one thing it was bleak and cold: the north wind, hailing direct
from Baffin's Bay, had teeth, and it bit so cruelly that he was
glad when he found shelter in the building which housed the
offices of the Carter Importing Company. The tropics had thinned
O'Reilly's blood, for the Cuban winds bear a kiss instead of a
sting; therefore he paused in the lower hallway, jostled by the
morning crowds, and tried to warm himself. The truth is O'Reilly
was not only cold, but frightened.

He was far from weak-hearted. In fact, few O'Reillys were that,
and Johnnie had an ingrained self-assurance which might have been
mistaken for impudence, but for the winning smile that went with
it. Yet all the way from Havana he had seen in his mind's eye old
Sam Carter intrenched behind his flat-topped desk, and that
picture had more than once caused him to forget the carefully
rehearsed speech in which he intended to resign his position as an
employee and his prospects as a son-in-law.

That desk of Mr. Carter's was always bare and orderly, cleared for
action, like the deck of a battle-ship, and over it many
engagements had been fought, for the man behind it never shirked a
conflict. His was a vigorous and irascible temperament, compounded
of old-fashioned, slow-burning black powder and nitroglycerine--a
combination of incalculable destructive power. It was a perilously
unstable mixture, tool, at times nothing less than a flame served
to ignite it; on other occasions the office force pussy-footed
past Carter's door on felt soles, and even then the slightest jar
often caused the untoward thing to let go. In either event there
was a deafening roar, much smoke, and a deal of damage. O'Reilly
felt sure that whatever the condition of Mr. Carter's digestion or