"Oh!" says I. "Fluffs or finance?"

"I wouldn't have anything happen to you for the world," says I.

7"Purely a business matter," says he. "It began in Chicago, back in the good old days when trade was unhampered by fool administrations. At the time, if I may mention the fact, I had some little prominence as a pool organizer. We were trying to corner July wheat,—getting along very nicely too,—when your friend Gordon got in our way. He had managed to secure control of a dinky grain-carrying railroad and a few elevators. On the strength of that he demanded that we let him in. So we were forced to take measures to—er—eliminate him."

7

"And Pyramid wouldn't be eliminated, eh?" says I.

J. Bayard shrugs his shoulders careless and spreads out his hands. "Gordon luck!" says he. "Of course we were unprepared for such methods as he employed against us. Up to that time no one had thought of stealing an advance copy of the government crop report and using it to break the market. However, it worked. Our corner went to smash. I was cleaned out. You might have thought that would have satisfied most men; but not Pyramid Gordon! Why, he even pushed things so far as to sell out my office furniture, and bought the brass signs, with my name on them, to hang in his own office, as a Sioux Indian displays a scalp, or a Mindanao head hunter ornaments his gatepost with his enemy's skull. That was the beginning; and while my opportunities for paying off the score have been somewhat limited, I trust I have neglected none. And now—well,8 I can't possibly see why the closing up of his affairs should interest me at all. Can you?"

8

"Say, you don't think I'm doin' any volunteer frettin' on your account, do you?" says I.

"I quite understand," says he. "But about seeing this lawyer—do you advise me to go?"

He's squintin' at me foxy out of them shifty eyes of his, cagy and suspicious, like we was playin' some kind of a game. You know the sort of party J. Bayard is—if you don't, you're lucky. So what's the use wastin' breath? I steps over and opens the front office door.

"Don't chance it," says I. "I wouldn't have anything happen to you for the world. I'll tell Judson I've come alone, to talk for the dictograph and stand on the trapdoor. And as you go down the stairs there better walk close to the wall."

 Prev. P 6/197 next