"I am going to leave him there until after I have put Stanton and Kinzie and the other buccaneers safely out of business. When that is done, he can go; and I'll go, too." She had risen, and at the summing-up she turned from him and went aside to the one window to stand for a long minute gazing down into the electric-lighted street. When she came back her lips were pressed together and she was very pale. "When I was in school, our old psychology professor used to try to tell us about the underman; the brute that lies dormant inside of us and is kept down only by reason and the super-man. I never believed it was anything more than a fine-spun theory--until now. But now I know it is true." He spread his hands. "I can't help it, can I?" "The man that you are now can't help it; no. But the man that you could be--if he would only come back--" she stopped with a little uncontrollable shudder and sat down again, covering her face with her hands. "I'm going to turn Jibbey loose--after I'm through," he vouchsafed. She took her hands away and blazed up at him suddenly, with her face aflame. "Yes! after you are safe; after there is no longer any risk in it for you! That is worse than if you had killed him--worse for you, I mean. Oh, _can't_ you see? It's the very depth of cowardly infamy!" He smiled sourly. "You think I'm a coward? They've been calling me everything else but that in the past few days." "You _are_ a coward!" she flashed back. "You have proved it. You daren't go out to Little Butte to-night and get that man and bring him to Brewster while there is yet time for him to do whatever it is that you are afraid he will do!" Was it the quintessence of feminine subtlety, or only honest rage and indignation, that told her how to aim the armor-piercing arrow? God, who alone knows the secret workings of the woman heart and brain, can tell. But the arrow sped true and found its mark. Smith got up stiffly out of the big swing-chair and stood glooming down at her. "You think I did it for myself?--just to save my own worthless hide? I'll show you; show you all the things that you say are now impossible. Did you bring the gray roadster?" She nodded briefly. "Your father is coming back; I hear the elevator-bell. I am going to take the car, and I don't want to meet him. Will you say what is needful?" She nodded again, and he went out quickly. It was only a few steps down the corridor to the elevator landing, and the stair circled the caged elevator-shaft to the ground floor. Smith halted in the darkened corner of the stairway long enough to make sure that the colonel, with Stillings and a woman in an automobile coat and veil--a woman who figured for him in the passing glance as Corona's mother--got off at the office floor. Then he ran down to the street level, cranked the gray roadster and sprang in to send the car rocketing westward. XXIV A Little Leaven