thin
reach of his hand, an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swift
release had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him a
feeling of complete detachment, had released him, at least in thought,
from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone coughed
discreetly, it was as though some one had called him from a world from
which already he had made his exit.

Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver.

The voice over the telephone came in brisk staccato sentences.

"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been
thinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you boys,
and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a roadhouse in the Bronx;
going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to draw against
us within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions see you through?"

From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of the
barkeeper a glass crashed to the floor.

The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes.

"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up."

"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper.

The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay for
breakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway.

Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against the
mirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale.

"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing in
million-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd knowed it
was _him_, I'd have hit him once, and hid him in the cellar for the
reward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was a wire-tapper, working a
con game!"

Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the beer-glass
crashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from the hand of the
man who held it, and the man himself had fallen forward. His desk hit
him in the face and woke him--woke him to the wonderful fact that he
still lived; that at forty he had been born again; that before him
stretched many more years in which, as the young man with the white hair
had pointed out, he still could make good.

The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and Hastings
were allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour, two of them were
asked to remain. Into the most private of the private offices Carroll
invited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the main office Hastings had asked
young Thorne, the bond