control our own majority or let the Transcontinental
have it. Our pool got its fifty-one per cent. all right, but in the
nature of things the enemy stood as the next largest stock-holder in
P. S-W., since they'd been buying right and left against us. Now, since
we don't need any more, and nobody else wants it, all the
Transcontinental people have to do is to unload on the market, and down
she goes."

Ford looked incredulous, and then wrathful.

"Adair, tell me: did I have to stop my work when my time is worth fifty
dollars a minute, and come all the way to New York to tell you folks
what to do?" he demanded.

Adair's laugh was utterly and absolutely care-free.

"It looks that way, doesn't it? Have you got the compelling club up your
sleeve, as usual?"

"A boy might carry it--and swing it, too," was the disgusted answer.
"When does the board meet again? Or has it concluded to lie down in the
harness?"

"Oh, it gets together every morning--got the meeting habit, you know.
Everybody's in a blue funk, but we still have the daily round-up to swap
funeral statistics."

"All right. Meet me here in the morning, and we'll go and join the
procession. Can you make it nine o'clock?"

"Sure. It's too late to go home, and I'll stay here. Then you'll be
measurably certain that I can't escape. May I see the tip end of the
club?"

"No," said Ford grumpily. "You don't deserve it. Go to bed and store up
a head of steam that will carry you through the hardest day's work you
ever hoped to do. Good night."

They met again at the breakfast-table the following morning, and Ford
talked pointedly of everything save the P. S-W. predicament. One of
Adair's past fads had been the collecting of odd weapons; Ford
discovered this and drew the young man skilfully into a discussion of
the medieval secrets of sword-tempering.

"I've a bit of the old Damascus, myself," said the engineer. "Tybee--he
was on the Joppa-Jerusalem road in the building--picked it up for me.
Curious piece of old steel; figured and flowered and etched and inlaid
with silver. There were jewels in the pommel once, I take it; the
settings are still there to show where some practical-turned vandal dug
them out."

Adair was quite at a loss to guess how old swords and their histories
could bear upon the financial situation, but he was coming to know Ford
better. Some one has said that it is only the small men who are careful
and troubled on the eve of a great battle. So