, which he had known had only a chance of success, and it had failed. There was but only one thing to do—to yield.

He was thoughtful for several moments. "If we should refuse your terms, we of course in the end would buy your land at our own price. But it occurs to me that the bother and extra cost of improving the land and opening it up at a later date, might be as much as the difference between your price and ours. What do you think, Mr. Jordon?"

"There's much in what you say," returned the general manager, guardedly.

Rogers, David, and the Mayor exchanged quick, triumphant glances. They had won.

Mr. Chambers again relapsed into his appearance of thoughtfulness, and they all sat waiting for him to speak. David laid his hand on Rogers's and pressed it exultantly.

While Mr. Chambers still sat thus, the office door opened and his secretary apologetically tiptoed across the room with a letter in his hand.

"I told Mr. Hawkins you were engaged, but he insisted that this was important," the secretary said to Mr. Chambers, and withdrew.

Mr. Chambers read the note, thought a moment, slowly folded the sheet, then raised his eyes.

"Before going further, there is one point—of no importance, I dare say it will prove to be—that it might be well for us to touch upon." He centered his calm gaze upon the five owners. "Since you have intrusted Mr. Rogers with the management of your property I take it that he has your fullest confidence?"

"Ye-es," said one hesitatingly, and the others followed with the same word.

"Your confidence, of course, is founded on thorough acquaintance?"

David glanced from the impassive Mr. Chambers to Rogers. The mask of control had fallen from his face. He was leaning forward, his whole being at pause, his face a climax of fear and suspense.

A succession of slow "Yes-es" came from the owners.

"Then of course," Mr. Chambers went on in his composed voice, "you are perfectly aware that Mr. Rogers is a man with a long criminal career."

A shiver ran through Rogers; he stiffened, grew yet whiter. There was a moment of blankest silence. Then the Mayor sprang up, his face purpling.

"It's an infernal lie!" he shouted.

Consternation struggled on the faces of the five; they looked from the rigid, white figure of Rogers to the calm face of Mr. Chambers.

"It isn't so," declared one tremulously.

"We will leave the question to Mr. Rogers," said Mr. Chambers's unexcitable voice, and he pivoted in his chair so that his steady eyes pointed upon Rogers. "If Mr. Rogers is not 'Red Thorpe,' the one time notorious safe-blower, with scores of burglaries and three terms in the penitentiary against him, let him say so. However, before he denies it, I shall tell him that I have all the police data necessary for his identification. Now, Mr. Rogers."

Their gaze on Rogers's face, all waited for him to speak—Jordon, astounded, the five pale with the fear of loss, the Mayor glowering, David with a sense that supreme ruin was crushing upon them.

At length Rogers's lips moved. "It is true," he whispered.

"What if it is?" roared the Mayor at Mr. Chambers. "There's nothin' agin him now!"

"I'm making no charges against him," returned Mr. Chambers. "This is merely some information it seemed his clients might be interested in having."

All eyes again turned upon Rogers. He came slowly to his feet, walked to Mr. Chambers's desk, leaned his hands upon it and directed his large burning eyes down into Mr. Chambers's face.

"I have done many bad things, yes," he said in a voice, low, flame-hot, "but nothing as bad as you have just done. You have stolen more this minute than I have stolen in my lifetime."

He held his eyes, blazing with accusation, upon Mr. Chambers's imperturbable face for several moments, then looked about on the five owners. There was a chance, a bare chance, they might not turn against him.

"Yes, I am Red Thorpe," he said in a vibrant voice that became more and more appealing with every word. "I knew it would be found out—some day. There are some things I always told myself I'd say to the world when this day came. But to you I want to say only this: For ten years I've been honesty itself. I've been honest with you—you know it. If you stand by me, I'll do everything I've promised."

He stood rigid, awaiting their verdict. There was a strained silence. The five looked dazedly at Rogers, at one another, completely at a loss.

"If the gentlemen desire to entrust their affairs to a most dangerous criminal, one who might defraud them of everything, that is their privilege," put in Mr. Chambers quietly.

Their bewilderment was gone; Mr. Chambers's words had roused their property instinct. A murmuring rose among them.

David and the Mayor sprang up, but Rogers raised a hand and they remained beside their chairs. A flame began to burn in his white cheeks, in his deep eyes.

"I knew this day was coming," he said in a low voice, that had a wild bitter ring of challenge. "Instead of you, you weaklings"—he looked at the five—"and you, you mere soulless Acquisition"—his eyes blazed at Mr. Chambers—"I wish I had the world before me. I'd like to tell it what a vast fool it is in its treatment of such as me—how eyeless and brainless and soulless! Oh, what a fool!... But the world's not here."

He was silent for a moment. "And why am I at an end?—why?" His answer rang through the room with a passionate resentment, with an agony of loss. "Because the world did not care to step in and point the right way to me. To have saved me would have been so easy! I was worth saving! I had brains—there was a man in me. Whose fault is it that I am now at the end?—a miserable remnant of a man! The world's. I was robbed of my chance in life—robbed, yes sir, robbed!—and I could have made it a splendid life! Ah, how I've wanted to make it a splendid life. And the world—the world that robbed me!—that world calls me criminal. And I must pay the penalty, and the penalty is—what you see! Oh, my God!"

For ten years Rogers had cherished the purpose of accusing the world on the day of his exposure—but now his loss was so overwhelming, speech to these people was so utterly useless, strength was so little, that he could say no more—could only, leaning against the desk, gaze in hatred and despair at Mr. Chambers and the owners. The faces of the five were pale and blank. There was a trace of sympathy in Mr. Jordon's face, and a momentary change in Mr. Chambers's that indicated—who knows what?

David sprang to Mr. Chambers's desk, his soul on fire.

"This, sir, is a damned inhuman outrage!" he flung down into the older man's face.

"It might also have been of interest to Mr. Rogers's clients," Mr. Chambers returned calmly, "to have known the record of Mr. Rogers's associate."

David's wrath had no time to fashion a retort, for the Mayor, at his side, hammered the desk with a great yellow-gloved fist. "That's what it is!" he shouted. "It's a low, dirty, murdering trick!"

"I merely acquainted his clients with his record—which they have a right to know."

A huge sarcastic laugh burst from the Mayor, and he pushed his face down into Mr. Chambers's.

"You," he roared, "you, when you're in a deal, you always show your clients your record, don't you!"

Rogers, out of whose cheeks the fire had gone, leaving them an ashen gray, tugged at their sleeves.

"It's no use!—let's go!" he begged, chokingly. "Quick!"

David's eyes blazed down upon Mr. Chambers. "Yes, let's leave the infernal thief!"

He took one of Rogers's arms, the Mayor, shaking a huge fist in Mr. Chambers's face, took the other, and they made for the door. Mr. Chambers, still seated, watched Rogers's thin figure, head pitched forward and sunken between his shoulders, pass out of the office. Brushing people out of his way had become the order of his life, and he did it impersonally, without malice, as a machine might have done it. And Rogers was one of the most insignificant he had ever brushed aside.

"Mr. Rogers, as of course you are aware, has not the rights of a citizen," Mr. Chambers said to the five. "Consequently his agreement with you is invalid; he can not hold you to it. If you will kindly wait in the next room a moment, Mr. Jordon will speak with you."

After they had filed out he remarked to Jordon: "They are stampeded. They will come to your terms. I leave them in your hands."

He touched the button on his desk and his secretary appeared. "If Senator Speed has come," he said, "ask him to step in."

When David and Rogers were home again, and the Mayor and his profanity had gone, there was a long silence during which both sat motionless. David searched his mind for some word of hope for Rogers, who was a collapsed bundle in a Morris chair, gazing through the window into the dusky air-shaft.

At length he bent before Rogers and took his hand. "We'll go to some new place together, and start all over again," he said.

Rogers turned his face—the only part of him that the deepening twilight had not blotted out. It seemed a bodyless face—the mask of hopelessness.

"It's no use—I'm all in," he whispered. "Even if I had the courage to make another fight, there's no strength."

He was silent for several moments. Then a low moan broke from him. "Ten years!" he whispered. "And this is the end!"