“How do you do, Mr. Montague?” said the clerk, when he went to the desk.  “Mr. Harvey left a note for you.”

Montague opened the envelope, and read a hurried scrawl to the effect that Harvey had just got word that a bank of which he was a director was in trouble, and that he would have to attend a meeting that evening.  He had telephoned both to Montague’s office and to his hotel, without being able to find him.

Montague turned away.  He had no place to go, for his own family was out of town; consequently he strolled into the dining-room and ate by himself.  Afterwards he came out into the lobby, and bought several evening papers, and stood glancing over the head-lines.

Suddenly a man strode in at the door, and he looked up.  It was Winton Duval, the banker; Montague had never seen him since the time when they had parted in Mrs. Winnie’s drawing-room.  He did not see Montague, but strode past, his brows knit in thought, and entered one of the elevators.

A moment later Montague heard a voice at his side.  “How do you do, Mr. Montague?”

He turned.  It was Mr. Lyon, the manager of the hotel, whom Siegfried Harvey had once introduced to him.  “Have you come to attend the conference?” said he.

“Conference?” said Montague.  “No.”

“There’s a big meeting of the bankers here to-night,” remarked the other.  “It’s not supposed to be known, so don’t mention it.—­How do you do, Mr. Ward?” he added, to a man who went past.  “That’s David Ward.”

“Ah,” said Montague.  Ward was known in the Street by the nickname of Waterman’s “office-boy.”  He was a high-salaried office-boy—­Waterman paid him a hundred thousand a year to manage one of the big insurance companies for him.

“So he’s here, is he?” said Montague.

“Waterman is here himself,” said Lyon.  “He came in by the side entrance.  It’s something especially secret, I gather—­they’ve rented eight rooms upstairs, all connecting.  Waterman will go in at one end, and Duval at the other, and so the reporters won’t know they’re together!”

“So that’s the way they work it!” said Montague, with a smile.

“I’ve been looking for some of the newspaper men,” Lyon added.  “But they don’t seem to have caught on.”

He strolled away, and Montague stood watching the people in the lobby.  He saw Jim Hegan come and enter the elevator, in company with an elderly man whom he recognised as Bascom, the president of the Empire Bank, Waterman’s own institution.  He saw two other men whom he knew as leading bankers of the System; and then, as he glanced toward the desk, he saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, who had been talking to the clerk, turn around, and reveal himself as his friend Bates, of the Express.

“Humph!” thought Montague.  “The newspaper men are ‘on,’ after all.”

He saw Bates’s glance sweep the lobby and rest upon him.  Montague made a movement of greeting with his hand, but Bates did not reply.  Instead, he strolled toward him, went by without looking at him, and, as he passed, whispered in a low, quick voice, “Please come into the writing-room!”