was nothing for it. Out to California,
willy-nilly, I must go, and waste precious weeks there with lawyers and
house agents and other tiresome human necessities.

The one cheering thought in all this annoying pother was--and it was a
thought that grew rapidly in significance to me as I journeyed
westward--that fate had now made it possible for me to purify Hyena
Parker's millions by putting them to work for mankind.--Well, they have
since done their part, to the last dollar; they have spent themselves in
the losing battle against Misery, and are no more. Nothing became their
lives like the ending of them. But for all that, the world, you see, is
as it is--and the battle goes on.

Phil kept in touch with me from the other side, in spite of his
difficulties--as did Jimmy and Susan--and he had prepared the way for me
when at length I could free myself and sail. I was instructed to go to
Paris, direct, and fulfill certain duties there in connection with the
ever-increasing burdens and exasperations of the "C. R. B." I did so.
Six months later my activities were transferred to Berne; and--not to
trace in detail the evolution of my career, such as it was; for though
useful, I hope, it was never, like Phil's, exceptionally brilliant--I
had become, about the period of America's entry into the war, a modest
captain in the Red Cross, stationed at Evian, in connection with the
endless, heartbreaking task of repatriating refugees from the invaded
districts. And there my job rooted me until January of that dark winter
of our unspeakable depression, 1918.

With the beginning of America's entry into the war Phil had gone to
Petrograd for the American Red Cross, his commission being to save the
lives of as many Russian babies as possible by the distribution of
canned milk. Then, one evening--early in September, 1917, it must have
been--he started alone for Moscow, to lay certain wider plans for
disinterested relief-work before the sinister, the almost mythical
Lenine. That is the last that has ever been seen of him, and no word has
ever come forth directly from him out of the chaos men still call
Russia. The Red Cross and the American and French Governments have done
their utmost to discover his whereabouts, without avail. There are
reasons for believing he is not dead, nor even a prisoner. The dictators
of the soviet autocracy have been unable to find a trace of him, so they
affirm; and there are reasons also for believing that thi