general manager would fall down on the job if he did not have Peter Thatcher at his elbow. In June of this year, he had journeyed to Europe, at the earnest behest of his wife and his physician, intending to remain until September, and the first of August had seen him back on the job again. Now Peter had resigned himself to dying in harness. He was too old and too inexperienced at anything but work, to play. In his heart he regretted this. He was beginning to question seriously whether working hard and amassing millions was the sole object in life.
He began to envy men with much less money than himself but with much more variegated interests. Cultured men. Well dressed men with carefully modulated voices speaking perfect English. Men who talked of golf and yachts and the opera. Peter Thatcher was beginning to wonder if being a gentleman were not a worthier object in life than being a millionaire.
It was such a Peter Thatcher that Harold Lamb, very young and innocent and gloomy and somewhat quaking as to knees, came to interview that hot August noon.
A hard-faced young lady industriously chewing gum sat at the combination telephone switchboard and information desk in the outer room of Peter Thatcher's offices. An army of
