Then it was that the irritated examiner had abruptly dismissed the witness. Then the ripple had swept over the assemblage, and Katharine Fargo, gazing, had smiled that slow smile in which approval struggled with mingled wonder and question.
The jostling crowd flocked out into the square, among them a fresh-faced girl on the arm of a gray-bearded man in black frock coat and picturesque broad-brimmed felt hat. She turned her eyes to his.
“So that,” she said, “is John Valiant! I’d almost rather have missed Niagara Falls. I must write Shirley Dandridge about it. I’m so sorry I lost that picture of him that I cut out of the paper.”
“I reckon he’s not such a bad lot,” said her uncle. “I liked the way he spoke of his father.”
He hailed a cab. “Grand Central Station,” he directed, with a glance at his watch, “and be quick about it. We’ve just time to make our train.”
“Yessir! Dollar’n a half, sir.”
The gentleman seated the girl and climbed in himself. “I know the legal fare,” he said, “if I am from Virginia. And if you try to beat me out of more, you’ll be sorry.”
Some hours later, in an inner office of a down-town sky-scraper, the newly-appointed receiver of the Valiant Corporation, a heavy, thick-set man with narrow eyes, sat beside a table on which lay a small black satchel with a padlock on its handle, whose contents—several bundles of crisp papers—he had been turning over in his heavy hands with a look of incredulous amazement. A sheet containing a mass of figures and memoranda lay among them.