h
would have gone a long way toward installing a power-plant, looking at
pictures of Jake Kilrain in pugilistic garb and pose, the racing yacht
Shamrock under full sail, and Heatherbloom taking a record smashing
jump, the spider-legged office boy came from inside endeavoring to hide
some pleasurable excitement under a semblance of dignity and office
reticence.

"Mr. Harrah has been detained and won't be here for perhaps an hour."

"I'll wait," Bruce replied laconically.

The office boy lingered. He fancied Bruce because of his size and his
hat and a resemblance that he thought he saw between him and his
favorite western hero of the movies; besides, he was bursting with a
proud secret. He hunched his shoulders and looked cautiously behind
toward the inner offices. Between his palms he whispered:

"He's been arrested."

It delighted him that Bruce's eyes widened.

"Third time in a month--speedin' in Jersey--his new machine is 80
horse-power--! A farmer put tacks in the road and tried to kill him wit'
a pitchfork. Say! my boss _et_ him. I bet he'll get fined the limit."
His red necktie swelled palpably and he swaggered proudly. "Pooh! he
don't care. My boss, he--"

"Willie!"

"Yes ma'am." The stenographer's call interrupted further confidences
from Willie and he scuttled away, leaving Bruce with the impression that
the boy's admiration for his boss was not unmixed with apprehension.

The hour had gone when the door opened and a huge, fiery-bearded,
dynamic sort of person went swinging past Bruce without a glance and on
to the inner offices. The office boy's husky "That's him!" was not
needed to tell him that J. Winfield Harrah had arrived. The air suddenly
seemed charged electrically. The stenographer speeded up and dapper
young clerks and accountants bent to their work with a zeal and
assiduity which merited immediate promotion, while "Willie," Bruce
noticed, came from a brief session in the private office with the dazed
look of one who has just been through an experience.

When Bruce's turn came Harrah sat at his desk like an expectant ogre;
there was that in his attitude which seemed to say: "Enter; I eat
promoters." His eyes measured Bruce from head to foot in a glance of
appraisement, and Bruce on his part subjected Harrah to the same swift
scrutiny.

Without at all being able to explain it Bruce felt instantly at his
ease, he experienced a kind of relief as does a stranger in a strange
land when he dis