It occurred to Mr. Smith that no one has ever determined the precise
idea upon which the Boston and Manhattan Railroad bases its schedules
with its infrequent adherence thereto and customary deviation
therefrom. Numberless ingenious theories have been advanced from time
to time by untold thousands of exasperated patrons of the line;
opinions of all colors, all temperatures, all degrees of light and
shade have been volunteered, many with a violence that lends
conviction, but all in vain. The thing remains as secret, as
recondite, as baffling as ever. Good Bostonians regard attempts to
solve the problem as not only futile but impertinent--almost
blasphemous--accepting it as a factor in the general inscrutability
which veils the world, and are content to let it remain such.
From these reflections it is patent that this large patience, this
Oriental calm, had not yet come to Mr. Richard Smith of New York, who
felt a certain irritation somewhat modified by amusement as he sat
looking out of the car window at an apathetic brakeman who languidly
gazed down the shining rails. For no cause that could be guessed, the
train had now been resting nearly half an hour. The colored porter had
ceased to perform prodigies by shutting between the upper berth and the
wall three times as many blankets, mattresses, board partitions, and
other paraphernalia as one would have thought the space could possibly
contain, and was sitting in the corner section reflectively chewing a
toothpick. There appeared to be a distressing lack of interest in the
train on the part of all its proximate officials; no one seemed ready
to alter the status quo.
Only a few miles to the eastward the roofs of Boston and the golden
dome of the Capitol glittered in the morning sun, and there were the
bright rails stretching clean and straight up to the very gates of the
city. Railroading was a silly business anyway, thought Smith. An
express train should be consistent, and not suddenly decide to become a
landmark instead of a mobile and dynamic agent. He almost wished he
had taken his ticket by the Fall River boat--as he probably would have
done had he been a Bostonian.
"Without reference to its political aspect," he reflected, "I believe
strongly in water. I might have been deeply disturbed if there had
been a ground swell or a cross sea going around Point Judith, but I
wouldn't have been threatened with approaching senile decay en route."
Smith was from New York. The elderly Bostonian who shared his section
had thought so from the first. He had guessed it when Smith took out
for the second time his watch and replaced it with a snap; he had felt
his belief strengthened when his fellow traveler raised the sash and
looked impatiently up the idle track; and he had dismissed all doubt
when Smith, conversing with the apathetic brakeman, crisply indicated
his desire to return from a study of still life to the moving picture
show for which he had paid admission. The elderly Bostonian had
observed many New Yorkers, but it had never ceased to be a source of
surprise to him why they all should be so incessantly restless with an
electric anxiety to be getting somewhere else. To his own thinking one
place was very much the same as another,--with the exception of
Boston,--and a comfortable inertia was by no means to be condemned. If
people were waiting for one, and one didn't appear, they merely waited
a little longer--that was all. If eternity was really eternity, there
was exactly as much time coming as had passed. In any event no
well-regulated New England mind would permit itself to become disturbed
over so small a matter.
Smith, guessing perhaps something of this from his companion's placid
face, felt a momentary embarrassment at his own impatience.
"I've an engagement at ten o'clock," he remarked, somewhat
apologetically, to his conservative neighbor. "Do you suppose this
train is going to let me keep it?"
The gentleman addressed cautiously expressed the opinion that if no
further malign influences were felt, and the train were presently to
start, the remainder of the journey would occupy comparatively little
time.
And so in due course it came to pass as the elderly Bostonian had
predicted, clearly proving--if Smith had been open to accept
proof--that the Oriental method of reasoning is the most comfortable,
whatever may be said of its efficiency. He had left home at eleven on
the night before, and he arrived at the offices of Silas Osgood and
Company, 175 Kilby Street, at exactly half an hour before eleven in the
morning.
The exercise of walking up from the South Station, although the walk
was a short one, had wholly dispelled the irritation of the delay, so
that his smile was as genuine as ever when Mr. Silas Osgood held out
his courtly hand in welcome It would have been a very bitter mood that
could have withstood the Bostonian's greeting.
"We were looking for you a little earlier in the morning," he said,
when the first greetings were over. "You come so seldom nowadays that
we feel you ought to come as early as possible."
Smith laughed.
"If you'd said that to me when I had been waiting two hours somewhere
just the other side of North, East, West, or South Newton, I would have
probably snarled like a dyspeptic terrier. Now, seeing you, sir, I can
blandly reply that I came via Springfield and that the train was a
trifle late."
"Exceedingly courteous, I am sure, for one not a native," agreed the
other, smiling. "I am advised that the train has been known to be
delayed."
"Well, I'm here now, anyway," Smith rejoined, "and very glad to be. It
must be six weeks since I saw the good old gilded dome on the hill, and
six weeks seems a long time--or would, if they didn't keep me pretty
busy at the other end."
The two men were by this time in Mr. Osgood's private office, and the
closing door shut out the click of typewriters and the other sounds of
the larger room outside. As Mr. Osgood seated himself a trifle stiffly
in his wide desk chair, Smith looked at him affectionately. The
reflection came into his mind that the old gentleman was just a little
older than when they had last met, and the thought gave a pang.
Silas Osgood was nearing his seventieth year. A long life of kindly
and gentle thinking, of clean and correct living, had left him at this
age as clear-eyed and direct of gaze as a child, but the veins showed
blue in the rather frail hands, and the face was seamed with tiny
wrinkles. Mr. Osgood had been in business in the fire insurance world
of Boston for almost half a century. He was as well known as the very
pavement of Kilby Street, that great local artery of insurance life,
and the pulse of that life beat in him as strongly as his own.
To be an insurance man--and by that is meant primarily a fire insurance
man--is in New England no mean or casual thing. South, West, in the
newer and more open lands, where traditions are fewer and there is less
time for the dignities and observance of the amenities of commerce,
fire insurance takes its chance with a thousand other roads to an
honest dollar. If a Western lawyer has a few spare hours, he hangs out
an insurance sign and between briefs he or his clerk writes policies.
The cashier of the Farmers' State Bank in the prairie town ekes out his
small salary with the commissions he receives as agent for a few
companies. If a grist-mill owner or a storekeeper has a busy corner of
two Southern streets where passers-by congregate on market day, he gets
the representation of a fire company or two, and from time to time
sends in a risk to the head office, whose underwriters go nearly
frantic in endeavoring to decipher the hidden truth in the dusty
reports of these well-intentioned amateurs.
But it is not so in New England. In New England fire insurance reaches
its proudest estate. It is a profession, and to its true votaries
almost a religion. Its sons have, figuratively speaking, been born
with a rate book in one hand and a blank proof-of-loss clutched tightly
in the other. And in the mouth a silver spoon or not, as the case
might be, but in any event a conclusive argument for the superior
loss-paying ability and liberality in adjustment of the companies they
respectively represent. They are fire insurance men by birth,
education, and tradition--they and their fathers before them. Four
generations back, Silas Osgood's family had been supported by the staid
old English public's fear of fire. Three generations in Massachusetts
had been similarly preserved from the pangs of hunger. Likenesses of
all four were hanging on the wall of Mr. Osgood's office; as to
identity the first two were highly questionable, but their uniforms in
the old prints showed up fresh and bright. In those old days gentlemen
only, men of education and station, whose judgment and courage were
beyond question, were intrusted with the responsibility of fighting the
flames. It is hard to say why this important and exciting work should
no longer attract the same sort of men to its service.
Hanging beside the four generations were the commissions of the fire
companies locally represented in the Osgood office. Stout old
companies they were, too, for the most part; one of the older ones was
well in the second century of its triumph over fire and the fear of
fire and the ashes thereof; this was a foreign company which Osgood
held for old sake's sake. The other commissions bore American
signatures, most of them well known and well esteemed. On the wall
right above where Smith sat was the gold seal of his own company, the
Guardian, and against the seal the inexplicable hieroglyph which served
Mr. James Wintermuth for his presidential signature. Then there was
the great white sheet with the black border which set forth to all the
world by these presents that Silas Osgood and Company were the duly
accredited agents of the Atlantic Fire Insurance Company of Hartford,
Connecticut. The narrow placque of the old Birmingham Indemnity of
Birmingham, England, looked like a calling card beside the Atlantic's
flamboyant placard.
Smith, seeing Mr. Osgood's look fixed for a moment on the parchment
above his head, said inquiringly, "How long is it that you have
represented the Guardian in Boston?"
The older man smiled reflectively and turned his eyeglass in his hand
as he spoke.
"It was the year after the big fire when I first took the Guardian into
my office. You are a close enough student of the game to know that
that was just about forty years ago."
Smith nodded.
"Before Richard Smith was born. But I remember the date. Who
appointed you as agent?"
Mr. Osgood pointed to the scrawl at the foot of the framed commission.
"My old friend, James Wintermuth," he said. He paused a moment. "I
can almost see him now as he looked when he came to call on me--in the
old office farther down the street. Tall and quick-tempered, and you
can imagine how strong in the fingers he was in those days! I recall I
used to keep my glove on when I shook hands with him. He was a fine
young chap, was James. Perhaps a _little_ too hasty for us
conservative New Englanders, but--" He broke off, a half-smile on his
lips.
Smith remained silent.
"It's a fault you young New Yorkers are apt to have," the Bostonian
presently went on. "Most of you are a trifle aggressive for us over
here--just a bit radical."
The other laughed good-naturedly.
"I myself should say that my honored chief had lived down his
radicalism long ago. It's lucky for Silas Osgood and Company that
there is a little of it left somewhere in the company, for the
President convalesced from his attack of radicalism in eighteen
eighty-five or thereabouts and has never been threatened with a relapse
or a recurrence. You may criticize us, sir, but you will have to admit
that unless there was a little radicalism in my own department, the
Guardian would never have accepted the lines and the liability in this
down-town district that you have sent us and are sending us now. I
hope I'm conservative enough, but with all due respect to Mr.
Wintermuth, what he calls conservatism often strikes me as dry rot."
He stopped, laughing again.
"This is not an explosive protest," he said. "It is merely the result
of having traveled on the conservative Boston and Manhattan, which
would turn a phlegmatic Pennsylvania Dutchman into a Nihilist."
Then both men laughed together, and turned their attention to the
business before them, Mr. Osgood's pale silver head close beside
Smith's brown one.
In the outer office typewriters clicked, clients hung over desks, and
the traffic of a busy morning proceeded. It was just about twelve
o'clock when the clerks nearest the door stopped their work for a brief
minute to look up and smile, for Charles Wilkinson, whenever he came to
that office, timed his arrival with a skill that was perfectly
understood by all. Mr. Wilkinson beamed blandly over the map counter,
and still more blandly inquired whether Mr. Bennington Cole was in.
Mr. Cole was, it appeared, at his desk, and Mr. Wilkinson required no
one to show him the way.
"Hello, Benny," he said cheerfully. "You hardly expected to see me
here to-day, did you? But I'm the early bird, all right. The
excessively shy and unseasonable habits of the matinal worm never
appealed favorably to me, but we have to have him once in a while, so
here I am. You know what for, don't you? Or do you?"
Cole surveyed his visitor dispassionately.
"I fancy I can guess," he replied.
"No, upon my word," the other rejoined with spirit; "you do me a grave
injustice, Benny. I've already had luncheon--that is to say, I've just
had breakfast. You can more fully appreciate the significance of my
call when I tell you that I came to you directly from the breakfast
table. No, sir, the object of this visit is strictly business."
Bennington Cole gravely buttoned up his coat and thrust both hands into
his pockets.
Mr. Wilkinson smiled buoyantly.
"Benny, you've a delightful surprise in store for you," he said.
"Having astonished you by telling you that I was not open to an
invitation to lunch, I am going to follow it up by assuring you that I
do not intend to suggest the extension of even the paltriest of
pecuniary accommodations. I am after bigger game."
Cole's suspicion melted into a semblance of interest.
"You don't mean--" he began.
"Yes, but I do, though," said the other. "That's the precise meaning
of this pious pilgrimage at this ungodly hour. I want to find out
where you keep that worm. Yesterday afternoon, at the Hurds', you had
an idea. You know you did--you can't conceal it from my piercing sense
of penetration. And your idea had the ring of real currency when you
accidentally dropped it. So I'm here to collaborate, that's all."
Mr. Osgood's junior partner looked around at the clerks, who hastily
resumed their interrupted duties.
"Come in here," he said to the visitor, and he led his guest into an
inner office next to Mr. Osgood's own, and closed the door behind him.
"I _did_ have an idea," he conceded, as he motioned Wilkinson to a
seat, "and it was an idea that had several things to recommend it. But
it was a business proposition, and if you will pardon my saying so,
Charlie, you are not the kind of a collaborator I would choose, if I
were doing the choosing."
"But you're not, my boy," replied the other, unabashed. "I'm doing the
choosing, myself, and I choose you. Your idea was palpably based on
separating my barnacled connection from some of the ghastly pile of
glittering gold that he has taken, five cents at a time, from the
widows, orphans, blind, halt, and lame who patronize his trolley lines.
Elucidate forthwith, Benny--in the vernacular, unbelt. I am listening."
Cole was reflecting. No one knew better than he how little regard John
M. Hurd really felt for this mercurial youth. Yet Mr. Hurd had
resisted with entire success all other means of approach. After all,
family connections counted for something, even with the retentive old
trolley magnate. So when at last he spoke, it was with the
determination to show a part of his hand, at least, to Wilkinson.
"Mr. Hurd is President of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction
Company," he began.
His visitor smiled affably.
"There is a popular impression to that effect," he admitted.
"Silas Osgood and Company and--" he paused a moment--"Bennington Cole
are in the fire insurance business. The Massachusetts Light, Heat, and
Traction Company carries no fire insurance on any of its properties.
Well," he said sharply, "do you begin to see how you come into this?"
"See what?" asked Wilkinson, blankly.
"The insurable value of the various properties of the company must
amount to six or eight million dollars. The average rate on those
properties would probably be about seventy-five cents per hundred
dollars a year for insurance. That would make a premium of say fifty
thousand dollars per annum. The commission to the insurance broker who
handled that line--who could secure it and control it--would be ten per
cent of fifty thousand, or five thousand dollars. Half that amount--I
am doing these sums for you so that you can catch the idea--would be
twenty-five hundred--without any risk to yourself and every year of
your life. Do you think the game worth a try?"
Wilkinson sat up with eager interest.
"Why half? Why not both halves?" he inquired.
The other man spread his hands before him in a gesture as well
recognized among elder peoples as it is to-day.
"Naturally I would expect half for originating the scheme, drawing up
the schedule in its proper form, securing the lowest rate, and placing
the line with the various companies. You couldn't do those things, you
know; it takes knowledge of the business."
His visitor once more sat back in his chair.
"And all I have to do is to get Uncle John to take out an insurance
policy on his trolley cars! A mere nothing! I'm astonished that you
offer me so much as half--for so simple an office. Really, Benny, you
are losing your faculties. I can almost see them evaporating. Yes,
the time will come when some one of our mutual friends, driving past
the Meadow Creek Paresis Club, where Dr. McMullen receives certain
amiable but not entirely responsible persons, will behold you hanging
cheerily by one hand from the pergola roof with a vacuous smile on your
twitching lips, and will say to me sadly: 'Charlie, you knew him,
didn't you, in the old days, when his mind was as keen and bright as an
editor's knife?' And with chastened melancholy I will respond: 'Yes,
George, it is true. And moreover I was with him on the day when his
mind commenced to give way. The day he offered me a full half of the
spoils of my own--what do you call it?--oh, yes, arbalest.'"
Cole laughed, and not altogether pleasantly.
"Well, if you can get John M. to carry insurance, I'll see that you are
not disappointed in the terms of our agreement."
"Do you know, Benny, somehow I'd rather have it in writing. Suppose we
say one third to you and two thirds to me. After all, I need the
money, you see, and you don't."
"Aren't we counting our chickens a good while before they have emerged
from the incubator?" the other suggested.
"Very likely," Wilkinson readily agreed. "But I find that if I ever
indulge in that diverting form of mathematics it has to be before the
hatching. The little yellow rascals never stay around long enough
afterward to permit themselves to be counted."
Bennington Cole slowly picked up a pen and drew toward him a sheet of
paper; more slowly still he wrote what he described as a gentleman's
agreement between Charles Wilkinson and himself. That young man sat
back and studied the face of his associate with shrewd, half-shut eyes.
Presently Cole stopped writing.
"I fancy this will serve," he said.
"Read the Machiavellian document," demanded Wilkinson, placidly. And
Cole read.
"'Agreement between Bennington Cole and Charles Wilkinson. Said
Bennington Cole agrees that if said Charles Wilkinson shall secure
control of the fire insurance of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and
Traction Company, said Bennington Cole shall handle such account to the
best of his ability and shall pay to said Charles Wilkinson two thirds
of all brokerage commissions received thereby.'"
Said Charles Wilkinson reached for the paper.
"It seems to be in order," he said presently. "Sign it and date it,
Benny, and bring in old Stewpan there to witness it. This is a
business proposition, and I know how such things ought to be handled."
It was duly signed and duly witnessed by the aged and anemic cashier of
the Osgood office, and Mr. Wilkinson placed it carefully in his
pocketbook. Then he rose with alacrity.
"I'm sure you'll pardon my insistence on this little technicality," he
said smoothly; "but you business men, you professional men, are so
shrewd, so very alert and quick of mind, that a comparative novice like
myself is mere wax in your strong, deft fingers. . . . And now to
cipher out some way to secure the golden apple which hangs so close to
hand, yet so very dragon-guarded."
"That's your work," rejoined Cole. "I won't attempt to offer
suggestions. Nearly every insurance broker in Boston has at one time
or another had a go at John M. Hurd. Boring him to death has been
unsuccessfully tried several times, but as you are in the family, you
may of course have superior facilities to any of your predecessors.
Blackmail might accomplish something. But really I can't help you any,
Charlie. If I had any plan, I'd deserve to hang from your friend's
pergola roof for giving it to you instead of using it myself. I guess
this is where you begin to do a little hard thinking."
"What marvelous incisiveness you possess, Benny," his friend commented.
"It is an uplift to hear you. But you see thinking is quite in my
line. Any one who has had to think as hard as I how to keep the lean
white wolf of the Green Mountains--or vice versa--from my shifting
doorstep, certainly need not tremble before the necessity of thought.
But I have learned this--when I want to get something I don't know how
to get, I invariably regard it the height of sapience to go and ask
some one who does know how. In this case I can ask without going, for
the very man is here at hand."
"I've already told you that I can assist you no further," said Cole.
"I've given you the idea. You'll have to do the rest, yourself."
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of you," Wilkinson rejoined coolly. "I meant a
man of perhaps not better, but certainly rather broader, experience. I
shall go for advice to Mr. Silas Osgood."
And he opened the door and disappeared through it before Cole could
voice a protest. He would have much preferred that the senior partner
know nothing of the scheme unless it should take concrete form by its
success. If Wilkinson by any chance should secure the traction
company's insurance, the business should properly be handled by the
firm of Silas Osgood and Company, and not by Bennington Cole
individually. However, the mischief was already done, for he could
hear Charles' cheerful voice greeting the two men in the other office.
Rather reluctantly he followed.
He found Wilkinson sitting easily on the arm of a chair, talking
rapidly and confidentially to Mr. Osgood, who regarded him with
indulgence but wonder, as one who might come suddenly on a charming
lady lunatic.
"I don't think I know your friend," Wilkinson was saying, _sotto voce_,
in Mr. Osgood's ear. Then, as Cole entered, Smith rose to shake hands,
and the introduction was made.
"Mr. Smith, General Agent of the Guardian of New York--Mr. Wilkinson."
"Delighted to meet you, Mr. Smith." He turned to the elder man. "Mr.
Osgood, I've come to see you on a matter of business--an important
matter upon which I wish your advice. And I not only wish it, but I
need it, as you will appreciate when I tell you that my occupation for
the next few weeks, months, or years--as the case may be--will consist
in endeavoring to extort a little money from Mr. John M. Hurd."
Cole coughed.
"A most expressive cough, my dear Benny, and the interpretation is
clearly that there is no innovation about such a battle of wits. But,
Mr. Osgood, there is a difference." He looked inquiringly at Cole.
"By the way, is there any reason why we should not speak freely before
Mr. Smith?"
"Mr. Smith is a Company man; he will do nothing to disturb your plan,"
said Cole. "Go ahead, now you've started."
Wilkinson proceeded.
"I am about to take charge of insuring all the properties of the
Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company, John M. Hurd,
President," he announced.
Mr. Osgood permitted himself a slight smile.
"My dear young friend," he said, "you have given yourself a life
sentence at hard labor."
Wilkinson sat down.
"All the better reason why I need assistance," he rejoined. "I need
everybody's assistance. But only to get started. When I'm started
properly I can look after myself."
"My boy," said the veteran underwriter, kindly, "I have known John M.
Hurd since he was thirty years old. I knew him when what is now the
Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company consisted of two cars,
four horses, and three miles of single track. And he never carried a
dollar of insurance then, and he never has since. I have seen the
brightest brokers in Boston go into his office and come out in anywhere
from three to twenty minutes; and not one of them ever got anything at
all for his pains. Better give it up, my boy; you'll save yourself
more or less trouble, and the result will be the same."
The young man laughed.
"There's one point of dissimilarity that I see already," he replied.
"The time of the brightest brokers in Boston is valuable; mine is not.
Really, you're not very encouraging, but I didn't expect you to be. I
know my step-uncle, and I'm prepared for a stiff and extensive
campaign. All I'm asking for is a detonator--something to start the
action, you know, or something novel in the way of an explosive.
Perhaps an adaptation of one of those grenades that the Chinese pirates
throw when they want to drive their victims suffocating into the sea.
I realize that there isn't much use engaging Uncle John with ordinary
Christian weapons; he's practically bomb-proof."
"I am afraid," said Mr. Osgood, slowly, "that I am not very expert in
the manufacture of noxious piratical chemicals. You will have to seek
your inspiration elsewhere."
Smith turned to Wilkinson. Heretofore the representative of the
Guardian had taken no part in the conversation.
"Would you mind stating, without quite so many figures of speech, just
what you want?" he asked quietly.
"Certainly. What I want is something, some handle which will get me
John M. Hurd's attention just long enough to make him listen to me. If
I can get him to listen, I stand a chance."
"You say he carries no fire insurance on any of the trolley
properties?" the New Yorker inquired thoughtfully.
"No," replied Mr. Osgood. "He has a small insurance fund--perhaps
thirty or forty thousand dollars. He pays into this each year a part
of what his insurance would cost him, and out of this fund is paid what
losses the company sustains. And we must confess that so far the
scheme has worked well. His losses have been much less than he would
have paid in premiums to the companies."
"A fund--yes. That is all well and good, unless there is a great
congestion of value at some single point, or at a very few points.
Tell me, how much value is there in that main car barn on Pemberton
Street--the new one next to the power plant?"
"Probably over a half a million dollars--at night, when the cars are
all there," said Cole.
"And with the power house almost a million, then?"
"Almost," Cole agreed.
Smith rose and walked over to the window; the others watched him in
silence. "What kind of people hold the stock of the traction company?"
he asked suddenly.
"I fancy Mr. Hurd himself swings a very big block," Cole answered.
"And his directors have a good deal. It's easily carried--the banks up
here will loan on it almost up to the market value."
Smith still looked thoughtfully out the window.
"And I presume the directors and other stockholders take advantage of
that fact?" he inquired.
"Oh, yes," Mr. Osgood replied. "We have a lot of it as collateral for
loans in the Charlestown Trust Company, of which I am a director."
"And is it actively traded in on the Exchange?" the New Yorker
continued.
"No. Odd lots mainly, from time to time. But the price is remarkably
steady. It is regarded about as safe as a bond."
Smith returned to the seated group.
"Gentlemen," he said, "banks do strange things at times, but they are
usually grateful for information when it is of value. They have
probably never taken the trouble to find out whether the Massachusetts
Light, Heat, and Traction was properly protected against a fire--by
which I mean a big fire; they probably have assumed that it was. If it
were to become known in financial circles that their insurance fund was
forty thousand dollars and that they stood to lose one million dollars
if there were a big fire in Pemberton Street to-night, how many of
those borrowers do you think would be asked by the banks to reduce
their loans or to substitute in part other collateral of a less
speculative sort? It might even affect the price of the stock on the
Exchange rather unfortunately. Some of those directors might have an
unpleasant half-hour."
He paused. Wilkinson's face expressed the most eager attention.
"And I want to say to you, gentlemen, that a general fire in the
congested section of this city is in my opinion not so improbable a
thing as you Bostonians imagine. The conflagration hazard in Boston's
congested district is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it
would be difficult to overestimate its gravity. . . . There's your
grenade, Mr. Wilkinson."
Wilkinson leaped to his feet.
"I see it," he cried. "Leave it to me. It's as good as done. It's
merely a question of time."
"What are you going to do?" asked Cole, curiously.
Wilkinson made for the door.
"Do?" he cried. "Do? I'm going to load the grenade. Gentlemen, good
morning."