The hands of the large clock in the outer room pointed to three.
An active, dapper little man with glasses and with books under his
arm passed hurriedly from another office into the directors room.

"There goes Mr. Lane with the minutes. The meeting is called.
Where's Mr. Ryder?"

There was a general move of the scattered groups of directors
toward the committee room. The clock overhead began to strike. The
last stroke had not quite died away when the big swinging doors
from the street were thrown open and there entered a tall, thin
man, gray-headed, and with a slight stoop, but keen eyed and
alert. He was carefully dressed in a well-fitting frock coat,
white waistcoat, black tie and silk hat.

It was John Burkett Ryder, the Colossus.



CHAPTER II


At fifty-six, John Burkett Ryder was surprisingly well preserved.
With the exception of the slight stoop, already noted, and the
rapidly thinning snow-white hair, his step was as light and
elastic, and his brain as vigorous and alert, as in a man of
forty. Of old English stock, his physical make-up presented
all those strongly marked characteristics of our race which,
sprung from Anglo-Saxon ancestry, but modified by nearly 300