“You can leave this thing in my hands, sir,” he said.  “Our organisation has been working steadily to undermine the Sachigo people for months past.  That has always been part of our policy.  I’d say the whole thing’s going to fit very well.  You say, if necessary, you’ll find half a million dollars for the business.  We shan’t need a tithe of that.  However, it’s well to know it.  And none of it needs to worry our directors.  I’ll set about it right away—­in my own fashion—­and I’ll promise you a quick result.  We’ll smash these folk all right.  But how it’s to hand you the man you need I’m not wise—­”

“No.”  Hellbeam’s eyes were certainly derisive as they turned back from the window.  “This man, Martin, will show himself when he sees the—­destruction.  My people will do the rest.”

“Unless he leaves it—­to Sternford.  They tell us this man would as soon fight as laugh.  That’s how Miss McDonald said the missionary, Father Adam, told her.”

“Father Adam?” The derision in the financier’s eyes had deepened.  “That’s the man that other fool talks of.”

Peterman shrugged.  The sting in the financier’s words stirred him to resentment.

“I don’t know about that.  Anyway—­”

“How is it you say?  Get busy.  Yes.”

Hellbeam rose stiffly from his seat and picked up his hat.  He was quite untouched by the other’s change of tone.

“Do it how you please.  Break that mill.  I care nothing for the means.  Smash ’em, and leave the rest to me.  And when you that have done you can do the thing you please.  You will have my good will.  I say that.  Now I go.”

* * * * *

Peterman picked up the ’phone the moment the door had closed behind the one man in all the world he really feared, and at the other end of it Nancy took the message summoning her to his presence.  The man spoke with unusual urgency.  But his tone was pleasant, and more than conciliatory.  He wanted her at once.  She could leave her reports.  She could leave everything.  He had some news for her of the pleasantest nature.  Oh, yes.  He had determined big things for her.  She had earned them all.  But a thing had happened whereby there need be no limit to her advancement if she would take the chance of a big work offered her.  Would she kindly come up right away.

Nancy listened to this message with a stirring of heart.  What was the great work that was to place no limit on her advancement?  It was a feeling rather than a thought.  For a moment she stood in her glass-partitioned office after she had received the message and a smile of great happiness lit her eyes.

She was desperately earnest with a singleness of purpose which had in it something of the recklessness of the father before her.  She was a child in all else.  A wide vision of achievement was spread out before her.  She could see nothing beyond.  She could see nothing to give her pause, nothing even to bestir a belated caution.  So she left her office for the interview Peterman had demanded without suspicion, and with a heart and mind ready to plunge her headlong into any labours which the Skandinavia demanded of her.