There was awe undisguised in the look he gave her, and it had crept into his voice when he said: 

“Portia, are you really a flesh-and-blood woman?”

She smiled.

“Meaning that your ancestors would have burned me for a witch?  Perhaps they would:  I think quite likely they burned women who made better martyrs.  But I didn’t have to call in Flibbertigibbet.  The programme is a carefully guarded secret, to be sure; but it is known—­it had to be known—­to a number of people outside of our friends the enemy.  You’ve heard the story of the inventor and his secret, haven’t you?”

“No.”

“Well, the man had invented something, and he told the secret of it to his son.  After a little the son wanted to tell it to a friend.  The old man said, ’Hold on; I know it—­that’s one’—­holding up one finger—­’you know it—­that’s eleven’—­holding up another finger beside the first; ’and now if you tell this other fellow, that’ll be one hundred and eleven’—­holding up three fingers.  That is the case with this programme.  One of the one hundred and eleven—­he is a person high up in the management of the Overland Short Line—­dropped a few words in my hearing and I picked them up.  That’s all.”

“It is fearfully short—­the time, I mean,” he said after another pause.  “We can’t count on any help from any one in authority.  Guilford’s broom has swept the high-salaried official corners clean.  But the wage-people are mutinous and ripe for anything.  I’ll go and find out where we stand.”  And he groped on the floor of the veranda for his hat.

“No, wait a minute,” she interposed.  “We are not quite ready to adjourn yet.  There remains a little matter of compensation—­your compensation—­to be considered.  You are still on the company’s payrolls?”

“In a way, yes; as its legal representative on the ground.”

“That won’t do.  If you carry this thing through successfully it must be on your own account, and not as the company’s paid servant.  You must resign and make terms with Boston beforehand; and that, too, without telling Boston what you propose to do.”

He haggled a little at that.

“The company is entitled to my services,” he asserted.

“It is entitled to what it pays for—­your legal services.  But this is entirely different.  You will be acting upon your own initiative, and you’ll have to spend money like water at your own risk.  You must be free to deal with Boston as an outsider.”

“But I have no money to spend,” he objected.

Again the brown eyes grew luminous; and again she said: 

“What would you do without me?  Happily, my information came early enough to enable me to get a letter to Mr. Ormsby.  He answered promptly by wire this morning.  Here is his telegram.”

She had been winding a tightly folded slip of paper around her fingers, and she smoothed it out and gave it to him.  He held it in a patch of the electric light between the dancing leaf shadows and read: