"I am a prince for life," he murmured, "if I can realize on these cheques." He opened a bundle; they were all flat endorsements.
"About half of these are good anywhere," he mused.

"Our gang can handle them; and for the others, we may get a reward to return them later," he grimly smiled.
But as he busied himself, the inscrutable face of Irma Gluyas returned to madden him.
"She does suspect!" he growled.

"She only plays policy because she is in my power.

Never mind, my lady; you are knitting up your own shroud." Seven hundred and fifty miles away, the streets of New York City were filled with the refluent crowd of holiday absentees.

The great Babel had again taken up its round of toil and pleasure, its burden of care and crime, its chase for the bubble "reputation," its hunting away of the urban wolf from the door.
In inverse order of importance, the shutters had come down, the toiler had been out, dinner-pail in hand, for hours, when Milady yawned over her morning coffee and the magnates of finance appeared in their triumphal procession down Broadway to Wall Street.
There was a careworn look on Arthur Ferris' brow as he sprang out of a coupe at Randall Clayton's deserted apartments at nine-thirty.
He had sullenly enjoyed Mr.Robert Wade's Fourth of July cheer, his mind haunted with Randall Clayton's strange breach of social faith.