is it you say? Get busy. Yes."

Hellbeam rose stiffly from his seat and picked up his hat. He was quite
untouched by the other's change of tone.

"Do it how you please. Break that mill. I care nothing for the means.
Smash 'em, and leave the rest to me. And when you that have done you can
do the thing you please. You will have my good will. I say that. Now I
go."

* * * * *

Peterman picked up the 'phone the moment the door had closed behind the
one man in all the world he really feared, and at the other end of it
Nancy took the message summoning her to his presence. The man spoke with
unusual urgency. But his tone was pleasant, and more than conciliatory.
He wanted her at once. She could leave her reports. She could leave
everything. He had some news for her of the pleasantest nature. Oh, yes.
He had determined big things for her. She had earned them all. But a
thing had happened whereby there need be no limit to her advancement if
she would take the chance of a big work offered her. Would she kindly
come up right away.

Nancy listened to this message with a stirring of heart. What was the
great work that was to place no limit on her advancement? It was a
feeling rather than a thought. For a moment she stood in her
glass-partitioned office after she had received the message and a smile
of great happiness lit her eyes.

She was desperately earnest with a singleness of purpose which had in it
something of the recklessness of the father before her. She was a child
in all else. A wide vision of achievement was spread out before her. She
could see nothing beyond. She could see nothing to give her pause,
nothing even to bestir a belated caution. So she left her office for the
interview Peterman had demanded without suspicion, and with a heart and
mind ready to plunge her headlong into any labours which the Skandinavia
demanded of her.

She had completely forgotten, in that moment of exultation, the squarely
military figure that had passed down the dining-room of the Chateau, and
the coldly unsmiling eyes with which it had regarded her as she sat with
her companion over their memorable meal.

CHAPTER XV

THE SAILING OF THE _Empress_

Bull Sternford was reading over the telegram he had just written. Its
phraseology was curious. But it expressed the things he wanted to say,
and he knew it would be understood by the man to whom it was addressed.

"HARKER, SACHIGO, LABRADOR.