“Quite well. He is walking with a crutch, and is able to hear his classes.” So much Carfax said in the matter-of-fact manner of one who answers a commonplace categorically. Then he sat up suddenly and snapped his fingers, and the lisping drawl had returned when he went on: “By Jove! that reminds me, don’t you know. Hartridge would like to see you.” “Why does he wish to see me?” Carfax spread his hands. “My dear boy, I’m no mind-reader. But I’m sure it’s rather urgent. Will you go?” Tregarvon sat frowning down upon the papers on the desk for a full half-minute before he looked up to say: “I can’t go, Poictiers. I don’t care especially to meet Hartridge, or to listen to the begging-off plea which he is probably going to make. He as good as told me that he was jealous, and was trying to get square. Besides, I haven’t seen Richardia since this mad-work whirl began, and--and it will be easier for me if I don’t see her again.” Carfax had his answer ready. “You’ll not meet Richardia at Highmount. Elizabeth is staying with the Caswells for a few days, and Richardia went home to Westwood House at three o’clock. I know, because I drove her in my car. Hartridge has his rooms in the laboratory building, and you needn’t show up at the president’s house at all if you don’t wish to.” Tregarvon hesitated a moment and then glanced at his watch. “I’ll go--a little later,” he decided abruptly. “I don’t know that I owe the professor anything but an action at law for helping to destroy my drilling plant, but I’ll give him a chance to say what he has to say. Now run along and keep your dinner engagement. I can drive up in my own car when I am ready.” “About what time will that be?” queried Carfax, hanging upon the threshold of the door of leave-takings. “I ought to let Hartridge know when to expect you.” Again Tregarvon looked at his watch. “Say eight o’clock. Will that do?” “Perfectly, I should think.” It was the golden youth’s cue to disappear, but still he lingered. “That telegram you have just written, Vance; are you going to send it to-night?” Tregarvon answered without looking up. “Certainly. And to-morrow I shall notify the sheriff to send a deputy after McNabb.” Carfax went out, closing the door softly behind him. But when the big expensive motor-car had cut its half-circle to head toward the mountain pike it was brought to a stand at the railroad station, and the driver left it for a minute or two while he had speech through the ticket-window with Orcutt, the night telegraph operator. Daddy Layne, with nothing better to do, was warming his shins at the waiting-room stove, and though he listened, after the manner of his kind, he caught only one sentence of the low-toned talk. That was Orcutt’s, spoken after Layne’s keen old eyes had glimpsed the passing of something that looked like a yellow-backed bank-note through the window. “It’ll be as much as my job’s worth, Mr. Carfax, but I’ll do it.”