“Uh, of course, of course; you’re just perfectly a slinking gazelle.  Ha, ha, ha!” answered Bean, laughing at his own jest after the manner of the office-boy.

He was back making a feeble effort to finish the last of Breede’s letters.  He glanced mechanically at his notes.  Above that routine work he had so many things to think about.  He’d fixed Tully for good.  Tully wouldn’t try that “by the way” and “not impossible” stuff with him any more.  And that little old man—­perfumery not used since the Chicago fire, or had he said the Mexican War?  No matter.  And talked to Breede about heifers.  But there was the big-faced brute, speaking pretty seriously.  Let him go free to-night!  State’s prison offence, maybe!  Might be in jail this time to-morrow.  Would the flapper telephone to him there?  Send him unpoisoned canned food?  Would he be disgraced?  Breede—­directors—­glamour wearing off—­slinking gazelles with yellow whiskers—­rotten perfumery.  So rushed the turbulent flood of his mind.  But the letter was finished at last.

Two days later a certain traffic manager of lines west of Chicago read a paragraph in this letter many times: 

“The cramped conditions of this terminal have been of course appreciably relieved by the completion of the westside cut-off.  Nevertheless our traffic has not yet attained its maximum, and new problems of congestion will arise next year.  I am engaged to that perfectly flapper daughter of yours, and we are going to marry each other when she gets perfectly good and ready.  Better not fuss any.  Let Julia do the fussing.  To meet this emergency I dare say it will come to four-tracking the old main line over the entire division.  It will cost high, but we must have a first-class freight-carrier if we are to get the business.”

The traffic manager at first reached instinctively for his telegraphic cipher code.  But he reflected that this was not code-phrasing.  He read the paragraph again and was obliged to remind himself that his only daughter was already the wife of a man he knew to be in excellent health.  Also he was acquainted with no one named Julia.

He copied from the letter that portion of it which seemed relevant, and destroyed the original.  He had never heard it said of Breede; but he knew there are times when, under continued mental strain, the most abstemious of men will relax.

XII

When Bean emerged from the office-building that afternoon he was closely scrutinized by an inconspicuous man who, just inside the door by the cigar-stand, had been conversing with Tully.  Bean saw Tully, but strode by that gentleman with head erect, chest expanded, and waist drawn in.  Tully was cut.  And Bean did not, of course, notice the inconspicuous man with whom Tully talked.