ago. He said he wouldn't be back to the office this afternoon."

There had been no words wasted in the two minutes' conversation between
Porter and McNally after Harvey's abrupt entrance, and as a result of it,
while the young secretary waited and thought over the good stroke of work
he had done for Jim Weeks and of another good stroke he might some day do
for himself, Mr. Frederick McNally took the two-thirty express for
Manchester and Tillman City.




CHAPTER III


POLITICS AND OTHER THINGS

Harvey West was a young man. Perhaps had he been older, had his wisdom
been salted with experience, he would not have put two and two together
without realizing that the sum was four; but then, it is the difference
between twenty-six and fifty that makes railroads a possibility. He
walked slowly to the elevator and descended to the street. At the corner
he paused and looked about, turning over in his mind the singular
disappearance of Mr. McNally. "He can't do anything with Tillman's
stock," thought Harvey. "They're solid for us." But Harvey in his brief
business life had not fathomed the devious ways of the chronic capitalist.
He knew that commercial honor was honeycombed with corrupt financiering,
but to him the corrupt side was more or less vague, and never having
soiled his fingers he failed to realize the nearness of the mud. Harvey
had yet to learn that in dealing with a municipality or with a