raightened himself in his
chair. "I am sorry. Mr. Greensleeve is a very old friend----"

The library telephone rang; the second man entered and asked if Colonel
Mallett could speak to Mr. Dysart over the wire on a matter concerning
the Yo Espero district.

Duane, astonished, sprang up asking if he might not take the message;
then shrank aside as his father got to his feet. He saw the ghastly
pallor on his face as his father passed him, moving toward the library;
stood motionless in troubled amazement, then walked to the open window
of the conservatory and, leaning there, waited.

His father did not return. Later a servant came:

"Colonel Mallett has retired, Mr. Duane, and begs that he be
undisturbed, as he is very tired."

CHAPTER XV

DYSART

The possibility that his father could be involved in any of the
spectacular schemes which had evidently caught Dysart, seemed so remote
that Duane's incredulity permitted him to sleep that night, though the
name Yo Espero haunted his dreams.

But in the morning, something he read in the paper concerning a vast
enterprise, involving the control of the new radium mines in Southern
California, startled him into trying to recollect what he had heard of
Yo Espero and the Cascade Development and Securities Company. Tainting
its title the sinister name of Moebus seemed to reoccur persistently in
his confused imagination. Dysart's name, too, figured in it. And,
somehow, he conceived an idea that his father once received some mining
engineer's reports covering the matter; he even seemed to remember that
Guy Wilton had been called into consultation.

Whatever associations he had for the name of the Cascade Development and
Securities Company must have originated in Paris the year before his
father returned to America. It seemed to him that Wilton had been in
Spain that year examining the recent and marvellously rich radium find;
and that his father and Wilton exchanged telegrams very frequently
concerning a mine in Southern California known as Yo Espero.

His father breakfasted in his room that morning, but when he appeared in
the library Duane was relieved to notice that his step was firmer and he
held himself more erect, although his extreme pallor had not changed to
a healthier colour.

"You know," said Duane, "you've simply got to get out of town for a
while. It's all bally rot, your doing this sort of thing."

"I may go West for a few weeks," said his father absen