Mr. Ford raised his hand.  Starratt obeyed with silence.

“I’m sorry, Starratt, to see you bitten with this radical disease...  Of course, you can’t stay on here, after this.  Your confidence in us seems to have been destroyed and it goes without saying that my confidence in you has been seriously undermined.  We’ll give you a good recommendation and a month’s salary...  But you had better leave at once.  A man in your frame of mind isn’t a good investment for Ford, Wetherbee & Co.”

Starratt was still quivering with unleashed heroics.  “The recommendation is coming to me,” he returned, coldly.  “The month’s salary isn’t.  I’ll take what I’ve earned and not a penny more.”

“Very well; suit yourself there.”

Mr. Ford reached for his pen and began where he had left off at Starratt’s entrance ... signing insurance policies...  Starratt rose and left without a word.  The interview was over.

Already, in that mysterious way with which secrets flash through an office with lightninglike rapidity, a hint of Starratt’s brush with Ford was illuminating the dull routine.

“I think he’s going into business for himself, or something,” Starratt heard the chief stenographer say in a stage whisper to her assistant, as he passed.

And at his desk he found Brauer waiting to waylay him with a bid for lunch, his little ferret eyes attempting to confirm the general gossip flying about.

Starratt had an impulse to refuse, but instead he said, as evenly as he could: 

“All right ... sure!  Let’s go now!”

Brauer felt like eating oysters, so they decided to go up to one of the stalls in the California Market for lunch.  He was in an expansive mood.

“Let’s have beer, too,” he insisted, as they seated themselves.  “After the first of July they’ll slap on war-time prohibition and it won’t be so easy.”

Starratt acquiesced.  He usually didn’t drink anything stronger than tea with the noonday meal, because anything even mildly alcoholic made him loggy and unfit for work, but the thought that to-day he was free intrigued him.

The waiter brought the usual plate of shrimps that it was customary to serve with an oyster order, and Starratt and Brauer fell to.  A glass of beer foamed with enticing amber coolness before each plate.  Brauer reached over and lifted his glass.

“Well, here’s success to crime!” he said, with pointed facetiousness.

Starratt ignored the lead.  He had never liked Brauer and he did not find this sharp-nosed inquisitiveness to his taste.  He began to wonder why he had come with him.  Lunching with Brauer had never been a habit.  Occasionally, quite by accident, they managed to achieve the same restaurant and the same table, but it was not a matter of prearrangement.  Indeed, Starratt had always prided himself at his ability to keep Brauer at arm’s length.  A subtle change had occurred.  Was it possible