“May I sit?” he inquired coolly, after the operation had been performed.

Hellbeam nodded.

“Well?” he repeated.

The agent laid his hat on the ornate desk, and removed his gloves with care and deliberation.

“I’m just back from Sachigo,” he said.

“Hah!”

The financier settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and returned his cigar to his gross mouth.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“Easy.  Things are moving our way.”

The dark eyes glanced over the table for the gold cigarette box that always stood there.

“Help yourself,” the banker ordered rather than invited.

Idepski needed no second bidding.

“You got all my code messages?” he asked.  “Good,” as the Swede nodded.  “Then you know the position of the mill.  Say, that feller Harker needs a sort of apology from me—­also from you.  The mill’s a wonder.  And he’s the guy that’s fixed it that way.  You haven’t a thing in Skandinavia comparable.  I’d say you haven’t a feller on your side capable of touching the fringe of that tough’s genius for organisation.  It’s him.  Not Martin—­I mean Standing.”

“And Standing?”

But Idepski was not to be deflected from his purpose.

“That’s all right,” he said easily.  “I’m coming to him presently.  I gave you, at times, the whole length and breadth, and size, and capacity of the Sachigo of to-day.  You got all that stuff.  But I’ve saved up the plum.  There’s a new man come into it.  His name’s Sternford—­Bull Sternford.  Guess it’s him I need to tell you about before I pass on to the other.  It’s taken me a while to locate all I needed.  And I guess I had luck or I wouldn’t have got it all yet.”

For once the man’s smile reached his eyes.

“What’s his position—­in Sachigo?” Hellbeam demanded.

“Right on top of the business side of it.”

“A financial man?”

The banker’s interest was obviously stirred.  But Idepski shook his dark head.

“That’s the queer of it,” he said.  “He’s a youngster straight out of the forest with no sort of record except as a pretty tough fighting proposition.  Here, let me hand it to you in my own way, and I’ll answer any sort of question after.  I got men chasing up the forest camps.  You know that.  Well, I get their reports right here in this city at my office.  They’re read carefully, and anything that looks good is coded, and sent on to me wherever I am.  Well, right after I located this feller, Sternford, coming into Sachigo, I got word of some stuff reported from one of your own camps way out north-west of Lake St. Anac.  Guess it’s about the farthest north in that direction, and it’s cut off from any other camp by a hundred miles.  On the face of it the stuff didn’t seem to need more than a single thought.  It was to say my man was quitting the camp.  He’d sifted it right through, but there wasn’t a ‘jack’ in the