through the crowded middle city to the lower part of the town, which,
it is unnecessary for me to say, I cordially detested, and brought up
before a building, the entire lower floor of which was given over to
the opulent offices of Ballard, Wrenn and Halloway.

Ballard the elder was tall like his son, but here the resemblance
ceased, for while Ballard the younger was round of visage and jovial,
the banker was thin of face and repressive. He had a long, accipitrine
nose which imbedded itself in his bristling white mustache, and he
spoke in crisp staccato notes as though each intonation and breath
were carefully measured by their monetary value. He paid out to me in
cash a half an hour, during which he questioned and I replied while
Jack grinned in the background. And at the end of that period of time
the banker rose and dismissed me with much the air of one who has
perused a document and filed it in the predestined pigeonhole. I felt
that I had been rubber-stamped, docketed and passed into oblivion.
What he actually said was:

"Thanks, I'll write. Good afternoon."

The vision of the Great Experiment which had been flitting in
rose-color before my eyes, was as dim as the outer corridor where I
was suddenly aware of Jack Ballard's voice at my ear and his friendly
clutch upon my elbow.

"You'll do," he laughed. "I was positive of it."

"I can't imagine how you reach that conclusion," I put in rather
tartly, still reminiscent of the rubber stamp.