Paul directed the car out that way, spinning it nicely.  It was a monstrous performance, to spin at that hour in a direction quite away from the place where you are expected by all the laws of business and common decency.  This seemed to be the opinion of an inconspicuous man who followed discreetly in a taxi-cab.  But Bean enjoyed it, thinking that the night might find him in a narrow cell.  He looked with new interest on the street-cars full of office-bound people.  They were meekly going to their tasks while he was affronting men with more millions than he had checks on the newest suit.

As they left the city and came to outlying villages, he saw that he was going in the direction of Breede’s place.  He thought it would be a fine thing to get the flapper and go and be just perfectly married.  Then he could send a telegram to the office, telling them he could imagine nothing of less consequence, and that they might all go to the devil.  It was easy to be “snappy” in a telegram.  But he remembered that the flapper just perfectly wished to manage it herself; probably she wouldn’t like his taking a hand in the game.  Better not be rough with the child at the start.

They were miles away.  The person in the taxi-cab might have been observed searching his pockets curiously, and to be counting what money he found therein as he cast anxious glances toward the dial of the taxi-metre.

Bean surveyed the landscape approvingly.  Anyway, it was a fine enough performance to keep them waiting there.  They would all be enraged.  Perhaps the old one would have his stroke before the arrival of the spectator to whom it would give the most pleasure.  They might be taking him out to the ambulance, and all the other directors would stand there and say, “This is your work.  Officer, do your duty!” Well, it would be worth it.  He’d tell them so, too!

Looking ahead, he became aware that an electric car had suffered an accident.  The passengers streamed out and gathered around the motorman who was peering under the car.  As Paul slowed down and turned aside to pass, the motorman declared, “She’s burned out.  Have to wait for the next car to push us.”

There were annoyed stirrings in the group.  A few passengers started for a suburban railway station that could be seen a half-mile distant.  Bean looked down upon these delayed people with amused sympathy.

Then, astoundingly, his eye fell upon one of the passengers a little aloof from the group about the motorman.  He, too, after a last look at the car, seemed to be resolving on that long tramp to the station.  He was a sightly young man, tall, heavily built, and dressed in garments that would on any human form have won Bean’s instant respect.  But on the form of the Greatest Pitcher the World Has Ever Seen—!!

His mind was at once vacant of all the past, of all the future.  There was no more a Breede, male or female, no more directors or shares or jails.  There was only a big golden Present, subduing, enthralling, limitless!