This last was conclusive, as far as it went; and Japheth Pettigrass supplied the missing item.  The Dabneys and the Farleys made one party, and Japheth knew the steamer and the sailing date.

“Party will sail by White Star Line Baltic, New York, to-morrow.  New York address, Fifth Avenue Hotel.  Papers to you care 271 Broadway by mail yesterday,” was the message which was signed for by the doorkeeper at the mines and metallurgy examination room in Boston, late in the forenoon of the second day; and Tom looked at the clock.  Nothing would be gained by taking a train which would land him in New York late in the evening; so he plunged again into the examination pool and thought no more of Chiawassee Consolidated until his paper on qualitative analysis had been neatly folded, docketed and handed to the examiner.

The hands of his watch were pointing to eight o’clock the following morning when Tom made his way through the throng in the Grand Central station and found a cab.  The sailing hour of the Baltic was ten, and he picked his cabman accordingly.

“I shall want you for a couple of hours, and it’s double fare if you don’t miss. 271 Broadway, first,” was his fillip for the driver; and he was speedily rattling away to the down-town address.

The taking of the cab was his first mistake, and he discovered it before he had gone very far.  Time was precious, and the horse, pushed to the police limit, was too slow.  Tom signaled his Irishman.

“Get me over to the Elevated, and then go to Madison Square and wait for me,” he ordered; and by this change of conveyance he obtained his mail and won back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel by late breakfast time.

From that on, luck was with him.  The Farleys, father and son, were in the lobby of the hotel, waiting for the others to come down to the cafe breakfast.  Tom saw them, confronted them, and went at things very concisely.

“I have come all the way from Boston to ask for a few minutes of your time, Mr. Farley,” he said to the president.  “Will you give it to me now?”

“Surely!” was the genial reply, and the promoter signed to his son and drew apart with the importunate one.  “Well, go on, my boy; what can I do for you at this last American moment?—­some message from your good father?”

“No,” said Tom shortly; “it’s from me, individually.  You know in what shape you have left things at home; they’ve got to be stood on their feet before you go aboard the Baltic.”

“What’s this—­what’s this?  Why, my dear young man! what can you possibly mean?”—­this in buttered tones of the gentlest expostulation.

“I mean just about what I say.  You have smashed Chiawassee Consolidated, and now you are going off to leave my father to hold the bag.  Or rather I should say, you are taking the bag with you.”

The president was visibly moved.

“Why, Thomas—­you must be losing your mind!  You’ve—­you’ve been studying too hard; that’s it—­the term work up there in Boston has been too much for you.”