"Thank you, sir," said Smith.

There was more discussion to follow, and the two went over the situation as a whole more fully than had been hitherto possible.

"Of course," Smith pointed out, "this is just a beginning. But Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are safe--that's something. And Baltimore will never dare make a move after this, for Maryland always follows Pennsylvania. No, our chief problem at present is New York and New England."

"Yes," agreed the older man. His face darkened. "Boston! How about Boston? What can we do up there?"

"I don't know," returned Smith, slowly. "But there's one thing we can do, and do at once. We can close the Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy agency. We can decapitate that crew in forty-eight hours, and with your permission I'll go up there and do it myself."

"Go ahead," said the President.

That night Mr. Wintermuth enjoyed the first peaceful rest for almost three months. Smith, on the contrary, perhaps through his anxiety to put his Boston agency house in order, remained sleepless far into the small, still hours. Nevertheless he departed next day for Boston on the three o'clock express, arriving in Boston at eight, although he might as well have taken a later train, for it was certain that neither Sternberg, Bloom, nor McCoy would be apt to remain in their offices until that hour of night. Doubtless it was for this reason that he left the train at the Huntington Avenue station and turned west toward Deerfield Street.

Fifteen minutes later he was waiting in the reception hall of an apartment house, the construction of which he had once, in the Guardian office at New York, quite minutely described for the edification of a certain young lady visitor. In due course of time he was conveyed to the proper floor, and a moment later found himself shaking hands with the identical young lady.

"Mother, this is Mr. Richard Smith of New York, a friend of Uncle Silas, of whom I told you."

Smith found himself bowing to a little gray lady whose manner was so gentle that he unconsciously lowered his voice in speaking to her. She was dressed all in gray, and her hair was gray, and the silvery lights that glistened in it moved through the folds of a tiny lace object which might, had it been developed, have proved to be a cap. To call so filmy and nebulous a thing a garment of any kind was perhaps absurd; but if this premise was once granted, it would have been correct to say that Mrs. Maitland clung to caps. Certainly no article could have better suited her, and in her single person she had done almost as much as all the rest of Boston to revivify a dying but delightful inst.i.tution.

The little lady, for all her mildness of manner and appearance, proved to be as wide awake as any one of the three. She even found a way to discover, without Smith's being aware of it, whether he possessed the typical New Yorker's att.i.tude toward her native city. Mrs. Maitland lived in the firm and fixed belief that all New Yorkers, dwelling as they did in a restless and artificial milieu of restaurants and theaters and dollars, had for Boston and Bostonians a kind of patronizing pity. The fact that she herself regarded New Yorkers in very much the same light had never occurred to her.

Smith, however, was not a typical New Yorker. He had too real and intense an interest in all created things to fear Mrs. Maitland's gently suspicious inquisition. In addition to this he was so genuinely interested in at least one of the Bostonians before him that he naturally and easily escaped the pitfalls into which another might have tumbled. So thoroughly, indeed, did he win approval and disarm suspicion that before very long he had his reward in being left, before the small but cheerful fire, with the daughter of the house.

This tactful withdrawal did not lessen the attraction of Mrs. Maitland in Smith's eyes, and it was with real admiration in his tone that he said to Helen:--

"I think your mother is charming."

"I have thought so," returned Helen, with a.s.sumed loftiness, "for thirty or forty years."

"So long?" queried Smith, thoughtfully. "That merely goes to show how one can be deceived."

"Deceived!" said Miss Maitland. "Unless you mean self-deception, I would like an explanation of that remark."

But her visitor said that in his opinion to explain anything, however occult, to a Bostonian, savored of intellectual impudence, and was, at the least, a piece of presumption of which he hoped he should never be guilty.

"And yet I can remember," said the girl, laughing, "an occasion when explanations _were_ made to a young lady from Boston--and explanations that took some time, too. I--even I--can bear witness to that."

"My life," Smith rejoined, "has been like that of a candidate for office, such that he who runs may read--and he need not necessarily be a ten-second sprinter, either. Only one dark, shameful page is in it, and that is the record of the day when I talked deaf, dumb, and blind the helpless stranger within the Guardian's gates."

"Are you really sorry?" Helen asked more seriously.

Smith looked at her.

"It has been more than three months since you left New York," he said.

"I have been glad of it--and sorry for it--every day of that time."

"And which are you now?" inquired the girl, with interest.

"If I should start on that subject, I should probably regret it.

Hadn't we better talk of something else?"

"As you wish," Helen returned lightly. "But you can at least tell me about the Guardian, and what has been happening since I left. In an occasional letter which I have received from an insurance friend of mine in New York, there has never been a word about his company."

"Your correspondent no doubt wanted to be cheerful when he wrote to, you, and for that reason it has been necessary for him to omit all reference to the Guardian's affairs."

"But I heard indirectly about them, just the same--from Uncle Silas. I know of course that he retired from the active management of Silas Osgood and Company because he was humiliated and chagrined at being obliged to resign the agency of his old friend Mr. Wintermuth's company, and I know that, although he would not interfere with Mr. Cole after Mr. Cole took charge of the business, he disapproved of Mr.

Cole's accepting the agency of the Salamander."

"Well, if you know as much as that, you know that our suspicions of Mr.

O'Connor proved all too true. He not only engineered the scheme to get us out of the Eastern Conference, but after we got out he has tried to steal all our best agents and business for his own company, and, thanks to the lack of any resistance on our part, he has been able in many cases to succeed."

"But why didn't you resist? I don't quite understand. Couldn't anybody--couldn't you stop him?"

"I--I didn't have a chance," answered Smith.

"Indeed? And why not?" continued his inquisitor.

"From the series of pointed questions you are putting me, I might almost imagine I was being interviewed by the representative of a muck-raking magazine," countered her visitor, in covert concern.

"From the lack of actual information in your replies one might almost imagine you were," Helen cordially agreed. "Now are you going to answer my inquiry?"

"Well, the Guardian directors selected another man to take charge of its underwriting affairs, and we didn't hit it off very well--naturally he did things in his own way."

"I know," said the girl, nodding her head; "Mr. Gunterson."

"Good heavens!" said the young man, "is there any use in my attempting to give information to some one who already has it all? If you know all about this and what has gone on, why ask me?"

"I wanted to hear what you'd say. It is a natural desire, I'm sure, and you ought to be willing to help gratify it. You see, you are responsible for my interest in the affairs of your insurance company, and you have almost a parental responsibility."

"How is Wilkinson?" said Smith, engagingly.

"Presently it may be that the conversation can be diverted to Mr.

Wilkinson. But not now."

"Well, then, to go back to the affairs of the Guardian, how is Mr.

Osgood? It's rather dangerous for a man who's been in harness so long to get out of it so suddenly. It's not good for a man--in my opinion."

"More adroit--for I really want to tell you about Uncle Silas. But business first--then pleasure."

"Well," said her visitor, with resignation, "go ahead, Miss Portia."

"I wish to know all about what happened in the Guardian while Mr.

Gunterson was in charge," said Helen, simply.

And finally, with a few evasions which were immediately detected and some omissions which were possibly suspected, Smith told the story of the decline of the Guardian.

"So Mr. Gunterson left," commented the girl, when all was said. "What happened then?"