Chapter 24

The Great Mahogany Table in the Club Macaws conference room was again surrounded by a grave assembly.

As Gilbert McKinnon brought the meeting to order, there were congratulations offered to one of their number.

August Fenwick brushed aside the compliments with a casual air.

Not a bit of it, McKinnon, he said.

The newspapers have made much of the bravery or cleverness involved in my escape.

"'I imagine that they do so in the hopes that I will elect not to sue them as a body.'

The small group chuckled at this.

"'I assure you, gentlemen, that only a most fortunate accident permitted me to call for help at all,

and surely that was more an act of motivated self-interest

than bravery. I scarcely felt a moment's courage from the time that I was taken until Chief O'Malley

and his men came to the rescue. O'Malley was pleased at this, and chided himself again for his

suspicion of August Fenwick, who was starting to seem like not such a bad fellow after all.

Certainly the papers had made much of Fenwick's escape, even to the point of relegating the battle on Young Street to secondary status. As Fenwick suspected, it was most likely in the

interests of making the most public retraction possible of their earlier accusations of villainy,

but it did not displease Chief O'Malley at all.

The story of Fenwick's rescue made much of the involvement of his police force,

while the routing of the mechanical men who savage downtown seemed to have been the work of

an outside force, and not even the papers had much in the way of detail.

McKinnon harrumped and moved on.

"'Of course we are, regretttably without one of our company today, he said, indicating the chair usually occupied by Ian James. James's son Wentworth was, as most of you know, injured in the blast that destroyed the power plant he had designed,

and much of the complex it was meant to support.

...