He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where she and her people occupied a wing of great price, and Cheyne, in a veranda-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day.  There was a war of rates among four Western railroads in which he was supposed to be interested; a devastating strike had developed in his lumber camps in Oregon, and the legislature of the State of California, which has no love for its makers, was preparing open war against him.

Ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign.  But now he sat limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big body shrunk inside his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the Chinese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to the secretary’s questions as he opened the Saturday mail.

Cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything and pull out.  He carried huge insurances, could buy himself royal annuities, and between one of his places in Colorado and a little society (that would do the wife good), say in Washington and the South Carolina islands, a man might forget plans that had come to nothing.  On the other hand—­

The click of the typewriter stopped; the girl was looking at the secretary, who had turned white.

He passed Cheyne a telegram repeated from San Francisco: 

Picked up by fishing schooner ‘We’re Here’ having fallen off boat great times on Banks fishing all well waiting Gloucester Mass care Disko Troop for money or orders wire what shall do and how is Mama Harvey N. Cheyne.

The father let it fall, laid his head down on the roller-top of the shut desk, and breathed heavily.  The secretary ran for Mrs. Cheyne’s doctor who found Cheyne pacing to and fro.

“What—­what d’ you think of it?  Is it possible?  Is there any meaning to it?  I can’t quite make it out,” he cried.

“I can,” said the doctor.  “I lose seven thousand a year—­that’s all.”  He thought of the struggling New York practice he had dropped at Cheyne’s imperious bidding, and returned the telegram with a sigh.

“You mean you’d tell her?  ’May be a fraud?”

“What’s the motive?” said the doctor, coolly.  “Detection’s too certain.  It’s the boy sure enough.”

Enter a French maid, impudently, as an indispensable one who is kept on only by large wages.

“Mrs. Cheyne she say you must come at once.  She think you are seek.”

The master of thirty millions bowed his head meekly and followed Suzanne; and a thin, high voice on the upper landing of the great white-wood square staircase cried:  “What is it?  What has happened?”

No doors could keep out the shriek that rang through the echoing house a moment later, when her husband blurted out the news.

“And that’s all right,” said the doctor, serenely, to the typewriter.  “About the only medical statement in novels with any truth to it is that joy don’t kill, Miss Kinzey.”