“You can make your getaway now.” “Jump the firm?” “Why not? In that case, jump while the jumping’s good.” Harker, on that, said no more. He’d go a long way before dropping the partnership. It wasn’t alone losing the tidy and “classy” business as it was now run through Pentecost’s putting it on a straight-play basis, but even more than that he appreciated the association with this marvelous operator. It gave him the feeling of trailing along with a giant, a super-sharp, a past master of crookedness. He gave the matter of the Haworth enterprise deep thought, and by noon of the following day had decided to play in on it, saying to himself that he’d bar worrying by putting his trust in Pentecost. On the afternoon of the same day that Mr. Harker declared himself in on the West Roxbury undertaking, both members of the firm embarked on a steamer of the Metropolitan Line for Boston. The boat was the _North Land_ and this line was the “all-the-way-by-water” route, the steamers after traversing Long Island and Block Island Sounds and Buzzards Bay, passing through the Cape Cod Canal into Barnstable Bay, and thence through Cape Cod and Massachusetts Bay into Boston Harbor. It was the fourth day after Pentecost’s visit to the Cripps mansion and the firm was proceeding to Boston as agreed, in order to discuss with Haworth various points of the contract—the amount to be paid down, the delivery of the machine, and other matters connected with the sale—so that the papers could be drawn up ready for signature on the day the option expired. Mr. Pentecost had already accomplished a great deal, having got in reports from his men (if it was ordinary business you’d call them correspondents) in all the large cities, and also having come to the determination to carry on the thing himself in such of those towns as he finally selected, instead of selling to the central agency or bureau handling this class of material,—a bureau which he found to be run by “pikers,” mortally afraid to pay big money for big chances. In addition to this, it was safer not to trust them in so ticklish a business. So he had it all laid out, and his own men were already where he wanted them or on the way. He’d sent a couple of his choicest “trusties” over to Boston the day before. Of course the main work was going to be there. The taking of a steamer instead of going by rail, and also the selection of this particular line, were both essential to Mr. Pentecost’s scheme; and the same thing made it imperative that, following their interview with Haworth, they return to New York by the same boat on which they went over. So important was this latter, indeed, that had they been unable to secure return accommodations on the _North Land_, Pentecost would have postponed the trip until both the going and returning could have been accomplished on the same steamer—he did not care which of the two running on this route it was.