g house and a
bathing suit on Bailey's beach was showing the latter possession to a
group of friends.

"No one can tell me that Newport isn't damp," he said. "I haven't been
in bathing for twenty-four hours, and yet I can actually wring the
water out of my suit."

CHAPTER II

That same morning, about ten o'clock, Mr. William Cord was shut up in
the study of his house--shut up, that is, as far as entrance from the
rest of the house was concerned, but very open as to windows looking
out across the grass to the sea. It was a small room, and the leather
chairs which made up most of its furnishings were worn, and the
bookshelves were filled with volumes like railroad reports and _Poor's
Manual_, but somehow the total effect of the room was so agreeable
that the family used it more than Mr. Cord liked.

He was an impressive figure, tall, erect, and with that suggestion
of unbroken health which had had something to do with his success in
life. His hair must have been of a sandy brown, for it had turned,
not gray nor white, but that queer no-color that sandy hair does turn,
melting into all pale surroundings. His long face was not vividly
colored, either, but was stamped with the immobility of expression
that sensitive people in contact with violent life almost always
acquire. The result was that there seemed to be something dead about
his face until you saw his eyes, dark and fierce, as if all the fire
and energy of the man were concentrated in them.

He was dressed in gray golfing-clothes that smelled more of peat than
peat does, and, though officially supposed to be wrestling with the
more secret part of correspondence which even his own secretary was
not allowed to see, he was actually wiggling a new golf-club over the
rug, and toying with the romantic idea that it would enable him to
drive farther than he had ever driven before.

There was a knock at the door. Mr. Cord leaned the driver in a corner,
clasped his hands behind his back, straddled his legs a trifle, so
that they seemed to grow out of the rug as the eternal oak grows out
of the sod, and said, "Come in," in the tone of a man who, considering
the importance of his occupation, bears interruption exceedingly well.

Tomes, the butler, entered. "Mr. Verriman, sir, to see you."

"To see _me_?"

"Yes, sir."

Cord just nodded at this, which evidently meant that the visitor was
to be admitted, for Tomes never made a mistake and Verriman presently
en