"Will you? I guess I need something pretty inflammatory."

"Lord of love! haven't you good and plenty, without calling upon me?
Are you going to let these stock-jobbing land-pirates on 'Change gibbet
you as a solemn warning to aspiring young promoters?"

Adair paused with the cigarette half way to his lips. "Ah," he said,
after a thoughtful moment. "Perhaps that was what I needed. No; they
will not gibbet any of us to-day; and possibly not to-morrow." Then,
with a sudden dropping of the mask of easy-going indifference: "Give me
the key to your room, and find me a swift stenographer. Then go over to
the Lake Shore headquarters and ask to have the Nadia coupled to the
evening train for New York."

"But the president?" Ford began. "Didn't he say something about going
over these new lines on an inspection trip?"

"Never mind Uncle Sidney: on this one occasion he will change his plans
and go back to New York with us," said Adair curtly.

"Good," said Ford approvingly. "And how about opening the new through
line for business? Do we go on? Or do we hang it up until we find out
where we are 'at'?"

"Don't hold it up a single minute. Drive it for all the power you can
get behind it. If we have to collide with things, let's do it with the
throttle wide open. Now find me that shorthand person quickly, will
you?"

By what means the president was persuaded or coerced into doing the
thing he had not planned to do, Ford was not to know. But for that
matter, after carrying out Adair's instructions the engineer plunged at
once into his own Herculean task of reorganization, emerging only when
he made a tardy sixth at the president's dinner table in the hotel cafe
in the evening.

The dinner, which the young engineer had been fondly counting upon as a
momentary relaxation from the heart-breaking business strain, was a
dismal failure on its social side. President Colbrith, as yet, it
appeared, in blissful ignorance of the latest news from New York, had
reserved the seat of honor for his new assistant, and the half-hour was
filled to overflowing with minute and cautionary definitions of the
assistant's powers and duties.

Ford listened with a blank ear on that side. There was work to do, and
one man to do it. He did not care particularly to hear instructions
which he would probably have to disregard at the first experimental dash
into the new field. He meant to hold himself rigidly to account for
results; more than this he though