"We own the road. Practically——" "Nobody knows that." "It seems to me——" "They don’t!" Hallett spat to the floor a bit of tobacco that, bitten from the end of his cigar, had clung to his lips. "They only think they do. It’d be the hardest thing in the world to prove that was ever tried." "Would it?" Rivington questioned. "I really believe——" The quick, cold voice of the third man flashed across their talk. It was as if he leaped at them. "We may own the road," he said; "but we don’t operate it. Not one of us has officially any administrative power in the matter of its operation. You gentlemen have forgotten that." He smiled: his teeth were pointed. "Still," said Rivington, "if the fusion movement——" He stopped there, not because of his habit of speaking in tangents, but because the door opened, and an old man timidly paused at its threshold. The master of the office turned his head slowly. "Simpson?" he said. "Yes, sir," said the man at the door. "What does this mean? Where’s Rollins?" "He was using my room to compose that letter about the hospital, and so I took his place." "Didn’t he tell you we were not to be disturbed?" "Yes, sir; but this man"—Simpson held out an envelope—"got by everybody. He told me you would see him at once if you only received his message." The man at the head of the table reached for the envelope. He read a card that it had contained. "Show him in," he said. He waited until Simpson had left to obey. Then, without wasting a glance on his associates, he explained: "This is the card of a man called Luke Huber, Assistant District-Attorney. He’s written on it: ’Five minutes in regard to the North Bridge wreck and your letters about it.’" "Letters?" said Hallett. "What letters?" As he replied, the strong jaw of the man at the head of the table worked as if he were chewing. "That’s what I mean to find out." "Here? Now?" Rivington gasped. The man addressed nodded. When a nod could save words, he saved words. "Is that the careful thing?" asked Hallett. "I’ll bet his card’s a bluff and he never expected to get in at all." "That is precisely why I am having him in." "Mr. Huber," announced Simpson. Huber was still a young man. He was so young, and his youth was so ostentatious, that he immediately courted the rebuke once administered to Pitt. Moreover, he seemed to lack energy. He was thin; his face, though pleasant, was white. The lids dropped wearily over eyes that were at first veiled from the three men who looked up, but did not rise at his entrance. His mouth, the lips of which were only a pale pink, might have appeared firm, but would certainly have given the impression of being tired of firmness, and, when he bowed gravely to his host, his bristling head inclined itself so slowly and so slightly that the effort of the inclination, whether mental or physical, was insultingly apparent.