When West had made up his mind that the party of four were not to meet in Wing's office, he had decided to see if they were in McNally's. He could not ask for Wing, of course, so he asked for McNally and trusted to the spur of the moment for a pretext for his call. Now that McNally's absence had enabled him to think of one he took a long breath of satisfaction. He had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish, and contrary to Jim Weeks's expressed expectation. There was no doubt that it was a combination of the C. & S.C. and Thompson's gang that was booming the M. & T. Moreover there was no doubt as to their next move. “But it won't work,” he thought. “Jim owns about half of Tillman City, and anyway they'll never sell when our stock is jumping up the way it is.” And having settled this important matter he switched his train of thought off on another track. It reached Truesdale in a very short time, but it had nothing to do with M. & T., or with Mr. McNally. He took the note out of his pocket and read it through twice, and then smoked over it comfortably for some time before he began vaguely to wonder why Mr. McNally didn't come back. Five minutes later he glanced at his cigar ash. It was an inch and a half long. “That means twenty minutes,” he said thoughtfully, and then it dawned on him that things had happened which were not down on the schedule. He walked quickly to the telephone, and a moment later Pease was talking to him. “No,” said the stenographer; “Mr. Weeks went out to lunch about an hour ago. He said he wouldn't be back to the office this afternoon.” There had been no words wasted in the two minutes' conversation between Porter and McNally after Harvey's abrupt entrance, and as a result of it, while the young secretary waited and thought over the good stroke of work he had done for Jim Weeks and of another good stroke he might some day do for himself, Mr. Frederick McNally took the two-thirty express for Manchester and Tillman City. CHAPTER III POLITICS AND OTHER THINGS