rve, before I go
to him again! No blundering, clumsy Dutchman can make a blackmailer out
of me by holding hands with that scoundrelly wife of mine! That's the
reason he did it, too! Between them they are trying to make my loans
from Plank look like blackmail! It would serve them right if I took them
up--if I called their bluff, and stuck Plank up in earnest! But I won't,
to please them! I won't do any dirty thing like that, to humour them!
Not much!"

He lay back, rolling about in the jouncing cab, scowling at space.

"Not much!" he repeated. "I'll shake down Quarrier, though! I'll make
him pay for his treachery--scaring me out of Amalgamated! That will be
restitution, not extortion!"

He was the angrier because he had been for days screwing up his courage
to the point of seeking Quarrier face to face. He had not wished to do
it; the scene, and his own attitude in it, could only be repugnant
to him, although he continually explained to himself that it was
restitution, not extortion.

But whatever it was, he didn't like to figure in it, and he had hung
back as long as circumstances permitted. But his new lodgings and his
new friends were expensive; and Plank, he supposed, was off somewhere
fishing; so he hung on as long as it was possible; then, exasperated
by necessity, started for Quarrier's office, only to miss him by a
few seconds because he was fool enough to waste his temper and his
opportunity in making an enemy out of a friend!

"Oh," he groaned, "what an ass I am!" And he got out of his cab in front
of a very new limestone basement house with red geraniums blooming on
the window-sills, and let himself in with a latch-key.

The interior of the house was attractive in a rather bright, new, clean
fashion. There seemed to be a great deal of white wood-work about, a
wilderness of slender white spindles supporting the dark, rich mahogany
handrail of the stairway; elaborate white grilles between snowy,
Corinthian pillars separating the hall from the drawing-room, where
a pale gilt mirror over a white, colonial mantel reflected a glass
chandelier and panelled walls hung with pale blue silk.

All was new, very clean, very quiet; the maid, too, who appeared at
the sound of the closing door and took his hat and gloves was as
newly groomed as the floors and wood-work, and so noiseless as to be
conspicuous in her swift, silent movements.

Yet there was something about it all--about the bluish silvery
half-light, th