0 sterling to your price," his
lordship calmly announced. "Make your bid L1,600,000 sterling, and
mail it in time for Wednesday's boat. I sail on the same ship.
Proposals will be opened on the twenty-fifth. Arrange for an English
indemnity bond for ten per cent. of your proposition. Do not
communicate in any manner whatsoever with your son, except to forward
the sealed bid to him. He is not to know of our arrangement. You will
meet me in London later; we will take care of that L200,000 out of the
last forty per cent. of the contract price, which is payable thirty
days after completion, inspection, and acceptance of the bridge. You
will not consult your associates upon leaving here. Do I make myself
clear? Very well, sir. The figures are easy to remember: L1,600,000;
L1,400,000 to you. I am pleased with the facilities your plant offers
for doing the work. I am confident you can complete the bridge on
time, and I beg leave to wish you a very pleasant good day."

Jackson Wylie, Sr., did not really come to until he had reached
the street; even then he did not know whether he had come down the
elevator or through the mail-chute. Of one thing only was he certain:
he was due to retire in favor of his son. He told himself that
he needed a trip through the Holy Land with a guardian and a
nursing-bottle; then he paused on the curb and stamped on his corn for
a second time.

"Oh, what an idiot I am!" he cried, savagely. "I could have
gotten L1,600,000 to start with, but--by gad, Sir Thomas is the
coldest-blooded thing I ever went against! I--I can't help but admire
him."

Having shown a deplorable lack of foresight, Mr. Wylie determined to
make up for it by an ample display of hindsight. If the profits on the
job were not to be so large as they might have been, he would at
least make certain of them by obeying instructions to the letter. In
accordance with this determination, he made out the bid himself, and
he mailed it with his own hand that very afternoon. He put three blue
stamps on the envelope, although it required but two. Then he called
up an automobile agency and ordered a foreign town-car his wife had
admired. He decided that she and the girls might go to Paris for the
fall shopping--he might even go with them, in view of that morning's
episode.

For ten days he stood the pressure, then on the morning of the
twenty-fourth he called his _confreres_ into the directors' room, that
same room in which young Hanford had