, 1915-05-06

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 satchei in a safe. Spectacular
young asst" he said ex%plosively.
Il should say SOL" agreed Fargo.
DO you know / used Z be afraid my
Katharine had a leaning toward him.
But thank God, she's a sensible girl"
.
Dusk had fallen that evening when
John Valiant's Panhard 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 look 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 hat 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 a 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 east 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 a low
stool, watching a 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 a 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
fierce twin raps, with one little lone
some one afterward-and this was IN
failing. Safe inside, he saw himself
standing on a big, polar-bear-skin, the
door tight-locked against all comers,
an expectant baby figure with his lit
tie hand clasped in his fathers. The
white rug was the magic entrance to
the Never-Never Country. known only
to those two.
He could lear his own shrill treble:
clearinghouse. Wishing House.
where are your
Then the deeper voice tquite unrec-
ognizable as his father's) answering:
Here ! am, Master; here l 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 a tightening Of the
throat. for he saw a that never
faded from his memory. 1t was the
n hushed and horrible night. when
dread things had been happening that
he could not understand. when a biz