ition of trouble, Flint gazed fixedly
at the mechanic as the car swung round the bend in the road. The glance
was returned.

Yielding to some kind of imperative curiosity, the Billionaire leaned
over the side of the car--leaned out, with his coat flapping in the
stiff wind--and for a moment peered back at the disquieting workman.

Then the car swept him out of sight, and Flint resumed his seat again.

He did not know--for he had not seen it happen--that in that moment the
slippery, leather-covered note-book had slid from his lolling coat
pocket and had fallen with a sharp slap on the white macadam, skidded
along and come to rest in the ditch.

The workingman, however, who had paused and turned to look after the
speeding car, _he_ had seen all this.

A moment he stood there, peering. Then, retracing his steps with
resolution he picked up the little book and slid it into the pocket of
his jeans.

Deserted was the road. Not a soul was to be seen, save the crossing
flagman, musing in his chair beside his little hut, quite oblivious to
everything but a rank cob pipe. The workman's act had not been noticed.

Nobody had observed him. Nobody knew. Not a living creature had
witnessed the slight deed on which, by a strange freak of fate, the
history of the world was yet to turn.

CHAPTER VIII.

ONE UNBIDDEN, SHARES GREAT SECRETS.

Immediately on discovering his loss--which was soon after having reached
his office--Flint, in something like a fright, telephoned down to the
Oakwood Heights laboratory and instructed Herzog, in person, to make a
careful search for it and to report results inside an hour. Even though
some of the essentials of his plan were written in a code of his own
devising, Flint paled before the possible results should the book fall
into the hands of anybody intelligent enough to fathom its meaning.

"Damn the luck!" he ejaculated, pacing the office floor, his fists
knotted. "If it had been a pocket book with a few thousand inside, that
would have been a trifle. But to lose my plan of campaign--God grant no
harm may come of it!"

Waldron, slyly observing him, could not suppress a smile.

"Calling on God, eh?" sneered he. "You _must_ be agitated. I haven't
heard that kind of entreaty on your lips, Flint, since the year of the
big coal strike, when you prayed God the gun-men might 'get' the
strikers before they could organize. Come, come, man, brace up! Your
book will turn up all right; and e