The snap of the receiver under his finger was abrupt and decisive as he again called central, and while he waited he talked to Tarring.

“What funds have we in those banks?...  Hello!  I want Bryant 1146, yes, the Metropolitan Opera....  Hello!  Please have Mr. Carter brought from his box to the ’phone.  This is Hamilton Burton, talking ... a matter that can’t wait....  Tarring, I must have the stock those banks hold.  You must have them here tomorrow night....  Hello, is that you Carter?  I need a special train for Barry Spa in thirty minutes, and another to meet it there for Lake Mosoc.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Burton’s voice came with violent explosiveness.

“Impossible?  It seems to me that every man I talk to prates vacantly about impossibilities.  Damn it, when I need a train I need a train....  You understand me, don’t you, Carter?”

Again there was the interruption of the voice at the further end.  As Burton listened his eyes kindled afresh under blackly drawn brows, but when he spoke it was in a clear and cold voice, more unpleasant to hear than a tirade of passion.

“To hell with explanations, Carter!  I want action.  Do I get my train?  You are burning time....  Kindly listen because I mean this to the last syllable....  Unless you can achieve this highly impossible matter of accommodation—­” suddenly the voice leaped to a higher scale and shot out its ultimatum like canister—­“I will throw you out of the presidency and the damned road-bed into the river and the shops into the junk heap....  All right, please hurry.”  He clapped down the receiver, then resumed his second thread of thought as though there had been no interruption.

“I want those bankers here.  That is your job, Tarring.  They need know only that it is of vital importance and that our meeting must be attended with the strictest confidence.  Intimate that my object is the averting of ruinous runs which must follow unless we stop them—­and worse disasters.”

Tarring rose.  His task, as compared with the other he had seen assigned, appeared easy.  “Shall I come with them?” he inquired.

Burton nodded.  “You are a notary.  It may be necessary for you to take acknowledgments.”

CHAPTER XV

When the two emissaries had left the library Hamilton Burton sat before his hearth and shook loose the reins of imagination.  He burned driftwood in this room and as his eyes dwelt on the shooting tongues of blue flame that licked around the logs his dreams absorbed him.  Yamuro, his Japanese valet, slipped in to see if his master required him—­but his footfall was noiseless, and when he had tiptoed close enough to study the face, he departed without speaking.  The lips in the yellow face parted in a grin that bared a spread of strong, white teeth.  The eyes between high cheekbones glistened in dark slits and in his throat, too low to be heard, a little grunt voiced Yamuro’s fanatical admiration.  Had Hamilton Burton been an emperor in the field Yamuro would have asked no greater privilege than to interpose his body between his idolized master and all danger.  Such was the power of this wholly selfish but dominant personality.  Outside the Oriental chuckled to himself, “No worry....  Him got great thoughts.”