ngdon and Roebuck and me there were six principals in the
proposed Coal combine, three of them richer and more influential in finance
than even Langdon, all of them except possibly Dykeman, the lawyer or
navigating officer of the combine, more formidable figures than I. Yet none
of these men was being assailed. "Why am I singled out?" I asked myself,
and I felt that if I could answer, I should find I had the means wholly
or partly to defeat them. But I could not explain to my satisfaction even
Langdon's activities against me. I felt that Anita was somehow, in part at
least, the cause; but, even so, how had he succeeded in convincing Roebuck
that I must be clipped and plucked into a groundling?

"It must have something to do with the Manasquale mines," I decided. "I
thought I had given over my control of them, but somehow I must still have
a control that makes me too powerful for Roebuck to be at ease so long as I
am afoot and armed." And I resolved to take my lawyers and search the whole
Manasquale transaction--to explore it from attic to underneath the cellar
flooring. "We'll go through it," said I, "like ferrets through a ship's
hold."

As I was finishing breakfast, Anita came in. She had evidently slept well,
and I regarded that as ominous. At her age, a crisis means little sleep
until a decision has been reached. I rose, but her manner warned me not to
advance and try to shake hands with her.

"I have asked Alva to stop with me here for a few days," she said formally.

"Alva!" said I, much surprised. She had not asked one of her own friends;
she had asked a girl she had met less than two days before, and that girl
my partner's daughter.

"She was here yesterday morning," Anita explained. And I now wondered how
much Alva there was in Anita's firm stand against her parents.

"Why don't you take her down to our place on Long Island?" said I, most
carefully concealing my delight--for Alva near her meant a friend of mine
and an advocate and example of real womanhood near her. "Everything's ready
for you there, and I'm going to be busy the next few days--busy day and
night."

She reflected. "Very well," she assented presently. And she gave me a
puzzled glance she thought I did not see--as if she were wondering whether
the enemy was not hiding new and deeper guile under an apparently harmless
suggestion.

"Then I'll not see you again for several days," said I, most businesslike.
"If you want anything, there will be