The luxurious house in which the sick man lived among the best things that his money had bought him, and from which he used to dart out each morning to his office in the maze, was closed to the reporters and to most of the acquaintances who called there. L. Bergen Rivington went in and came out, worried and elliptical. George J. Hallett went and came out with loud, but brief, denials. The newspaper men, from the steps of a house directly across the street, watched in relays and, every hour, rang the muffled bell of the sick man’s house and asked the same questions, and were given the same answers, from the servant who came to the door. Then, one morning, at its old-accustomed hour, the motor-car that the sick man had most affected purred up to the house. The door opened. The sick man, apparently no longer a sick man, came out, neat and trim in a suit of russet brown, stepped into the car and was started for his office before the quickest reporter could get a word with him. "He has quite recovered," said the doctors, when the newspaper men overhauled them, and, although they swathed the answer in long phrases, they would say no more than that. "He’s quite well again and will not leave New York," said Simpson to the representatives of the press when they reached his Wall Street offices; and Simpson would add nothing save that his employer was too busy with accumulated work to have time for press interviewers. Simpson, however, and Conover too, and all the office-force and all the brokers, knew something more. They knew that, whereas their master was generally not quick of temper, he had returned to work in an ugly mood. There was, indeed, a great deal of work for him to do: enough to ruffle the temper of any man. He did it all grimly, speedily, with no waste of words. He attended to each detail with as much energy and care as he gave to every other detail, and one detail that he dealt with in a necessarily long talk with Hallett he dealt with thus: "What about that Huber matter?" he asked. Rivington was not in the room, but the master of the room was seated at the head of the table just as he always seated himself when both Hallett and Rivington were there. He crouched with his large hands on the mahogany surface, the thick fingers extended, his elbows raised at right angles to his torso and pointing ceilingward. Hallett was as near to nervousness as he could be brought. "Nothin’ yet," he said. "Hasn’t any action been taken?" snapped the man at the head of the table. "A lot of action’s been taken, but nothin’s come of it yet." "He hasn’t been bought?" "Stein says——" "I know that. He hasn’t been stopped?" "No." "Stop him. He’s got to be stopped. Don’t you know that he really might hurt us? Stop him." "All right," said Hallett. "And now what about this Memphis & New Orleans deal?" the man in russet brown went on. His beady eyes glittered, and the tips of his stumpy fingers caressed the shining surface of the table.