IX

THE BLOCK SIGNAL


If Mr. John Winton, C. E., stood in need of a moral tonic, as Adams
had so delicately intimated to Miss Bessie Carteret, it was
administered in quantity sufficient before he slept on the night of
dinner-givings.

For a clear-eyed theorist, free from all heart-trammelings and able to
grasp the unsentimental fact, the enemy's new plan of campaign wrote
itself quite legibly. With his pick and choice among the time-killing
expedients the Rajah could scarcely have found one more to his purpose
than the private car Rosemary, including in its passenger list a Miss
Virginia Carteret.

All of which Adams, substituting friendly frankness for the
disciplinary traditions of the service, set forth in good Bostonian
English for the benefit and behoof of his chief, and was answered
according to his deserts with scoffings and deridings.

"I wasn't born yesterday, Morty, and I'm not so desperately asinine as
you seem to think," was the besotted one's summing-up. "I know the
Rajah doesn't split hairs in a business fight, but he is hardly
unscrupulous enough to use Miss Carteret as a cat's-paw."