made his talk a number of years
before. Inasmuch as it was too late now for a disclosure to affect the
opening of the bids in London, he felt absolved from his promise to
Sir Thomas.

"Gentlemen, I have the honor to inform you," he began, pompously,
"that the Barrata Bridge is ours! We have the greatest structural
steel job of the decade." His chest swelled with justifiable pride.

"How? When? What do you mean?" they cried.

He told them of his mysterious but fruitful interview at the Waldorf
ten days previously, enjoying their expressions of amazement to the
full; then he explained in considerable detail the difficulties he had
surmounted in securing such liberal figures from Sir Thomas.

"We were ready to take the contract for L1,300,000, as you will
remember, but by the exercise of some diplomacy"--he coughed
modestly--"I may say, by the display of some firmness and
independence, I succeeded in securing a clean profit of $500,000 over
what we had expected." He accepted, with becoming diffidence, the
congratulations which were showered upon him. Of course, the news
created a sensation, but it was as nothing to the sensation that
followed upon the receipt of a cablegram the next day which read:

ATWYLIE,

Newark, New Jersey.

Terrible mistake somewhere. We lost. Am coming home to-day.

Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., also went home that day--by carriage, for,
after raving wildly of treachery, after cursing the name of some
English nobleman, unknown to most of the office force, he collapsed,
throwing his employees into much confusion. There were rumors of
an apoplectic stroke; some one telephoned for a physician; but the
president of the Atlantic Bridge Company only howled at the latter
when he arrived.

What hit the old man hardest was the fact that he could not explain to
his associates--that he could not even explain to himself, for that
matter. He could make neither head nor tail of the affair; his son was
on the high seas and could not be reached; the mystery of the whole
transaction threatened to unseat his reason. Even when his sorrowing
heir arrived, a week after the shock, the father could gather nothing
at first except the bare details.

All he could learn was that the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission
had met on the twenty-fifth day of May, for the second time in its
history, with Sir Thomas Drummond in the chair. In the midst of an
ultra-British solemnity the bids had been opened and read--nine of
them--