At last Peter reported to Edmund Trevelyan that everything was satisfactory; the invention all that Sarsfield-Mitcham had claimed for it. The New York lawyers were now instructed to withdraw all opposition, and allow a sheriff's sale to come on in its due course. Trevelyan went with Mackeller over to Long Island, and was convinced by practical observation that the life-saving scheme was a great success.
While he was away from New York he experienced a taste of P. G. Flannigan's quality that filled him with both chagrin and laughter. In some manner, never yet fully explained—for poor Ponderby was too bewildered when his young master met him afterwards to give any understandable account of the affair—the dominant P. G. Flannigan had passed all the guards at the Plaza Hotel as if he possessed the Open Sesame of the Arabian Nights, and was actually closeted for two hours and a half with the exclusive Lord Stranleigh. The newspapers rang with this important announcement. The richest man in England, if not in the world, was holding a private conversation, no witnesses present, with the greatest manipulator of railways then in existence. It was boldly stated that this had been the object of Lord Stranleigh's visit to the United States, and that he was going to place a thousand million of dollars at the disposal of P. G. Flannigan. Flannigan stocks rose like balloons; that two hours
