pursue. At the side of the road, under
the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with his
arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning eyes
the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested and knock-kneed
boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer concerned him. It
was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and not only preached
but before his eyes put into practice, that interested him. The young
man with white hair had been running away from temptation. At forty
miles an hour he had been running away from the temptation to do a
fellow mortal "a good turn." That morning, to the appeal of a drowning
Caesar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered, "Sink!" That
answer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider he had
sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horse-power
racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or
philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not
escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set him
again to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled
past saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, and
leaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as though he
sat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and stared at nothing.
The half-hour passed and the young man swung his car back toward the
city. But at the first roadhouse that showed a blue-and-white telephone
sign he left it, and into the iron box at the end of the bar dropped a
nickel. He wished to communicate with Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and
Hastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll had just issued orders that he
must not be disturbed, the young man gave his name.

The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved air
of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully. "What
are you putting over?" he demanded.

The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and, though
apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the barkeeper
listened.

Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings also
listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices,
and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, is
the most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer, to
the coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but wi