us that at that moment I could not O.K. them. At
last specialists from Boston arrived and it was diagnosed that I was
suffering from an aggravated attack of appendicitis. At two o'clock in
the morning, after a prolonged consultation, the consensus of opinion
was that my next field of operations would be in another world.

It must have been some time a little later that I, awaking to a brief
interval of consciousness, witnessed a tableau, the memory of which
invariably rises to my mind's eye whenever I try to mitigate or subdue
my feelings of hatred and disgust for Addicks. The room was dimly lit;
the two doctors were at the foot of the bed; Addicks, standing beside
them, was looking fixedly at me. I caught his eye; doped as I was with
opiates I saw the cold, calculating expression of his face, which told
me as plainly as words that he felt it was all up with me, that my
usefulness to him was at an end, and that without a thought for my
interests or a scintilla of regret, he was calculating how to turn my
death to his advantage. An amused conviction of the man's heartlessness
crept over me, and then I passed out into the land of dreams.

From that night until one bright morning ten days later, I was visiting
other worlds than those of finance and gas; but on the tenth day they
told me I had eluded the grim ferryman and, barring accident, might get
out into the world again in five weeks. A suspicion which owed its
origin to that glimpse of Addicks on the first night of my illness
awakened in my mind, and the following day I sent for my principal
attorney and demanded an exact statement of what had happened in the
interval of my illness. He had kept close track of all that had
occurred, and the facts he revealed, calloused as I was to the thought
of Addicks' baseness, horrified me by their cold-blooded villany. My
associates had gone ahead with a vengeance, without waiting a minute to
see whether I should live or die. My offer to the Legislature had been
withdrawn; Addicks had substituted his name for mine in all the
documents, and then he had traded with Rogers. It had been arranged
between them that Whitney should go on and get the charter, which was to
allow the company to sell gas at any price, for it was not to be under
the supervision of the gas commissioners, who had pledged the public
that the price of gas in Boston should not ever be more than $1 per one
thousand feet. This obtained, a new corporation was to be or