was for the moment uncertain of Tully's meaning.

"Shares," he said. "Right there in my desk."

"Quite so, quite so!" said Tully. "I'm not wholly uncertain, you
know--this is between us--that I couldn't place them for you. I may say
the office would not find even those few shares unwelcome."

"Well, you see, I don't know about that," said Bean. "You see, I had a
kind of an idea--"

"I think I may say they would take it not unkindly," said Tully.

"--of holding on to them," concluded Bean.

"Your letting them go for a fair price might not inconceivably react to
your advantage," suggested the luminous Tully.

"It is not impossible that I shall want them myself," responded Bean,
unconsciously adopting the Tully indirection.

"The office is not unwilling--" began Tully.

"I'll keep 'em a while," said Bean. "I have a sort of plan."

"I should not like to think it possible--"

Bean was tired of Tully. What was the man trying to get at, anyway? He
didn't know; but he would shut him off. His mind leaped with an
inspiration.

"I can imagine nothing of less consequence," said Bean.

He was at once proud of the snappy way the words came out. Breede, he
thought, could hardly have been snappier. He glared at Tully, who looked
shocked, hurt, and disgusted. Tully sighed and walked back to his own
desk, as if the ice cracked beneath his small feet at every step.

Bean resumed his work, with the air of one forgetting a past annoyance.
But he was not forgetting. He might let them have the stock; he had
never thought any too well of that express directorship; but let them
send some one that could talk straight. He didn't care if he _had_ been
short with Tully. He was going to lose his job anyway, the day after
that wedding, if not before.

He wrote many of Breede's letters, and was again interrupted, this time
by Markham, Breede's confidential secretary. Markham's approach to Bean
was emphatically footed, as that of a man unable to imagine ice being
thin under _his_ feet. He was bluff and open, where Tully lurked behind
his "not impossibles." He was even jovial now. He smiled down at Bean.

"By the way, Bean, some one was telling me you have some Federal
Express."

"Have the shares right there in my desk," admitted Bean, wonderingly. He
was suspicious all at once. Tully and Markham had both opened on him
with "By the way." He had always felt it a shrewd thing to suspect
people who began with "By the way."

"Ah, yes,