“The public was quite as much at sea, and it was freely conceded that the directing heads of the North Star were madmen, though people who knew the North Star intimately were contented to wait and see what came out of it all.”
“With the approach of the greatest crisis in the history of the North Star, another important matter claimed immediate attention. Your twenty-first birthday, Miss Stone, fell one week before cancellation of the North Star’s rights on the limits must be prevented. I’ll confess that when I sent you for in the name of ‘J.C.X.’ I saw an opportunity of thus mixing in a little more mystery to keep our rivals guessing just what we were about.
“By an odd coincidence, Norman T. Gildersleeve and your friend, Mr. Hammond, were bound for Kam City on the same train that brought you from the West. The North Star’s intelligence department had been keeping close tab on Gildersleeve. So far as I can gather, he must have gained some vague notion as to the truth of the North Star’s direction and control. He had been filling our camps with cheap private detectives of the transom and keyhole peeking type, some of whom were entertained to exciting adventures but gained no knowledge worth while. Gildersleeve was growing certain the North Star had some trump card to play, and he thought to take a leaf out of the North Star’s book of methods to get at the bottom of it and frustrate it. He concocted a wild scheme of appearing to disappear personally and gain admission to the limits in the disguise of a preacher. He was egotistic enough to believe that what his detectives had failed in he could accomplish himself.
“Our agents kept me apprised of his every move, even to his inveigling young Hammond to undertake a seemingly mysterious mission to the limits to divert attention from his own operations. In many respects it appealed to me as a nice bit of comedy, but Gildersleeve and Hammond were shadowed day and night; the former for obvious reasons and the latter to see that no harm befell him. Our newspapers meanwhile published all sorts of conflicting news stories of Gildersleeve’s disappearance; much to the discomfiture of Gildersleeve’s one confidante, a Kam City lawyer named Winch. Just by way of adding to the gaiety of nations, I wrote an editorial on the subject of aphasia, inferring that it was this trouble that had suddenly afflicted. Mr. Gildersleeve and had it published in our string of dailies.