have the file in your office by five this afternoon. And tell him, for me, that if he tries to put through this trick, I’ll break him. I’ll put a competing line on, and his steamboats will be in the receiver’s hands inside a year� . And� hello, are you there?� And just look up that point I suggested. I am rather convinced you’ll find the Interstate Commerce has got him on two counts� .”

Nor did Graham, nor even Paula, imagine that Dick — the keen one, the deep one, who could see and sense things yet to occur and out of intangible nuances and glimmerings build shrewd speculations and hypotheses that subsequent events often proved correct — was already sensing what had not happened but what might happen. He had not heard Paula’s brief significant words at the hitching post; nor