"Ah-h-h!" says she. "I was certain that Verona did not fully realize. Perhaps it would be as well that she——" and here she breaks off sudden, like she'd been struck with a new idea. For a second or so she gazes blank over the top of my head, and then she comes to with a brisk, "That will do, young man! Verona is not at home. You need not trouble to call again. The maid will show you out. Celeste!"

And the next thing I knew I was ridin' down again with Cephas. I'm some shunter myself; but I dip the colors to Aunty: she does it so neat and sudden! It must be like the sensation of havin' a flight of trick stairs fold up under you,—one minute you're most to the top, the next you're pickin' yourself up at the bottom.

What worries me most, though, is this hint she drops about Vee. Looks like the old girl had something up her sleeve; but what it is I can't dope out. So all I can do is keep my eyes open and my ear stretched for the next few days, watchin' for something to happen.

Course, I had one or two other things on my mind meanwhile; for down at the gen'ral offices we wa'n't indulgin' in any spring-fever symptoms,—not9 with three big deals under way, all this income mess of deductin' at the source goin' on, and Mr. Robert's grand scheme for dissolvin' the Corrugated—on paper—bein' worked out. Oh, sure, that's the easiest thing we do. We've split up into nineteen sep'rate and distinct corporations, with a diff'rent set of directors for each one, and if the Attorney General can sleuth out where they're tied together he's got to do some high-class snoopin' around.

9

Maybe you think too, that little Sunny Haired Hank, guardin' the brass gate, ain't wise to every move. Say, I make that part of my job. If I didn't, I'd be towin' a grouchy bunch of minority kickers in where the reorganization board was cookin' up a new stock-transfer game, or make some other fool break that would spill the beans all over the pantry floor.

"Torchy," says Mr. Robert, chewin' his cigar nervous and pawin' through pigeonholes, "ask Mr. Piddie what was done with those Mesaba contracts."

"Filed under Associated Developments," says I.

"Oh, yes, so they were," says he. "Thanks. And could you find out for me when we organized General Transportation?"

"Wa'n't that pulled off the day you waited10 for that Duluth delegation to show up, just after 

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