Fate, who had been at the steer-wheel of his life-car during the last five years, carry him safely through what looked a dozen sure deaths?  Without slacking speed a jot we swung around the corner of Fortieth into Fifth Avenue.  The road was clear to Forty-second; there a dense jam of cars, teams, and carriages blocked the crossing.  Bob must have seen the solid wall for I heard his low muttered curse.  Nothing else to indicate that we were blocked with his goal in sight.  He never touched the speed controller, but took the two blocks as though shot from a catapult.  The two?  No, one, and three-quarters of the next, for when within a score of yards of the black wall he jammed down the brakes, and the iron mass ground and shook as though it would rend itself to atoms, but it stopped with its dasher and front wheels wedged in between a car and a dray.  It had not stopped when Bob was off and up the avenue like a hound on the end-in-sight trail.  I was after him while the astonished bystanders stared in wonder.  As we neared Bob’s house I could see people on the stoop.  I heard Bob’s secretary shout, “Thank God, Mr. Brownley, you have come.  She is in the office.  I found her there, quiet and recovered.  She did not ask a question.  She said, ’Tell Mr. Brownley when he comes that I should like to see him.’  Then she ordered me to get the afternoon paper.  I handed it to her an hour ago.  I think she believes herself in her old office.  I shut off the floor as you instructed.  I did not dare go to her for fear she would ask questions.  I have”—­but Bob was up the stairs two and three steps at a time.

My breath was almost gone and it took me minutes to get to the second floor.  My feet touched the top stair, when, O God! that sound!  For five long years I had been trying to get it out of my ears, but now more guttural, more agonised than before, it broke upon my tortured senses.  I did not need to seek its direction.  With a bound I was at the threshold of Beulah Sands-Brownley’s office.  In that brief time the groans had stilled.  For one instant I closed my eyes, for the very atmosphere of that hall moaned and groaned death.  I opened them.  Yes, I knew it.  There at the desk was the beautiful gray-clad figure of five years ago.  There the two arms resting on the desk.  There the two beautiful hands holding the open paper, but the eyes, those marvellous gray-blue doors to an immortal soul—­they were closed forever.  The exquisitely beautiful face was cold and white and peaceful.  Beulah Sands was dead.  The hell-hounds of the “System” had overtaken its maimed and hunted victim; it had added her beautiful heart to the bags and barrels and hogsheads stored away in its big “business-is-business” safe-deposit vaults.  My eyes in sick pity sought the form of my old schoolmate, my college chum, my partner, my friend, the man I loved.  He was on his knees.  His agonised face was turned to his wife.  His clasped hands had been raised in an awful, heart-crushing