The thought of Nan Charters came into Beecher’s mind, and he wondered curiously if she would be there. "I say, Bruce, what’s all this hip-hurrah?" he asked as Gunther led him to the dining-room and they took seats at the long mahogany table. "Has Majendie really pulled through? Is the story true about Fontaine? Would you go into the market?" "They tell it on Fontaine now, do they?" said Gunther, with a short laugh. "It started with my old man, but I guess he was too tough a weight to carry. Ted, I don’t know any more than you, but I know this—keep out." "My opinion," said Beecher, nodding to a new arrival. Bruce Gunther was his closest friend—a chum from boarding-school days. He was a stocky, rather ugly type, direct to the point of rudeness, with more than a trace of his father’s power. Gunther Senior had, from a long and merciless examination of men, come to regard youth as a natural malady, an ebullition of heated blood to be lived down before a man was fit for great opportunities and the vision of great affairs. When young Gunther was graduated, he called him to his desk, wrote him out a check, and told him to take five years, sow his oats, and be through with it—at the end of which time his career would begin at the bottom of the great banking offices of Gunther & Company, New York, London, and Paris. Young Gunther was now completing the last year of his contract with a compressed savageness that would have wrecked any but the strongest constitution. At heart he awaited the end of his holiday with a feeling of relief and enthusiasm. He was quite unspoiled, and a terror to sycophants and boot-lickers. It was these sturdy, passionate qualities of energy and directness in him that had attracted Beecher. "Bruce, I’m on a very curious chase," he said, pushing back from the table, "and I want your help. It’s too long and too confidential to tell you now. But two things I wish you would do for me: find out all you can quietly about two men—Enos Bloodgood and a fellow called Garraboy, a broker." "Garraboy—the brother-in-law?" said Gunther instantly. They left the table and went for cigars and coffee to the first room, to a window that gave on the Avenue. "I know him. He was blackballed here a couple of years ago. There were some ugly stories about him; I’ll look ’em up. Bloodgood’s another matter. I have heard rumors he was hard hit by the market. It’s easy enough; I know several men I can call up. Can’t you tell me the whole thing now?" When Beecher had finished, Gunther remained a long moment immersed in reflection. "By the Lord Harry, that is a problem," he said, suddenly waking up. "The dickens of a tangle! What the deuce was Slade doing there?" He relapsed into silence again, and as suddenly said decisively: "You’re wrong on one point, Ted. It’s not Garraboy or Bloodgood we ought to suspect first; it’s Cheever—the Cheevers." "How the deuce are we going about it?" said Beecher.