"Why," I smiled, "I don't know much more than what the papers said. Mr. Carmichael, you know--" "Yes," Mr. Dround interrupted impatiently, "Mr. Carmichael is in New York, gets back this morning; but I thought you might--" He hesitated, not wishing to admit his own ignorance. "I will send for you later when Mr. Carmichael comes in," he concluded. So when John arrived he had us both in his office. "You want to see me?" Carmichael asked gruffly, as if he hadn't much time that morning to waste on the senior member. "Yes, I wish to talk over certain matters that concern us all, even though they may have no immediate bearing upon the business." Mr. Dround always talked like that when he got the least nervous. "Well, what is it?" Carmichael asked. He had just arrived, and I suppose his letters interested him more than Mr. Dround's talk. "You may not have seen the articles in the morning papers--about--about certain privileges which it is alleged--" "What are the boys yapping about now?" Carmichael demanded, taking up a newspaper from the desk and thrusting his shoulders forward in an ugly fashion. "It concerns our permit to lay that new switch-track," Mr. Dround explained. Carmichael laid the paper down and looked at the senior member in a curious way, as if he were trying to make out just what kind of a fool he had to deal with. But as he said nothing, Mr. Dround continued:-- "Recently I had occasion to deny categorically that, so far as I knew, our firm ever made any such kind of arrangement as is here described. My word was challenged. It was a very painful situation, I need not say. Since then I have been thinking--I have been wondering whether this charge--" He floundered pitifully, disliking to mouth the dreadful words. John helped him out brutally:-- "You wonder whether we had to grease anybody's paw about that switch-track over in Ada Street?" Dround nodded. "The papers say so!" "They have to print something, don't they? What harm does that do us? I wouldn't trust the whole d----n bunch of papers with a ten-dollar bill. They're a lot of blackmailers--that's what they are!" John bit off the end of a cigar and spat it out in front of Mr. Dround. "We are not concerned with the newspapers or their motives, Mr. Carmichael," the senior member observed with considerable dignity. "What I want is your assurance that this firm--that, so far as we are concerned, this accusation is false." We waited for the Irishman's reply. It would be an easy matter to tell a fib and set Mr. Dround's mind at rest. But Carmichael seemed to be in a specially bad temper this morning. When he went to New York he was accustomed to enjoy himself, and it was not the right time to badger a man just off the cars. Pretty soon John said fiercely:-- "It's my business to look after such matters?" Mr. Dround nodded. "Don't I do it satisfactorily?" Mr. Dround waived this point. "Well, I guess you'll have to be content with that."