Putting all these correlated facts together, Mr. Jarney, after due deliberation, and after duely weighing them all as incriminating integral parts, and after combining them with the main story of the plot, arrived at the inevitable conclusion that Monroe was up to some deviltry that should be probed to the bottom. He, therefore, called a meeting of the Board of Directors, and put the whole question, in all its phases, before that body. It was almost noon when the board met. They must act without going through the circumlocution of formal discussion and the entanglements of red tape, he told them. Some of the members were for postponing the meeting till the next day, to await a telegram from New York, so great was their faith in Monroe's honor. Monroe, they said, would be in the metropolis on the morrow. The procrastinating members prevailed in their vote on the question, and adjournment was had till the next day. But Mr. Jarney was not disconcerted, nor did he allow himself to be wholly blocked in his plan of action. So as soon as the board had arrived at the decision to go slow, he took it upon himself, knowing the shrewdness of John Winthrope, to send him a private wire, addressed personally, briefly saying: "Beware of Monroe; I will be there tomorrow afternoon, if possible." Dispatching this message, Mr. Jarney returned home, related to Edith what he had discovered as confirmatory evidence against Monroe, got ready, and left on the next train for the seat of trouble. Edith, from the morning of her conversation with her father to the time she received a wire from him, went through a siege of terrible mental conflicts. She confided in no one, at first, not even Star, the cause of her father's sudden call to New York. She was in a highly nervous fright throughout the hours that seemed never to pass between his going and the receipt of the telegram. Her flights of fancy went to unreasonable complications for the doomed young man in the New York office. She thought she must rescue him at all odds to her health. Had she been in a condition physically able to bear the journey, she would have gone alone, if need be; or with her father, if permitted; but as it was, she remained in her prison like an unwilling subject in a sanitorium. Thus exhibiting an excitable demeanor in her actions, her mother and Star made futile attempts to draw from her the cause of her fervid agitation. Still strung to a high tension of determination, still overcome with an uncommon fear, still anxious and studiously meditating over the eventualities that might come to pass before her father should reach his destination, she wandered about the house in uncontrollable perturbation, sticking tenaciously to her secret. "Edith," said Star, approaching her in one of her rounds of walking the floor, "come, tell me what is agitating you so today, that I might be of help."