mate Bradley, the engineer Olson, and Wilson, Whitely, Brady
and Sinclair. There might be some hope for them if they could
join forces; but separated, I'm afraid they couldn't last long."
"If only they hadn't let the German prisoners capture the U-33!
Bowen should have had better judgment than to have trusted them
at all. The chances are von Schoenvorts succeeded in getting
safely back to Kiel and is strutting around with an Iron Cross
this very minute. With a large supply of oil from the wells
they discovered in Caspak, with plenty of water and ample
provisions, there is no reason why they couldn't have
negotiated the submerged tunnel beneath the barrier cliffs
and made good their escape."
"I don't like 'em," said the assistant secretary; "but
sometimes you got to hand it to 'em."
"Yes," I growled, "and there's nothing I'd enjoy more than
handing it to them!" And then the telephone-bell rang.
The assistant secretary answered, and as I watched him, I saw
his jaw drop and his face go white. "My God!" he exclaimed as
he hung up the receiver as one in a trance. "It can't be!"
"What?" I asked.
"Mr. Tyler is dead," he answered in a dull voice. "He died at
sea, suddenly, yesterday."
The next ten days were occupied in burying Mr. Bowen J. Tyler, Sr.,
and arranging plans for the succor of his son. Mr. Tom Billings,
the late Mr. Tyler's secretary, did it all. He is force, energy,
initiative and good judgment combined and personified. I never
have beheld a more dynamic young man. He handled lawyers, courts
and executors as a sculptor handles his modeling clay. He formed,
fashioned and forced them to his will. He had been a classmate
of Bowen Tyler at college, and a fraternity brother, and before,
that he had been an impoverished and improvident cow-puncher
on one of the great Tyler ranches. Tyler, Sr., had picked him
out of thousands of employees and made him; or rather Tyler had
given him the opportunity, and then Billings had made himself.
Tyler, Jr., as good a judge of men as his father, had taken him
into his friendship, and between the two of them they had turned
out a man who would have died for a Tyler as quickly as he would
have for his flag. Yet there was none of the sycophant or fawner
in Billings; ordinarily I do not wax enthusiastic about men, but
this man Billings comes as close to my conception of what a
regular man should be as any I have ever met. I venture to say
that before Bowen J. Tyler sent him to college he had never
heard the word ethics, and yet I am equally sure that in
