EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON

Skinyer and Beatem had paid the editor, who was crooked, two thousand
dollars cash to hold back that extra for twenty-four hours; and the
editor had paid the reporting staff, who were crooked, twenty-five
dollars each to keep the news quiet, and the compositors, who were also
crooked, ten dollars per man to hold their mouths shut till the
morning, with the result that from editors and sub-editors and
reporters and compositors the news went seething forth in a flood that
the Erie Auriferous Consolidated was going to shatter into fragments
like the bursting of a dynamite bomb. It rushed with a thousand
whispering tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors
of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, and till every honest
man that held a share of the stock shivered in his tracks and reached
out to give, sell, or destroy it. Only the unwinking Idiots, and the
mild Orphans, and the calm Deaf mutes and the impassive Chinese held
tight to what they had. So gathered the storm, till all the town, like
the great rotunda of the Grand Palaver, was filled with a silent "call
for Mr. Tomlinson," voiceless and ominous.

And while all this was happening, and while at Skinyer and Beatem's
they worked with frantic pens and clattering type there came a knock at
the door, hesitant and uncertain, and before the eyes of the astounded
office there stood in his wide-awake hat and long black coat the figure
of "the man Tomlinson" himself.

And Skinyer, the senior partner, no sooner heard what Tomlinson wanted
than he dashed across the outer office to his partner's room with his
hyena face all excitement as he said:

"Beatem, Beatem, come over to my room. This man is absolutely the
biggest thing in America. For sheer calmness and nerve I never heard of
anything to approach him. What do you think he wants to do?"

"What?" said Beatem.

"Why, he's giving his entire fortune to the university."

"By Gad!" ejaculated Beatem, and the two lawyers looked at one another,
lost in admiration of the marvellous genius and assurance of Tomlinson.

* * * * *

Yet what had happened was very simple.

Tomlinson had come back from the university filled with mingled hope
and hesitation. The university, he saw, needed the money and he hoped
to give it his entire fortune, to put Dr. Boomer in a position to
practically destroy the whole place. But, like many a modest man, he
lacked th