Chapter 25
A CABLE FROM EUROPE Dinner that night was a somewhat oppressive meal. Several new guests had arrived, some of whom bore names which were well known to me. There was a sense of some hidden excitement, which formed an uneasy background to the spasmodic general conversation. The men especially seemed uncomfortable and ill at ease. "Poor father," Ad** whispered to me, "he would give a good many of his dollars not to be in this." I glanced across at our host, who had come down from New York specially in his magnificent private car, which was now awaiting his return on a siding of the little station. He was a hard-faced, elderly man, with a shrewd mouth and keen eyes, sparely built, yet a man you would be inclined to glance at twice in any assemblage. He wore a most unconventional evening sui
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