nd offered him a chair, and handed him a morning newspaper. There were
people waiting in the room; strange people, only like those Mr.
Thorndike had seen on ferry-boats. They leaned forward toward young Mr.
Andrews, fawning, their eyes wide with apprehension.

Mr. Thorndike refused the newspaper. "I thought I was going to see the
judge," he suggested.

"Court doesn't open for a few minutes yet," said the assistant district
attorney. "Judge is always late, anyway."

Mr. Thorndike suppressed an exclamation. He wanted to protest, but his
clear mind showed him that there was nothing against which, with reason,
he could protest. He could not complain because these people were not
apparently aware of the sacrifice he was making. He had come among them
to perform a kindly act. He recognized that he must not stultify it by a
show of irritation. He had precipitated himself into a game of which he
did not know the rules. That was all. Next time he would know better.
Next time he would send a clerk. But he was not without a sense of
humor, and the situation as it now was forced upon him struck him as
amusing. He laughed good-naturedly and reached for the desk telephone.

"May I use this?" he asked. He spoke to the Wall Street office. He
explained he would be a few minutes late. He directed what should be
done if the market opened in a certain way. He gave rapid orders on many
different matters, asked to have read to him a cablegram he expected
from Petersburg, and one from Vienna.

"They answer each other," was his final instruction. "It looks like
peace."

Mr. Andrews with genial patience had remained silent. Now he turned upon
his visitors. A Levantine, burly, unshaven, and soiled, towered
truculently above him. Young Mr. Andrews with his swivel chair tilted
back, his hands clasped behind his head, his cigarette hanging from his
lips, regarded the man dispassionately.

"You gotta hell of a nerve to come to see me," he commented cheerfully.
To Mr. Thorndike, the form of greeting was novel. So greatly did it
differ from the procedure of his own office, that he listened with
interest.

"Was it you," demanded young Andrews, in a puzzled tone, "or your
brother who tried to knife me?" Mr. Thorndike, unaccustomed to cross the
pavement to his office unless escorted by bank messengers and
plain-clothes men, felt the room growing rapidly smaller; the figure of
the truculent Greek loomed to heroic proportions. The hand of the bank