The hood of the car was down, and the taste of the air, warmed by the
sun, was grateful. It was at this time, a year before, that young Spear
picked the spring flowers to take to his mother. A year from now where
would young Spear be?

It was characteristic of the great man to act quickly, so quickly
that his friends declared he was a slave to impulse. It was these same
impulses, leading so invariably to success, that made his enemies
call him the Wisest Man. He leaned forward and touched the chauffeur's
shoulder. "Stop at the Court of General Sessions," he commanded. What
he proposed to do would take but a few minutes. A word, a personal word
from him to the district attorney, or the judge, would be enough. He
recalled that a Sunday Special had once calculated that the working time
of Arnold Thorndike brought him in two hundred dollars a minute. At that
rate, keeping Spear out of prison would cost a thousand dollars.


Out of the sunshine Mr. Thorndike stepped into the gloom of an echoing
rotunda, shut in on every side, hung by balconies, lit, many stories
overhead, by a dirty skylight. The place was damp, the air acrid with
the smell of stale tobacco juice, and foul with the presence of many
unwashed humans. A policeman, chewing stolidly, nodded toward an
elevator shaft, and other policemen nodded him further on to the office
of the district attorney. There Arnold Thorndike breathed more freely.
He was again among his own people. He could not help but appreciate the
dramatic qualities of the situation; that the richest man in Wall Street
should appear in person to plead for a humble and weaker brother. He
knew he could not escape recognition, his face was too well known, but,
he trusted, for the sake of Spear, the reporters would make no display