hen; long after she had put her head in at the
door to ask, "Aigs 'r cakes for breakfast?" long after those two
busy brains should have rested in sleep, the two sat at either
side of the light-flooded table, the face of one glowing as he
talked, the face of the other sparkling as she listened. And at
midnight:

"Why, you infant wonder!" exclaimed Emma McChesney.

At nine o'clock next morning when Jock McChesney entered the
offices of the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company he carried a
flat, compact bundle of papers under his arm encased in protecting
covers of pasteboard, and further secured by bands of elastic.
This he carried to his desk, deposited in a drawer, and locked the
drawer.

By eleven o'clock the things which he had predicted the night
before had come to pass. A plump little man, with a fussy manner
and Western clothes had been ushered into Bartholomew Berg's
private office. Instinct told him that this was Griebler. Jock
left his desk and strolled up to get the switchboard operator's
confirmation of his guess. Half an hour later Sam Hupp hustled by
and disappeared into the Old Man's sanctum.

Jock fingered the upper left-hand drawer of his desk. The
maddening blankness of that closed door! If only he could find
some excuse for walking into that room--any old excuse, no matter
how wild!--just to get a chance at it--

His telephone rang. He picked up the receiver, his eye on the
closed door, his thoughts inside that room.

"Mr. Berg wants to see you right away," came the voice of the
switchboard operator.

Something seemed to give way inside--something in the region of
his brain--no, his heart--no, his lungs--

"Well, can you beat that!" said Jock McChesney aloud, in a kind of
trance of joy. "Can--you--beat--that!"

Then he buttoned the lower button of his coat, shrugged his
shoulders with an extra wriggle at the collar (the modern hero's
method of girding up his loins), and walked calmly into
Bartholomew Berg's very private office.

In the second that elapsed between the opening and the closing of
the door Jock's glance swept the three men--Bartholomew Berg,
quiet, inscrutable, seated at his great table-desk; Griebler, lost
in the depths of a great leather chair, smoking fussily and
twitching with a hundred little restless, irritating gestures; Sam
Hupp, standing at the opposite side of the room, hands in pockets,
attitude argumentative.

"This is Mr. McChesney," said Bartholomew Berg. "Mr. Gr