into New York in the smart roadster Miss Sherwood had placed at
his disposal.

On each trip Larry made swift visits to several of the properties, until
finally he had covered the entire list Miss Sherwood had furnished him
through the agents. His survey corroborated his surmise. The property,
mostly neglected apartment and tenement houses, was in an almost equally
bad way whether one regarded it from the standpoint of sanitation,
comfort, or cold financial returns. The fault for this was due to the
fact that the Sherwoods had left the property entirely in the care
of the agents, and the agents, being old, old-fashioned, and weary of
business to the point of being almost ready to retire, had left the
property to itself.

Prompted by these bad conditions, and to some degree by the then
critical housing famine, with its records of some thousands of families
having no place at all to go and some thousands of families being
compelled for the sake of mere shelter to pay two and three times
what they could afford for a few poor rooms, and with its records of
profiteering landlords, Larry began to make notes for a plan which
he intended later to elaborate--a plan which he tentatively entitled:
"Suggestions for the Development of Sherwood Real-Estate Holdings."
Larry, knowing from the stubs of Miss Sherwood's checkbook what would
be likely to please her, gave as much consideration to Service as
to Profit. The basis of his growing plan was good apartments at fair
rentals. That he saw as the greatest of public services in the present
crisis. But the return upon the investment had to be a reasonable one.
Larry did not believe in Charity, except for extreme cases. He believed,
and his belief had grown out of a wide experience with many kinds of
people, that Charity, of course to a smaller extent, was as definitely a
source of social evil as the then much-talked-of Profiteering.

In the meantime he was seeing his old friend, Joe Ellison, every day;
perhaps smoking with Ellison in his cottage after he had finished his
day's work among the roses, perhaps walking along the bluff which
hung above the Sound, whose cool, clear waters splashed with vacation
laziness upon the shingle. The two men rarely spoke, and never of the
past. Larry was well acquainted with, and understood, the older man's
deep-rooted wish to avoid all talk bearing upon deeds and associates of
other days; that was a part of his life and a phase of existence that
Jo