Powers Jackson had given the old Jackson homestead and farm at Vernon Falls in Vermont to Helen, and with it a small legacy of twelve thousand dollars "as a maintenance fund." She had opened the house but once or twice since her marriage, because Jackson was always too busy to take a long vacation, and she did not like to leave him. Latterly she had thought about the old man\'s gift a good deal, and there had been some talk of her spending the summer in Vernon Falls with the children and her mother. Instead of this they had gone to the Shoreham Club for a few weeks in August, putting off the journey East till the fall.

She had never touched the legacy, leaving it in Everett Wheeler\'s hands, securely invested, and had paid what was needed to maintain the old place from her allowance. Now, however, a number of repairs on the buildings had accumulated, and it occurred to her one day, when she was in the city, to find out from Wheeler how much surplus she had at her disposal. They had joked a good deal about her estate, and the lawyer had scolded her for not coming to his office to examine the papers and see what he was doing with her money.

It was late in the afternoon when she had finished other, more urgent errands, and, turning into the lofty La Salle Street building, was whirled up to the twelfth floor. The middle-aged stenographer in Wheeler\'s office looked up on her entrance, and said that the lawyer had not left, but was engaged with some gentlemen. Would she wait? She sat down in the quiet, carpeted outer office, from which radiated several small offices. The doors of all these rooms were open except one, and through the ground-glass panel in this door she could see the dark forms of several men. Presently the stenographer pushed her papers into the drawer of her desk, and fetched her hat and coat.

"I think they must be \'most through," she remarked pleasantly. "You go right in when they come out."

Then she gathered up her gloves and left. Little noise came from the hall, except the occasional sliding back and forth of elevator gates. The vast hive seemed to be deserted at this hour, and few places in the city were so quiet and lonesome as this sober law office. The murmur of voices in the inner room was the only sound of life. Gradually the voices grew louder, but Helen paid no attention to them until a man\'s voice, clear and shrill with exasperation, penetrated distinctly to the outer office.

"No, Wheeler!" the man almost shouted. "We won\'t compromise this. I won\'t have it covered up or whitewashed. We\'ll go to the bottom, here and now. Let us find out what all this double-dealing means. Let us know, now, whether the work on that building is being done honestly or not, and whether our architect is working for us or for the contractor against us."

It was Pemberton\'s voice, and Helen recognized it. From the first words she had grasped the arms of her............