directors were not accidental they would be likely to be in consultation
for some time, and he would gain more by inquiring for Mr. Wing at the
expiration of a half hour than by doing it now. So he lunched at leisure
and then went back to the sixth floor of the Dartmouth.

He was met by a rebuff from Buttons. "No, Mr. Wing had not come back yet,"
and again "Would Mr. West wait?" Harvey could think of nothing better to
do, so he sat down to think the matter out. He was puzzled, for the three
men were in the building, he felt sure. Then it came to him. "Jove," he
murmured, "McNally! McNally was that fourth man." He sat back in his chair
and tried to decide what to do.

Meanwhile four men sat about the square polished table in Mr. McNally's
new office and anxiously discussed ways and means. The scrappy memoranda
and what appeared to be problems in addition and subtraction littered
about, made it appear that some ground had been pretty thoroughly gone
over. There was a momentary lull in the conversation, and the silence was
broken only by the tapping of Mr. Wing's pencil as he balanced it between
his fingers and let the point rebound on the top of the table. There
really seemed to be nothing to say. The alliance between C. & S.C. and
Thompson's faction of the M. & T. directors had been arranged some days
before. They had met to-day to see how they stood. McNally told what he
had done, and it was not so much as they had hoped he would be able to do.
The combination was not yet strong enough to take the field. For the past
twenty minutes Thompson had been leaning over the table making suggestions
in his thick voice, and McNally had sat back and quietly annihilated them
by demonstrating their impracticability, or by stating that they had been
unsuccessfully tried.

Beyond asking one or two incisive questions of McNally, Porter had said