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have just invested in. The share is worth, by my reckoning, the small sum of twenty-five dollars. One share,” she repeated. “I would like you to take it and to keep track of its progress in the stock market. Do you follow the stock market?”
    “I can’t say that I do. I know a good deal about the periodic tables and about Sir Isaac Newton’s basic physical principles, and I have no interest in stocks and bonds. In fact, I find the whole world of finance a bore.”
    Undeterred by his brusqueness of manner, Eleanor pressed on. “Take this letter and set it aside, wait a few months, and follow this particular stock and you will watch your twenty-five dollars increase in value manyfold.”
    He eyed the envelope in her hands suspiciously. “All right,” he said, “if you insist.” Thinking back on the exchange sometime later, she realized that the young man’s abrasive manner actually helped her mask her own uncertainty as to how her recent purchase was to fare, and it allowed her to continue with this unlikely recruitment she knew was required of her. “But what is the catch?” he continued without grace.
    “There is no catch, I just want you to wait and watch. And then I want you to imagine how your fortunes would have changed had you received from me today a full year’s salary in this stock, which I was prepared to offer you.” She held out the envelope and kept it extended until the young man, still suspicious, took it from her. “You will contact me when you have seen enough and you are convinced.”
    “Well, all right,” he said, taking the envelope. “But I doubt very much that I shall be calling you.”
    “You have great strengths, I hear. Remember that Dr. James describes you as brilliant.”
    Ted Honeycutt’s demeanor changed to the closest he could come to civility. “I like you, Miss Putnam. I really do. But I see atoms and moleculesin my future, not stocks and bonds. You have just engaged in a complete waste of time.”
    “Very well,” she said, rising. “I fully understand. But you will discover that I am a very determined woman, and that I want very much for you to join me in this effort.”
    “Again, I do not wish to be offensive,” he said. “But I think perhaps that you are the one here not fully in control of your senses.”
    “That may be,” Eleanor said, “but I wanted to bring your attention to bear on my project, and I hope I have done that.”
    “But how are you on your side so certain that I am the one you are looking for?”
    “I am also, as you will further discover, a highly intuitive person, Mr. Honeycutt. I am here on the very strongest of intuitive hunches. I am very definitively certain that you are exactly the one I am looking for, and I greatly hope that you will come around.” She pointed to the envelope now in his hand. “And with that envelope I rest my case.”
    And with that envelope Eleanor had made, unknowingly, a fateful move.

7

    “DISASTER AVERTED, IT APPEARS”
    S ometime after her return from her adventure in Cincinnati and her initial meeting with the graduate student T. Williams Honeycutt, her fiancé, Frank Burden, ever the serious banker, oblivious to Eleanor’s having successfully completed the loan, came to her with an article he had found among his bank’s news resources. “Disaster averted, it appears,” he said with a helpful and satisfied smile. “I am exceedingly glad that your interests were only hypothetical. That soap company you were inquiring about is going bankrupt.” Frank laid an investment news sheet opened out in front of her. Eleanor could only stare in disbelief.
    The article was succinct and highly unflattering. Cincinnati Soap and Candle was indeed headed for insolvency, it appeared. The company’s owner, a certain Homer Smith, was portrayed as irrational, unable and unwilling to sell the company to what he perceived as the greedy giant attempting to take it over. IRASCIBLE OWNER GOING DOWN WITH THE SHIP , the