mistake in any way; but that is
precisely how he did feel. Yet he was sure he had never met this young
man before, in spite of a certain familiarity of face that haunted him.
Not being a regular reader of the sporting pages, he was at a loss to
account for this, as he prided himself on his memory for faces.

With a shrug in dismissal of the inconsequential, Mr. Podmore went to
lunch. He had comfortable quarters at the Queen's Hotel, just a block
from the Union Station, and after a light lunch in the big dining-room
he idled about the rambling old rotunda for an hour or more, smoking
many cigarettes and attempting to read a magazine. The solicitous
anxiety of his waiter during luncheon had earned that surprised
individual a rebuke and cost him the usual tip; the friendly advances
of a hotel guest, which ordinarily would have been met by equal
geniality, finally sent Podmore up in the old-fashioned elevator to his
room, where he locked the door and began pacing restlessly back and
forth. Not until a sixth glance at his watch indicated the approach of
2 o'clock did his unusual fidgetiness begin to disappear; but when at
last he walked briskly out of the hotel Mr. Podmore, to all intents,
had regained his normal self-possession.

He went straight to the down-town offices of the Alderson Construction
Company, arriving punctual to the minute of his appointment. Both
Nickleby and Alderson were already there.

"Well, we're all here, Alderson. Are you waiting for somebody to open
with prayer?" complained J. Cuthbert Nickleby with an impatient glance
at his watch after the greetings were over. "I don't see why the devil
you needed me here at all, Pod. Why all the ceremony?" The President
of the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company was a thin, sallow man
with a thin, tight line of a mouth. The cynicism of his expression was
chronic.

"Because you'd be the first to holler if anything went wrong," retorted
Podmore, eyeing him pointedly as he tilted his hat to the back of his
head and proceeded calmly to skin the glove from his left hand. "We're
all in this together, J. C., and that's why I insisted on you being
here--to see that everything is according to Hoyle."

"Aint getting cold feet already are you?"

An easy laugh was Mr. Podmore's only rejoinder to this insult. They
both watched Alderson, who had swung open the door of the safe and was
reaching into its depths. The contractor was stout and florid, and his