messages
came--to them, sitting in conclave in the library--to Philip Harris in
his bare office and to the mother, waiting alone in her room.

At last she could not bear it. "I cannot hold out, Philip," she said,
one day, when he had come in and found her hanging up the receiver with
a fixed look. "Don't trust me, dear. Take me away." And that night the
big car had borne her swiftly from the city, out to the far-breathing
air of the plain and the low hills. In her room in the house on
the lake, her little telephone bell tinkled, and waited, and rang
again--baffled by long silence and by discreet replies.... The tapped
wires concentrated now upon Philip Harris, working by suggestion, and
veiled threat, on his overwrought nerves till his hand shook when he
reached out to the receiver--and his voice betrayed him in his denials.
They were closing on him, with hints of an ultimatum. He dared not
trust himself. He left the house to the detectives and went down to the
offices, where he could work and no one could get at him. Every message
from the outside world came to him sifted, and he breathed more freely
as he took up the telephone. The routine of business steadied him. In a
week he should be himself--he could return to the attack.

Then a message got through to him--up through the offices. The man who
delivered it spoke in a clear, straight voice that did not rise or fall.
He had agreed to give the message, he said--a hundred thousand paid
to-day, or no communication for three months. The child would be taken
out of the country. The men behind the deal were getting tired and would
drop the whole business. They had been more than fair in the chances
they had offered for compromise.... There was a little pause in the
message--then the voice went on, "I am one of your own men, Harris,
inside the works--a man that you killed--in the way of business. I
agreed to give you the message--for quits. Good-bye." The voice rang off
and Philip Harris sat alone.

A man that he had killed--in the way of business--! Hundreds of them--at
work for him--New York--Cincinnati--St. Louis. It would not be easy--to
trace a man that he had killed in business.

So he sat with bent head, in the circle of his own works... the network
he had spread over the land--and somewhere, outside that circle, his
child, the very heart, was held as hostage--three months. Little Betty!
He shivered a little and got op and reached for a flask of brandy and
poure