l this stage play? Can't you
anticipate that much without endangering your bubble?"

Ford lowered his voice again.

"I gave you the hint. Penfield, my chief clerk--his desk is just on the
other side of that partition--is an ex-main-line man, shoved upon me
when I didn't want him. He was General Manager North's stenographer.
For reasons which will be apparent to you a little later on, I want to
blow my bubble in my own way; or, to change the figure, I'd like to fire
the first volley myself."

Frisbie's grin was rather more than less diabolic.

"Then I'd begin by firing Mr. Penfield, himself," he remarked.

"No, you wouldn't," said Ford. "There are going to be obstacles enough
in the way without slapping Mr. North in the face as a preliminary.
Under the circumstances, he'd take it that way; Penfield would make sure
that he took it that way."

It was at this point in the low-toned conference that the ingenious
young man in the outer office put down the desk telephone ear-piece long
enough to smite with his fist at some air-drawn antagonist. Curiosity
was this young man's capital weakness, and he had tinkered the wires of
the private telephone system so that the flicking of a switch made him
an auditor at any conversation carried on in the private office. He was
listening intently and eagerly again when Ford said, still in the same
guarded tone:

"No, I can't fire Penfield, and I don't particularly want to. He is a
good office man, and loyal to his salt: it's my misfortune that it is
Mr. North's salt-cellar, and not mine, that he dips into. Besides, I'd
have trouble in replacing him. Saint's Rest isn't exactly the paradise
its name implies--for a clean-cut, well-mannered young fellow with
social leanings."

"Now, what in the mischief does all that mean?" mused the chief clerk,
when Ford and his new track man had gone out. "A month's hunting trip
over the range, with the surveying instruments taken along. And last
summer Mr. Ford spent a good part of his time over there--also hunting,
so he said. Confound it all! I wish I could get into that private drawer
of his in the safe. That would tell the story. I wonder if Pacheco
couldn't make himself an errand over the Pass in the morning? By
George!" slapping his thigh and apostrophizing the superintendent, "I'll
just go you once, Mr. Ford, if I lose!"

Now the fruit, of which this little soliloquy was the opening blossom,
matured on the second day after Ford and Frisbi