“Well,” growled his employer, “could your man suggest to Mahr that he had had wind of something in Cosmopolitan Telephone?  I’ll see that there’s a move to corroborate it by noon to-day, if Long gets in his tip early.  And suggest, too, that I’m sore because he bought the Heim Vandyke; but that if he asked me to come and see it, I’d go, and he might have a chance to pump me.  I happen to know that Mahr is in the telephone pool up to his eyes, and he’d do anything to get into quick communication with me.  He is probably going to the club to-day, and I’ll not be there—­see?”

Brencherly shrugged his shoulders.  “Of course, if things turn out—­um—­fishy, Long loses his job.  But he’s a good man to have well placed.  I guess we could land him a berth.”

Gard sickened.  He could read the detective’s secret satisfaction in the association of that “we” in a shady transaction.  Naturally, to have a man on whom they “had something” in a place of trust might be a great asset.

“Long will be taken care of,” he snapped, replacing his scarf pin for the twentieth time, and making an unspoken promise to himself to send the secretary so far away from the scene of Brencherly’s activities that he would at least have a chance to begin life anew without fear of the past.

“May I?” queried Brencherly, with a jerk of his head toward the telephone.

“Rather you didn’t—­from here.  Go out, get your man and tell me when he will tip Mahr.  That means my orders in the Street.  Tell him there is news of federal action.  I drop out enough stock to sink the quotations a few points—­it’s the truth, too, hang it!  But it won’t get very far.”

A crafty smile curled the detective’s lips as he rose to go.  “Very good, sir.  We’ll pull it off all right.  I suppose the office will find you?”

“Yes,” said Gard.  “And I see you intend to take a flier on your inside information.  Well, all I say is, don’t hang on too long.  Get busy now; there’s no time to waste.”

He rang for his valet to show the man out, descended to the dining room, dispatched his simple breakfast and turned his face and thoughts officeward.  With that move came the thought of Washington.  He cast it from him angrily, yet when the swirl of business affairs closed around him he experienced a certain pleasure and relief in stemming its tides and battling with its current.  True, the current was swift and boded the whirlpool, but the rage that was in him seemed to give him added strength, added foresight.  At least in this struggle he was gaining, mastering the flood and directing it to his will.  Would his mastery be proven in this other and more personal affair?  He set his teeth and redoubled his efforts, intent on proving his own power to himself.  Even as Napoleon believed in his star, Gard trusted in his luck, and it was with a smothered laugh of sardonic satisfaction that news of the first move in his campaign came over the wire.