This person, however, followed Bean to the street, where he seemed a little taken aback to observe the young man very authoritatively enter a large red touring car and utter a command to its driver with an air of seasoned ownership.  The red car moved slowly up Broadway.  The inconspicuous man surveyed the passing vehicles, and seemed relieved when he discovered an empty taxi-cab going north.  He hailed it and entered, giving directions to its guide that entailed much pointing to the large red touring car now a block distant.

Thereafter, until late at night, the red car was trailed by the taxi-cab.  At six o’clock the car stopped at a place of refreshment overlooking the river, where the trailed youth consumed a modest dinner, which he concluded with a radiant raspberry ice.  A little later he reentered the red car and was driven aimlessly for a couple of hours through leafy by-ways.  The inconspicuous man became of the opinion that the occupant of the red car was cunningly endeavouring to conceal his true destination.

The car returned to the place of refreshment at nine-thirty, where the young man again ordered a raspberry ice, with which he trifled for the better part of an hour.  He betrayed to the alert but inconspicuous person who sat near him, by his expectant manner of scanning newcomers’ faces, that he had hoped to meet some one here.

This expectation was disappointed.  The watchful person suspected that the youth’s confederates might have been warned.  The quarry at length departed, in obvious disappointment, and was driven to his abode in a decent neighbourhood.  The taxi-cab was near enough to the red car when this place was reached to enable its occupant to hear the young man request it for eight the following morning.  The young man entered what a sign at the doorway declared to be “Choice Steam-heated Apartments,” and the occupant of the taxi-cab was presently overheard by the janitor of the apartments expostulating with the vehicle’s driver about the sum demanded for his evening’s recreation.  He was heard to denounce the fellow as “a thief and a robber!” and to make a vicious threat concerning his license.

Bean was face to face with Ram-tah, demanding whatever strength might flow to him from that august personage.  A crisis had come.  Either he was a king, or he was not a king.  If a king, he must do as kings would do.  If not a king, he would doubtless behave like a rabbit.

But strength flowed to him as always from that calm, strong face.  In Ram-tah’s presence he could believe no weakness of himself.  Put him in jail, would they?  A man who had not only once ruled a mighty people in peace, but who had, some hundreds of centuries later, made Europe tremble under the tread of his victorious armies.  Ram-tah had been no fighter—­but Napoleon!  He, Bunker Bean, was a wise king, yet a mighty warrior.  Beat him down, would they?  Merely because he wanted to become a director in their company!  Well,