I might be willing to go off to Cuba and see my own fortune fade into smoke. But how about their money? No--it was not a simple thing just to go broke by one's self. To-morrow my office would be crowded by these followers, and there would be letters and telegrams from those who couldn't get there. So back to the old problem! I rested my head on my hands and went over in my mind the situation, the amount of my loans, the eternal question of credit--where to get a handhold to stay me while the whirlwind passed, as I knew it must pass. [Illustration: _It was a messenger boy with a delayed telegram._] Hour after hour I wrestled with myself. Ordinarily I could close my eyes on any danger and get the sleep that Nature owes every hard-working sinner. But not to-night. I sat with my hands locked, thinking. Along about midnight there sounded in the silent house a ring at the door-bell: it was a messenger boy with a delayed telegram. I tore it open and read:-- "Remember my letter." It was dated from Washington, and was not signed. CHAPTER XXV THE LAST DITCH _Romantic folly--The impulse that comes from beyond our sight--I go to seek Mr. Carboner--An unpromising location for a banker--I receive advice and help--Dickie Pierson gets an order from me--What is Strauss's game?_ The yellow paper lay in my hand, and, with a flash, my memory went back to that mysterious note which Jane Dround had sent on the eve of her departure for Europe. It lay undisturbed in a drawer of my office desk. I smiled impatiently at the woman's folly--of the letter, the telegram. And yet it warmed my heart that she should be thinking of me this day, that she should divine my troubles. And I seemed to see her dark eyebrows arched with scorn at my weakness, her thin lips curl disdainfully, as if to say: "Was this to be your finish? Have I helped you, believed in you, all these years, to have you fall now?" So she had spoken. But still I was unconvinced, and in this state of mind I went back to bed, knowing that I should need on the morrow what sleep I could get. But sleep did not come: instead, my mind busied itself with Jane Dround's letter--with the woman herself. As the night grew toward morning I arose, dressed myself, and left the house. The letter in my office pulled me like a thread of fate; and I obeyed its call like a child. In the lightening dawn I hurried through the streets to the lofty building where the Products Company had its offices, and groped my way up the long flights of stairs. As I sat down at my desk and unlocked the drawers, the morning sun shot in from the lake over the smoky buildings beneath me. After some hunting I found the letter. Mrs. Dround wrote a peculiar hand--firm, clear, unchangeable, but with curious tiny flourishes about the _r_'s and _s_'s.