Bellingham for the twentieth time consulted his watch, and finding that it still lacked ten minutes of midnight, he rose, walked over to the window, and stood looking out into the night. In the distance he could see the bulk of the stables looming through the darkness, and near at hand the huge lone pine tree towered in silhouette against the sky; yet his mind was not fixed upon what was before him, but was reviewing once again the events of the day, events which had occurred scarcely twelve hours ago, but which seemed, in retrospect, to have taken place ages since, in the shadow of some dim and distant past.
He could see himself, a distinct and separate entity, leaving the car and hurrying toward the garage, alert, expectant, eager to find Nolan and hear what he had to say. From the same man whom he had seen before he had sought to discover if Nolan was in, and the man had nodded with a curt "Yep," but when Bellingham was half way to the elevator his informant had called him back to explain, "Say, hold on a minute; I forgot; Nolan's quit his job."
The secretary could feel again the sinking of the heart, the shock of disappointment the words had caused. "Quit?" he had repeated, and the man had replied, "Yep. He's quit. New man on the car; a Swede. He's up there if you want to see him." But Bellingham had muttered something about its being a personal matter, and still in a daze, had made his way out of the garage, perplexed and disheartened, and vainly wondering what could possibly have happened to the chauffeur.
It was not an easy problem to solve. Certainly the money he had advanced could have been no temptation to Nolan; twenty dollars was nothing compared with the keeping of a good position. And if the chauffeur's abandonment of his job had not been voluntary, of necessity it must have been involuntary; it appeared as though he must have been detected in his pursuit of his employer, and met with a summary dismissal. Yet if this were so, why could he not still have kept his appointment with the secretary. There seemed to be no satisfactory solution, yet as a practical matter none was necessary; of what importance were theories when he knew that the actual result was a complete failure of his plans to gain information through the instrumentality of Nolan. And as a result he would now be forced to act himself; no choice was left to him; whether he liked it or not, he must assume the risk.