All rights reserved
Published, February, 1916
Reprinted, February, 1916 (four times)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I [The Face That Did not Fit]
II [One Man and Another]
III [When the Dark Went Away]
IV [Advent and Adventure]
V [The Rate Clerk]
VI [On Two Fronts]
VII [The High Bid]
VIII [John Makes Up]
IX [A Demonstration from the Gallery]
X [A Stage Kiss]
XI [Seed to the Wind]
XII [A Thing Incalculable]
XIII [The Scene Played Out]
XIV [The Method of a Dream]
XV [The Catastrophe]
XVI [The King Still Lives]
XVII [When Dreams Come True]
XVIII [The House Divided]
XIX [His Next Adventure]
XX [A Woman with a Want]
XXI [A Cry of Distress]
XXII [Pursuit Begins]
XXIII [Capricious Woman]
XXIV [The Day of All Days]
XXV [His Bright Idea]
XXVI [Unexpectedly Easy]
XXVII [The First Alarm]
XXVIII [The Arrest]
XXIX [The Angel Advises]
XXX [The Scene in the Vault]
XXXI [A Misadventure]
XXXII [The Coward and His Conscience]
XXXIII [The Battle of the Headlines]
XXXIV [A Way That Women Have]
XXXV [On Preliminary Examination]
XXXVI [A Promise of Strength]
XXXVII [The Terms of Surrender]
XXXVIII [Sunday in All People's]
XXXIX [The Cup Too Full]
XL [The Elder in the Chair]
HELD TO ANSWER
CHAPTER I
THE FACE THAT DID NOT FIT
Two well-dressed men waited outside the rail on what was facetiously denominated the mourners' bench. One was a packer of olives, the other the owner of oil wells. A third, an orange shipper, leaned against the rail, pulling at his red moustaches and yearning wistfully across at a wattle-throated person behind the roll-top desk who was talking impatiently on the telephone. Just as the receiver was hung up with an audible click, a buzzer on the wall croaked harshly,—one long and two short croaks.
Instantly there was a scuffling of feet upon the linoleum over in a corner, where mail was being opened by a huge young fellow with the profile of a mountain and a gale of tawny hair blown up from his brow. Undoubling suddenly, this rangy figure of a man shot upward with Jack-in-the-box abruptness and a violence which threatened the stability of both the desk before him and the absurdly small typewriter stand upon his left. Seizing a select portion of the correspondence, he lunged past the roll-top desk of Heitmuller, the chief clerk, and aimed toward the double doors of grained oak which loomed behind. But his progress was grotesque, for he careened like a camel when he walked. In the first stride or two these careenings only threatened to be dangerous, but in the third or fourth they made good their promise. One lurching hip joint banged the drawn-out leaf of the chief clerk's desk, sweeping a shower of papers to the floor.