rested on the second man of the
pair. This was a young man with level, gray eyes, who nodded slightly
and cheerfully said:--

"How do you do, Mr. O'Connor."

No word said O'Connor; his eyes neither lowered nor turned aside their
fascinated gaze. Each of the four men stood still, waiting for the
little drama to end: a long minute.

"Here are the papers, Mr. Murch," said the intermediary, at last,
turning to the financier.

"All right; let me look over them," said the other.

Five minutes later the Salamander had ceased to exist.

CHAPTER XXV

The March winds blustered over Boston, and the cold salt smell of the
ocean was borne tempestuously in upon the shivering city. Chill and
keen out of the northeast came the air that hinted not at all of
spring, but urgently of winter. The people in the streets walked
briskly, with no laggard steps; they were accustomed to this sort of
untimely treatment from the New England climate, and they had no
intention of being betrayed thereby into pondering over southern lands
or sunny vineclad hillsides where summer always lingered. Boston might
not be climatically Utopian, but there was at all events something
virile, something manly and admirable about a sort of weather for which
no other good word could be used.

Between the tall buildings in Kilby Street, where now for three weeks
the current of the insurance world had been flowing with quickened,
almost feverish pulse, the activity on this blustering day in middle
March was undiminished. Of the hastily arranged adjustment offices
which the magnitude of the conflagration had made necessary, nearly all
had been given up, and the comparatively few uncompleted adjustments of
losses were now being handled through the regular offices.

It had been a titanic task, that of adjusting fire losses extending in
the aggregate to between one and two hundred millions of dollars--for
there were some indications that the Boston property damage would reach
the latter figure. But after three weeks of steady work, when the
lines of claimants before the adjusters' doors had hardly slackened a
moment, the worst was over. Three fourths of the claims had been
settled; satisfactorily to all concerned by the larger and more
responsible companies; on a basis of offered compromise by those
institutions tottering on the brink of insolvency; dubiously, or with
craven and flagrant unfairness by the stricken "wildcats," the
irresponsible und