“Two hours leeway before the storm,” said Hal.  “Why deliberately stir him up, Mac?”

“No one ever saw Pierce lose his temper.  I’ve a curiosity in that direction.  Besides, he’ll be easier to handle, mad.  Do you know Pierce?”

“I’ve lunched with him, and been there to the house to dinner once or twice.  Wish I hadn’t.”

“Let me give you a little outline of him.  Elias M. is the hard-shell New England type.  He was brought up in the fear of God and the Poor-House.  God was a good way off, I guess; but there stood the Poor-House on the hill, where you couldn’t help but see it.  The way of salvation from it was through the dollar.  Elias M. worked hard for his first dollar, and for his millionth.  He’s still working hard.  He still finds the fear of God useful:  he puts it into everybody that goes up against his game.  The fear of the Poor-House is with him yet, though he doesn’t realize it.  It’s the mainspring of his religion.  There’s nothing so mean as fear; and Elias M.’s fear is back of all his meanness, his despotism in business, his tyranny as an employer.  I tell you, Boss, if you ever saw a hellion in a cutaway coat, Elias M. Pierce is it, and you’re going to smell sulphur when he gets here.  Better let him do the talking, by the way.”

Prompt to the minute, Elias M. Pierce arrived.  With him came William Douglas, his personal counsel.  Having risen to greet them, Hal stood leaning against his desk, after they were seated.  The lawyer disposed himself on the far edge of his chair, as if fearing that a more comfortable pose might commit him to something.  Mr. Pierce sat solid and square, a static force neatly buttoned into a creaseless suit.  His face was immobile, but under the heavy lids the eyes smouldered, dully.  The tone of his voice was lifelessly level:  yet with an immanent menace.

“I do not make appointments outside my own office—­” he began, looking straight ahead of him.

Mindful of Ellis’s advice, Hal stood silent, in an attitude of courteous attention.

“But this is a case of saving time.  My visit has to do with the accident of which you know.”

Whether or not Hal knew was undeterminable from sign or speech of his.

“It was wholly the injured woman’s fault,” pursued Mr. Pierce, and turned a slow, challenging eye upon Hal.

Over his shoulder the editor-in-chief caught sight of McGuire Ellis laying finger on lip, and following up this admonition by a gesture of arms and hands as of one who pays out line to a fish.  Douglas fidgeted on his desperate edge.

“You sent a reporter to interview my daughter.  He was impertinent.  He should be discharged.”

Still Mr. Pierce was firing into silence.  Something rattled and flopped in a chute at his elbow.  He turned, irritably.  That Mr. Pierce’s attention should have been diverted even for a moment by this was sufficient evidence that he was disconcerted by the immobility of the foe.  But his glance quickly reverted and with added weight.  Heavily he stared, then delivered his ultimatum.