swered gave a brief order: "Have the
Naught-Seven provisioned and made up to go east as a special at
twelve-ten to-day. Tell Despatcher Darby to make the schedule
fast--nineteen hours or less to the River."

The clerk nodded and disappeared, and North turned again to MacMorrogh.

"Now about that other matter: I'll find you a go-between to approach
Ford; but to be quite frank with you, you'll have to be liberal with the
young man for his services. When you go into the diplomatic field, you
have to spend money." He was pressing another of the electric buttons as
he spoke, and to the office boy who put his face in at the door, he
said: "Ask Mr. Eckstein to step in here a minute."

It was the private secretary, the well-groomed young man with the alien
eyes and nose who answered the summons. North gave him his instructions
in a curt sentence.

"Mr. MacMorrogh would like to have a little talk with you, Eckstein:
take him into the other room where you can be undisturbed."

It was half an hour later when the door of the library opened to readmit
the private secretary and the contractor, and in the interval the
division superintendent's clerk had returned to say that the special
train schedule was made up, and that the Naught-Seven would be waiting
at the Union Station at twelve-ten.

"Well?" said the general manager, lifting a slow eyebrow at MacMorrogh
and compressing into the single word his wish to know what had been done
in the conference of two.

"'Tis all right, Misther North," said the contractor, rubbing his hands.
"'Tis a crown jewel ye have in this yooung--"

North cut the eulogy short in a word to his secretary.

"I go east, special, at twelve-ten, Eckstein, as Mr. MacMorrogh has
probably told you. I have a luncheon appointment at twelve with Mr.
Ford. Meet him when he comes, and make my excuses--without telling him
anything he ought not to know. If you can take my place as his host, do
so; but in any event, keep him from finding out where we have gone until
we are well on the way. That's all."

This was why Ford, walking the few blocks from his hotel at noon to keep
his engagement with North, found the general manager's private office
closed, and a suave, soft-spoken young man with a foreign east of
countenance waiting to make his superior's excuses.

"Mr. North was called out of town quite unexpectedly on a wire," was the
private secretary's explanation. "He tried to telephone you at the
Brown, but th