Her answer was a short, mirthless laugh that made him glance at her curiously.  “They know I’m perfectly safe.  It’s the other way round:  a man of your standing takes chances by being alone with a woman of—­mine”

“Which reminds me of Miss Lynn and Mr. Hammon.  You’ve decided to accept my offer?”

“No.  I can’t be a hired spy.”

“You said over the ’phone that you had learned something.”

“I have.  I believe there is an effort on foot to get some of Mr. Hammon’s money dishonestly.  I have a reason for wishing to prevent it.”

“I knew I wasn’t mistaken in you,” smiled Merkle.

“Oh, don’t attribute my actions to any high moral motives!  I’m getting a little rusty on right and wrong.  Personally, I have no sympathy with Mr. Hammon, and I don’t imagine he acquired all of his tremendous fortune in a perfectly honorable way.  Besides, he’s a married man.”

“It isn’t alone Jarvis or his family or their money that is concerned,” Merkle said, gravely.  “Great financial institutions sometimes rest on foundations as slight as one man’s personality—­ one man’s reputation for moral integrity.  A breath of suspicion of any sort at the wrong time may bring on a crash involving innocent people.

“Hammon at this moment carries a tremendous top-heavy burden of responsibilities; his death would be no more disastrous than a scandal that would tend to destroy public confidence in him as a man.”

“Doesn’t he know that himself?”

“Perhaps.  But his infatuation overtook him at an age when a man is a fool.  Young men are always objects of suspicion in the financial world, for their emotions are unruly; but when old men fall in love they are superbly heedless of consequences.  I promised to tell you something about Jarvis, and I will, since you spoke of his married life.  To begin with, his father and his father’s father were steel-workers.  They came from Cornwall before he was born, and Jarvis grew up in the glare of the Pennsylvania furnaces.  From the time he could walk he never knew anything, never heard anything except steel.  He inherited all the driving strength of his father and developed such a remarkable business ability that he became a rolling-mill superintendent almost before he was of age.  They say he never did less than two men’s work and often more; but he could make others work, too, and there lay the secret of his success.  He was indefatigable; he was a machine; he never rested, nor played, nor relaxed, as other men do.  He just worked; and his mill held the tonnage record for years.