“I am getting better,” came the occasional message from that stranger son.  And the father kept on playing the tune of accruing millions on the push-buttons.  His decision to send Dr. Bennington to Arizona came suddenly, just after he had turned sixty-three.  He had had an attack of grip at the same time that his attention had been acutely called to the demoralization of another great business institution whose head had died without issue, leaving his affairs in the hands of trustees.

Two days of confinement in his room with a high pulse had brought reflection and the development of atavism.  What if the institution built as a monument to himself should also pass!  What if the name of Wingfield, his name, should no longer float twelve stories high over his building!  He foresaw the promise of companionship of a restless and ghastly apparition in the future.

But he recovered rapidly from his illness and his mental processes were as keen and prehensile as ever.  Checking off one against the other, with customary shrewdness, he had a number of doctors go over him, and all agreed that he was good for twenty years yet.  Twenty years!  Why, Jack would be middle-aged by that time!  Twenty years was the difference between forty-three and sixty-three.  Since he was forty-three he had quintupled his fortune.  He would at least double it again.  He was not old; he was young; he was an exceptional man who had taken good care of himself.  The threescore and ten heresy could not apply to him.

Bennington’s telegram irritated him with its lack of precision.  Fifteen hundred dollars and expenses to send an expert to Arizona and in return this unbusinesslike report:  “You will see Jack for yourself.  He is coming.”

In the full enjoyment of health, observing every nice rule for longevity, his slumber sweet, his appetite good, John Wingfield, Sr. had less interest in John Wingfield, Jr. than he had when his bones were aching with the grip.  Jack’s telegram from Chicago announcing the train by which he would arrive aroused an old resentment, which dated far back to Jack’s childhood and to a frail woman who had been proof against her husband’s will.

Did this home-coming mean a son who could learn the business; a strong, shrewd, cool-headed son?  A son who could be such an adjutant as only one who is of your own flesh and blood can be in the full pursuit of the same family interest as yourself?  If Jack were well, would not Bennington have said so?  Would he not have emphasized it?  This was human nature as John Wingfield, Sr. knew it; human nature which never missed a chance to ingratiate itself by announcing success in the service of a man of power.