suspicions about his father, against
which he was fighting while denying to himself their very existence,
should take form and substance of unescapable facts, the Doctor would
have failed utterly of comprehension. He ascribed Hal's unease and
preoccupation to a more definite cause. Sedulous in everything which
concerned his "Boyee," he had learned something of the affair with Esme
Elliot, and had surmised distressfully how hard the blow had been: but
what worried him much more were rumors connecting Hal's name with Milly
Neal. Several people had seen the two on the day of the road-house
adventure. Milly, with her vivid femininity was a natural mark for
gossip. The mere fact that she had been in Hal's runabout was enough to
set tongues wagging. Then, sometime thereafter, she had resigned her
position in the "Clarion" office without giving any reason, so Dr.
Surtaine understood. The whole matter looked ugly. Not that the
charlatan would have been particularly shocked had Hal exhibited a
certain laxity of morals in the matter of women. For this sort of
offense Dr. Surtaine had an easy toleration, so long as it was kept
decently under cover. But that his son should become entangled with one
of his--Dr. Surtaine's--employees, a woman under the protection of his
roof, even though it were but the factory roof--that, indeed, would be a
shock to his feudal conception of business honor.

Such dismal considerations the Doctor had suppressed during an unusually
uncomfortable dinner, on a hot and thunder-breeding evening when both of
the Surtaines had painfully talked against time. Immediately after the
meal, Hal, on pretext of beating the storm to the office, left. His
father took his forebodings to the club and attempted to lose them
along with several rubbers of absent-minded bridge. Meantime the woman
for whom his loyalty was concerned as well as for his son, was
stimulating a resolution with the slow poison of liquor around the
corner from the "Clarion" office.

Nine P.M. is slack tide in a morning newspaper office. The afternoon
news is cleared up; the night wires have not yet begun to buzz with
outer-world tidings of importance; the reporters are still afield on the
evening's assignments. As the champion short-distance sleeper of his
craft, which distinction he claimed for himself without fear of
successful contradiction, McGuire Ellis was wont to devote half an hour
or more, beginning on the ninth stroke of the clock, to th