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some day ripple beside the grave of an old, old man who had been himself.

    "Stone!" he shouted. "Jack!"

    C hapter Five: THE QUESTIONS

    NEW YORK was loud and hot. Horse cars rattled over the cross-town tracks. A steam engine pounded on the elevated railway and ground to a stop. The sound of hoofs beat on the cobblestones. Wagon wheels, iron-tired, set up a continuous rumble and among the wagons moved broughams and victorias.

    In an office building on Park Row which was not a skyscraper but which was high enough to overlook Brooklyn Bridge, two men were greeting each other.

    One was Elihu Whitney, the most famous corporation lawyer in Gotham.

    The other was a Mr. Harriman.

    The lawyer wore a Prince Albert--its black coat falling to his knees. His collar was high and his tie black and narrow, knotted crosswise on his starched bosom.

    Mr. Harriman carried a bowler in his hand. His suit was light and very tight. In one of the two button-holes on his coat lapel was a rose. His vest also had lapels "'which were buttoned together two inches below his collar.

    Mr. Whitney's voice was basso and meticulous:

    "A fine day, indeed, my dear Harriman. I'm delighted to see you."

    Harriman stroked his giant mustache.

    "A pleasure. May I tender my congratulations on the return of your son and your charming daughter-in-law? A happy couple. One envies these youngsters their honeymoons, eh?"

    Whitney chuckled. "Two birds in a bush could not be happier."

    He bowed and waved his friend to a chair. He pulled a bell cord and an office boy brought a box of Cigars.

    The men helped themselves. The lawyer struck a match on the sole of his shoe and held it for his guest.

    "Your son is brilliant," Harriman continued. "Very brilliant. I wish you would convey Mrs. Harriman's salutations to them and tell them that we are both going to call as soon as they can bear to have their nest distl1rbed."

    "They'll be delighted."

    "I read so much about them in the Record."

    "Yes, yes," Whitney said. '

    He patted the under side of his cheek whiskers with the back of his hand and wondered how soon Harriman would reach the point.

    The other man drew on the floor with his cane.

    "The Record has depreciated since--ah--Stone left, don't you think?" A glint came in Whitney's eye. Harriman had come to talk about Stone. The lawyer would have offered odds at his dub that Mrs. Harriman's curiosity was responsible for the visit of her banker husband.

    Whitney shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps. But the profits are up. I have a balance sheet here--"

    "Don't bother. Don't trouble yourself." Harriman's smile distorted his mustache.
    "Funny thing for a man like Stone to do--lose himself at sea."

    "Very strange. But he was shaken. Grievously shaken."

    "Oh--true. A tense man. An idealist. A great loss to Journalism.

    "To the country, Harriman."

    "Yes, indeed. The whole country." He paused. "You don't believe, do you, that there's any chance--any remote chance--that he isn't lost--for life?"

    It was the hundredth time Whitney had been asked that question--in public and in private, by dowagers at austere functions in Washington Square and by his office boy. He realized that Harriman expected to receive a true answer-and he was ready with the truth as he knew it, although he felt he was answering Mrs. Olive Harriman's curiosity rather than the banker's honest interest.

    "I think the Falcon went down," he said gravely.

    "No hint of anything else?"

    "None;."

    "How did he leave his properties?"

    "In trust. In a holding company. For his son-for ninety-nine years. Then for the extant employees of the organization or organizations."

    "I see. Don't you think that's a bit suggestive?"

    The lawyer walked to the window. He rocked on his feet so that his Prince Albert touched the front and then the back of his knees. He watched the carriages and vans that poured back and forth across Brooklyn Bridge.

    "Not at all. He expected to return. At least--he expected his son to