"Yes; things have to be done the best way they can be done. That fellow can say one word which'll ruin us in one day's time. He can break the values in International more than we can mend in months. Our men would begin to cover as soon as they caught a hint that anything was really wrong. As for me, I'm spread out for millions in the general market. If they began to hammer me I couldn't come through--I wouldn't last a week. The thing to do is to keep this news safe until I can protect myself--until I can protect us all. Now it's you, Jennie, that's got to do that--it's you! I'm sending you out after him." "I always thought, Mr. Rawn," said she, "that you played a dangerous game, so long as you simply trusted that he'd do anything you told him." "Yes, I see it now. But he always was odd--he always held something back. I tell you, he's crazy! Now, he's either just crazy over his fool Socialist ideas, or else he's going to hold out for a squeeze. In the first case you can handle him. In the second, I can. "You see--I couldn't tell our directorate," he went on; "but there was always something lacking which I couldn't handle myself. _We_ need him, and we've got to have him! You can get him, I know you can. You can do anything you like. You're wonderful!" She sat and looked at him, her lips still parted in the same enigmatic smile which he did not like to see; but she made no answer. "What's wrong with him?" he went on immediately. "What does he _say_ is the trouble, anyway? And is it the truth that he's got the overhead current?" She nodded. "Of course, I know something about it from my work in the office. Yes, he told me that he had done what you have all been trying to do so long. He said he came over under power from the overhead--just as he told you." "He may be lying, for all we know. You can't look at a car and tell where its charge came from. Electricity is electricity, to all intents and purposes. What I want to know is, what he's got against us, anyhow, Jennie?" "Well, for one thing, he seemed troubled because Grace would not go back with him. He seemed to think that you and the life you could give her had been the reason for her abandoning him." "Why, what nonsense! Grace hasn't abandoned him! And I only got her over here because I needed her myself--before--well, before we were married. Who was to take care of _me_, I'd like to know? And you say he complains of _that_!" "That was one of the things." "But Grace would go back! She's none too well pleased now, since you and I have taken charge here. She'd go back to Charley to-morrow if he asked her--why, I'd _make_ him take care of her, of course. The trouble with him is, he values his own personal affairs too much. That's no way to begin in the business world. A man has to bend everything to the one purpose of _success_. Look at me, for instance." IV