So it was that long after Annie’s dinner dishes had ceased to clatter in the kitchen; long after she had put her head in at the door to ask, “Aigs ’r cakes for breakfast?” long after those two busy brains should have rested in sleep, the two sat at either side of the light-flooded table, the face of one glowing as he talked, the face of the other sparkling as she listened.  And at midnight: 

“Why, you infant wonder!” exclaimed Emma McChesney.

At nine o’clock next morning when Jock McChesney entered the offices of the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company he carried a flat, compact bundle of papers under his arm encased in protecting covers of pasteboard, and further secured by bands of elastic.  This he carried to his desk, deposited in a drawer, and locked the drawer.

By eleven o’clock the things which he had predicted the night before had come to pass.  A plump little man, with a fussy manner and Western clothes had been ushered into Bartholomew Berg’s private office.  Instinct told him that this was Griebler.  Jock left his desk and strolled up to get the switchboard operator’s confirmation of his guess.  Half an hour later Sam Hupp hustled by and disappeared into the Old Man’s sanctum.

Jock fingered the upper left-hand drawer of his desk.  The maddening blankness of that closed door!  If only he could find some excuse for walking into that room—­any old excuse, no matter how wild!—­just to get a chance at it—­

His telephone rang.  He picked up the receiver, his eye on the closed door, his thoughts inside that room.

“Mr. Berg wants to see you right away,” came the voice of the switchboard operator.

Something seemed to give way inside—­something in the region of his brain—­no, his heart—­no, his lungs—­

“Well, can you beat that!” said Jock McChesney aloud, in a kind of trance of joy.  “Can—­you—­beat—­that!”

Then he buttoned the lower button of his coat, shrugged his shoulders with an extra wriggle at the collar (the modern hero’s method of girding up his loins), and walked calmly into Bartholomew Berg’s very private office.

In the second that elapsed between the opening and the closing of the door Jock’s glance swept the three men—­Bartholomew Berg, quiet, inscrutable, seated at his great table-desk; Griebler, lost in the depths of a great leather chair, smoking fussily and twitching with a hundred little restless, irritating gestures; Sam Hupp, standing at the opposite side of the room, hands in pockets, attitude argumentative.

“This is Mr. McChesney,” said Bartholomew Berg.  “Mr. Griebler, McChesney.”

Jock came forward, smiling that charming smile of his.  “Mr. Griebler,” he said, extending his hand, “this is a great pleasure.”

“Hm!” growled Ben Griebler, “I didn’t know they picked ’em so young.”

His voice was a piping falsetto that somehow seemed to match his restless little eyes.