As the tugs dragged out the unwilling vessel from her berth, he caught a glimpse of Brutgal, his coarse, heavy face set off by an enormous sealskin collar, join Mrs. Marteen at the rail and bid blatantly for her attention.  Gard turned his back, took Dorothy by the arm, and, in spite of her protestations, left the wharf.  His motor took Tante Lydia and Dorothy to their apartment, where he left them with many assurances of his desire to be of service.

He sent a wireless message and was comforted.  He wondered how, in the old days that were only yesterdays, people could have endured separation without any means of communication, and he blessed the name of Marconi as cordially as he cursed the name of Brutgal.  To exasperate him further, the rest of the day seemed obsessed by Victor Mahr.  He was in the elevator that took him up to his office; he was at the club in the afternoon; he was a guest at the Chamber of Commerce banquet in the evening, and was placed opposite Marcus Gard.  Despite his desire to let the man alone, he could not resist the temptation to talk with him.

Mahr, whatever else he might be, was no fool, and even as Gard seemed a prey to nervous irritation, so Mahr appeared to experience a bitter pleasure in parrying his adversary’s vicious thrusts and lunging at every opening in the other’s arguments.  Both men appeared to ease some inner turbulence, for they calmed down as the dinner progressed, and ended the evening in abstraction and silence, broken as they parted by Gard’s sudden question: 

“And how’s that good-looking son of yours, Mahr?”

Mahr shot an underbrow glance at Gard, and took his time to answer.

“If he does what I want him to,” he said at last, “he’ll take a year or two out West and learn the lumber business—­and I think he will.”

“Good idea,” said Gard curtly.  “Good-night.”

One day of restlessness succeeded another.  Ill at ease, Gard felt himself waiting—­for what?  It was the strain of anxiety, such as a miner feels deep in the heart of the earth, knowing that far down the black corridor the dynamite has been placed and the fuse laid.  Why was the expected explosion delayed?  One must not go forward to learn.  One must sit still and wait.  A thousand times he asked himself the meaning of this latent dread.  He set it down to his suspicions of Mrs. Marteen’s departure.  Then why this fibril anxiety never to be long beyond call?  Surely, and the demon in his brain laughed with amusement, he did not expect her to send him a cryptic wireless—­“Everything arranged; operation a success; appendix removed without opposition,” or “Patient unmanageable; must use anesthetic.”