The enterprise. [volume] (Harlem, Mont.) 1899-1926, 1914-03-26


meanwhile?"
The receiver pursed his lips II
knew his father" he said. He had
the same crazy quixotic streak"
fle gathered the scattered docu-
ments and locked them carefully with
the satchel in a safe. "Spectacular
young asst" he said explosively
Il should say sol" agreed Fargo.
DO you know used to be afraid my
Katharine had leaning toward him.
But thank God, she's a sensible grill
Dusk had fallen that evening when
John Valiant's Panhard turned into
cross-street and circled into the yawn-
ing mouth of his garage
A little later, the bulldog at his
heels, he assembled the steps of his
club, where he lodged-he had dis
posed of his bachelor apartments a
fortnight ago. The cavernous seats of
The lounge were all occupied, but he
did not pause as he strobe through
the hall. He took the little pile OF
letters the boy handed him at the
desk and went slowly up the stairway.
He wandered into the deserted libra
~ and sat down, tossing the letters
on the magazine-littered table. He had
suddenly remembered that it was his
| twenty-hfth birthday.
In the reaction from the long strain
he felt physically spent. He thought
Of what he had done that afternoon
with sense of satisfaction. A re-
versal of public judgment, in his own
case, had not entered his head. He
knew his world-its comfortable facul
ty of forgetting, and the multitude of
sins that wealth may cover. To pre-
serve at whatever personal cost the
one noble monument his fathers
genius had reared, and to right the
wrong that would cast Its gloomy
shadow on his name-that had been
his only thought. What he had done
the outcome Of the investigation. But
now, he told himself, no one could say
the act had been wrung from him.
That, he fancied, would have been his
fathers way.
He smiled-a slow smile of reminis-
cence-for there had come to him at
that moment the dearest of all those
memories-a play Of his childhood.
He saw himself seated on a low
stool, watching funny old clock with
moon-face, whose smiling lips curved
up like military mustachios, and wish
ing the lazy long hands would hurry
He saw himself stealing down a long
corridor to the door of big room
streWn with books and papers, thai
through some baleful and mysterious
spell could not be made to open a.
all hours. When the hands pointed
right, however, there was the "Oper
Sesame"-his own secret knock, two
fierce twin raps, with one little lone
some one afterward-and this was I'm
failing. Safe inside, he saw hlmsel
standing on big, polar-bearskin. thu
door tight-locked against all corners
an expectant baby figure with his lit
tie hand clasped in his fathers. The
white rug was the magic entrance t
the Never-Never Country, known onl,
to those two.
He could hear his own shrill treble
Wishing House, Westinghouse
where are you?"
Then the deeper voice quite unree
ognizable as his father's) answering:
Here l am, Master; here I ami
And instantly the room vanishe
and they we're In the NeverNeve
Land, and before them reared the big
gest house in the world, with row 0
white pillars across it's front a mil
high.
John Valiant felt an odd beating c
the heart and tightening of tn
throat, for he saw a scene that neve
faded from his memory. 1t was tn
one hushed and horrible night, whe
dread things had been happening tina
he could not understand, when q hi