“On the day after tomorrow,” he reminded them, “the stock-holders’ meeting of Coal and Ore is held.  By use of the cumulative system of balloting we can concentrate our fire on Burton.”

“Do you gather,” questioned Meegan anxiously, “that our fears of a Burton raid are founded in fact?”

The elder chief spread before his associates several sheets of closely written paper.

“On the contrary, I gather that Burton has not selected this time for his coup.  I fancy we have forestalled him.”

“Yet,” suggested Meegan anxiously, “we want to feel sure.”

Malone nodded.  “Unless several men whom we trust prove traitors, we may feel sure.  Gentlemen, I think we have soon enough, but none too soon, safeguarded ourselves against piracy.  I hardly believe that what Gates did to L. and N. will be done to us by Burton....  I have been very busy and for some reason I do not feel quite myself.  I think I shall now beg you to excuse me.”  The man of mighty resource rose smilingly from the table and then suddenly rested both hands on its polished surface.  His ruddy face became pallid and he lifted one hand with a bewildered gesture to his brow.

Harrison and Meegan sprang with a common impulse to his side.

As they helped him to a chair, his step was unsteady.  “It will pass,” Malone assured them.  “It is an attack of indigestion.”  Yet within the half-hour his powerful frame was being racked by convulsions and two hours later specialists at St. Luke’s were making those preparations which precede an operation for appendicitis.  Tomorrow when the Stock-Exchange opened the newspapers would spread the news that J.J.  Malone was out of the game and Wall street would once more mirror an anxiety which any small thing might convert into a parlous situation.

At the same hour a special train with a guaranteed right of way was thundering along its road-bed with a wake of red cinders and black smoke trailing from its stack and a single passenger in its single coach.  The Honorable Mr. Ruferton was going to call on the Honorable Mr. Hendricks.

In ignorance of what the morrow held, the Honorable Mr. Hendricks was meanwhile sleeping peacefully in the quiet of his country house.

Shafts of sunlight came pleasantly through the dining-room windows on the following morning as he breakfasted alone, and still in ignorance.  The forests were decked with the first coloring of an early frost, and Mr. Hendricks strolled out for a cigar in the crisp air of his woodland.  Physically he was fit and his conscience did not trouble him; since his conscience was both lenient and practical.

Then as he took pleasure in his life and his Havana, he saw a dilapidated buckboard laboring up the rutty trail.  It halted at his gate to let out a man of whom chance had, on more than one occasion, made a colleague, and occasionally an adversary.

“Hello, Ruferton,” he shouted amiably, “what brings you here?”