n draw our first long breath. Isn't that about the way it
strikes you?"

"It is, precisely," agreed the general counsel, rising and finding his
hat. "And because it does strike me that way, I think I'll go down and
do a little telegraphing to-night."

"Hold on a minute," said Ford, "and I'll give you a message to take
down, if you don't mind. I must answer Adair, and it won't do any harm
to prod him a little--on the secrecy side."

Kenneth waited, with his hand on the door-knob, as it chanced. Hence the
opening of the door a minute or two later was quite without any
preliminary stir of warning in the room of conference. That was possibly
the reason why the lawyer almost fell over a man crouching in the
corridor.

"Hello, there!" said Kenneth; "I beg your pardon."

The man got upon his feet, exhibiting all the signs of intoxication.

"Beg yoursh, I'm sure," he mumbled, and was lurching crookedly away when
the lawyer suddenly came to his senses and grabbed at him. The clutching
hand fell short, and there was an agile foot-race down the corridor,
fruitless for Kenneth, since the fugitive suddenly developed sobriety
enough to run like a deer. Beaten in the foot-race, Kenneth went back
for a word with Ford.

"The battle is on," was the form the word took. "There was a man here,
listening at the key-hole, when I opened the door. How much he overheard
we'll be likely to find out to-morrow when we begin to pull the strings.
Thought I'd give you the pointer. Good night, again."

VIII

THE AUTOMATIC AIR

Set out in cold type, Ford's itinerary for the four days following his
conference with Kenneth would read like the abbreviated diary of a man
dodging the sheriff. His "ticker" memorandum for that period is still in
existence, but the notes are the hurried strokes of the pen of haste,
intelligible, we may say, only to the man who made them. To quote:

"Thursday, nine a.m., Peoria--see Sedgwick; ten--make trackage
contract with T.P. & W.; eleven a.m., Davenport--inventory
motive power--see chief despatcher--get profiles and maps--get copies of
yard contracts--get crossing rights--get total tonnage of grain cars.
Three p.m., Hannibal--see Berdan and whip him into line--inspect
shops--get contracts--get--"

But the string of "gets" fills the page, and is vital now to no living
soul of man, least of all to us who are interested only in finding out
if our young captain of industry actually did make good his boast