ld come to him from the
outside world. His entire life seemed to him limited to one short hour
in one small room, apart from the world and its concerns. That brief
episode was too recent and too personal to allow him at once to cast off
its impression. In his present mood, it appeared to be the focal point
of his entire life, the arena upon which the two warring strains in his
blood had met to fight to a finish. The fight had been sharp and fierce;
already he was beginning to rejoice that the Puritan had conquered the
Slav. Beyond that point, as yet, he was powerless to go. Later, his
rejoicing would be increased by the knowledge that in his own words and
deeds he had never swerved from a certain loyalty towards Lorimer.

"Mr. Lorimer is--" the proprietor was beginning vaguely.

Thayer's nod was more curt than he realized.

"Mr. Lorimer is dead."

"You don't mean it! When?" The man was visibly startled.

"This morning, between seven and eight o'clock."

"It must have been very sudden?" The accent was plainly interrogative.

"Yes, at the last. He had been quite ill for twenty-four hours. He was
overtired with his walk of the day before, and then ate something that
disagreed with him. He suffered terribly, and, at the last, heart
failure developed." Thayer ended his fable with a deep breath of relief.

"But they had no doctor," the man objected.

Thayer raised his eyes and looked at him steadily for an instant.

"No," he said quietly. "Mr. Lorimer has had a number of such attacks,
and Mrs. Lorimer had all the proper remedies. Until within a few
moments of the end, there was no indication that this attack was any
more serious than the others had been, and there had never before been
any tendency to heart failure." He paused for a moment, deliberately
challenging another question. Then he added, "If your telephone is not
in use, I must send word to Mrs. Lorimer's friends." And he walked away
to the telephone closet in the corner of the office.

He called up three numbers in New York. The first one was Mr. Dane's
office, and to him Thayer announced the bare fact of Lorimer's death and
of Beatrix's need for her parents. His talk with Bobby Dane was longer,
and at intervals it became interjectional in its terseness. To Bobby,
Thayer went over the story in all its detail, yet in such guarded
phrases that no one else, listening, could have gained an inkling of the
true cause of Lorimer's death. After the first shock w