The Madisonian. (Richmond, Ky.) 1913-1914, 1914-03-03
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-zS6 ILLUSTRATIONS &c LAUREN STOUT


Fargo read. He looked up. "Securi-
ties aggregating three millions!" he
said in hushed voice. "Why, unless
I've been misinformed, that represents
practically all his private fortune"
The other nodded Turned over to
the corporation with his resignation as
a yice-president, and without blessed
string tied to EN-! What do you think
Of that?"
Think! It's the most absurdly
idiotic thing ever met Two weeks
ago, before the investigation
but now, when it's perfectly certain
they can bring nothing home to him"
He paused. '.Of course suppose it'll
save the corporation, Ell? But it may
be ten years before it's securities pay
dividends. And this is real money.
Where the devil does he come in
meanwhile?"
The receiver pursed his lips. II
knew his father" he said. HE had
the same crazy quixotic streak"
He 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 sensible grit"
Dusk had fallen that evening when
John Valiant's Panharc turned into a
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
ry and sat down. tossing the letters
on the magazine-littered table. He had
suddenly remembered that it was his
twenty-fifth 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
would have been done no matter what
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 play of his childhood.
He saw himself seated on low
stool, watching funny old clock with
| a moon-face, whose smiling lips curved
| up like military mustachios, and wish
| ing the lazy long hands would hurry.
He saw himself stealing down long
corridor to the door of a big room
strewn with books and papers, that
through some baleful and mysterious
spell could not be made to open at
all hours. When the hands pointed
right, however, there was the open
| Sesame"-his own secret knock, two
| fxrviy,
some one afterward-and this was un-
| failing. Safe inside, he saw himself
standing on big, polar bear-skin, the
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 to
| the Never-Neyer Country, known only
ito those two.
He could hear his own shrill treble:
Westinghouse, Westinghouse,
where are you2"
Then the deeper voice quite unrec-
ognizable as his father's) answering:
Here I am, Master; here 1 ami"
And instantly the room vanished
and they were in the Never-Never
Land, and before them reared the big
| gest house in the world, with a row of
white pillars across its front a mile
high
John Valiant felt an odd beating of
the heart and Tightening of the
throat, for he saw a scene that never
faded from his memory. 1t was the
one hushed and horrible night, when
dread things had been happening that
| he could not understand, when big
man with gold eyeglasses, who
smelled of some curious sickish-sweet
perfume. came and took him by the
hand and led him into a room where
his father lay in bed, very gray and
quiet.