“Sure.  That is what kept me so long.”

Hawk hung upon his decision for the barest fraction of a second.  Then he gave his orders concisely.

“Hunt up Doctor Macquoid and get him out to the club-house as quick as you can.  Tell him to bring his hypodermic.  I’ll be there with all the help he’ll need.”  And when the young man was gone, Hawk smote the air with a clenched fist and called down the Black Curse of Shielygh, or its modern equivalent, on all the fates subversive of well-laid plans.

A quarter of an hour later, on the upper floor of the club-house at the Gentlemen’s Driving Park, four men burst in upon a fifth, a huge figure in brown duck, crouching in a corner like a wild beast at bay.  A bottle and a tumbler stood on the table under the hanging lamp; and with the crash of breaking glass which followed the mad-bull rush of the duck-clothed giant, the reek of French brandy filled the room.

“Hold him still, if you can, and pull up that sleeve.”  It was Macquoid who spoke, and the three apparitors, breathing hard, sat upon the prostrate man and bared his arm for the physician.  When the apomorphia began to do its work there was a struggle of another sort, out of which emerged a pallid and somewhat stricken reincarnation of the governor.

“Falkland is waiting at the hotel, and he and MacFarlane can’t get together,” said Hawk, tersely, when the patient was fit to listen.  “Otherwise we shouldn’t have disturbed you.  It’s all day with the scheme if you can’t show up.”

The governor groaned and passed his hand over his eyes.

“Get me into my clothes—­Johnson has the grip—­and give me all the time you can,” was the sullen rejoinder; and in due course the Honorable Jasper G. Bucks, clothed upon and in his right mind, was enabled to keep his appointment with the New York attorney at the Mid-Continent Hotel.

But first came the whipping-in of MacFarlane.  Bucks went alone to the judge’s room on the floor above the parlor suite.  It was now near midnight, but MacFarlane had not gone to bed.  He was a spare man, with thin hair graying rapidly at the temples and a care-worn face; the face of a man whose tasks or responsibilities, or both, have overmatched him.  He was walking the floor with his head down and his hands—­thin, nerveless hands they were—­tightly locked behind him, when the governor entered.

For a large man the Honorable Jasper was usually able to handle his weight admirably; but now he clung to the door-knob until he could launch himself at a chair and be sure of hitting it.

“What’s this Hawk’s telling me about you, MacFarlane?” he demanded, frowning portentously.

“I don’t know what he has told you.  But it is too flagrant, Bucks; I can’t do it, and that’s all there is about it.”  The protest was feebly fierce, and there was the snarl of a baited animal in the tone.

“It’s too late to make difficulties now,” was the harsh reply.  “You’ve got to do it.”