on of
the disinterestedness of his observation tipped the needles with acid.

In the sharpness of the master's button-counting survey there was swift
finality; and his impressions completed, analyzed, docketed for
reference, he ran on up the flight with light step, still rubbing the
palms of his hands in the unctuously well-contained and appreciative
sense of his power. To Jack he was a fascinating, grand, distant figure,
this of his own father, yet mortally near.

If the model girl had had the same keenness of observation for what is
borne in the face as for what is worn on the back, she could not have
failed to note the strong family resemblance between the young man
standing near her and the man who had paused on the stairway. This
glimpse of his father's mastery of every detail of that organization
which he had built, this glimpse of cool, self-centered authority, only
reminded Jack of his own ignorance and flightiness in view of all that
would be expected of him. He knew less than one of the cash girls about
how to run the store. A duel with Leddy was a simple matter beside this
battle he had to wage.

He mounted the last flight of stairs into an area of glass-paneled doors,
behind which the creative business of the great concern was conducted.
Out of one marked "Private," closing it softly and stepping softly, came
a round-shouldered, stooping man of middle age, with the apprehensive and
palliating manner of a long-service private secretary who has many things
to remember and many persons to appease with explanations. It was evident
that Peter Mortimer had just come from The Presence. At sight of Jack he
drew back in a surprise that broke into a beaming delight which played
over his tired and wrinkled features in ecstasy.

"Jack! Jack! You did it! You did it!" he cried.

"Peter!" Jack seized the secretary's hands and swung them back and forth.

"You've got a grip of iron! And tanned--my, how you're tanned! You did
it, Jack, you did it! It hardly seems credible, when I think of the last
time I saw you."

It was then that the secretary had seen a Jack with his eyes moist; a
Jack pasty-faced, hollow-cheeked; and, in what was a revolutionary
outburst for a unit in the offices, Peter Mortimer had put his arm around
the boy in a cry for the success of the Odyssey for health which the
heir was about to begin. And Mortimer's words were sweet, while the words
of the farewell from the other side of the glass-paneled