“Where is he?”     

       “Central America.”     

       Neddy Jerome was happy. He was in an expansive mood, for he had, with the assistance of a kindly fate, rounded up the one engineer in all the world whom he needed to take charge of the Colorado Consolidated. So he said:     

       “Well, Jack, just to celebrate the discovery of your old pal, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll O. K. your voucher for the expense of bringing young Geary back to the U. S. A., and when we get him here, it will be up to you to find a snug berth for him with Colorado Consolidated.”     

       “Neddy,” said John Stuart Webster, “by my hali-dom, I love thee. You're a thoughtful, kindly old stick-in-the-mud, but——”     

       “No ifs or but's. I'm your boss,”       Jerome interrupted, and waddled away to telephone the head waiter at his favourite restaurant to reserve a table for two.     

       Mr. Webster sighed. He disliked exceedingly to disappoint old Neddy, but——       He shrank from seeming to think over-well of himself by declining a       twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year job with the biggest mining company in Colorado, but——     

       “Rotten luck,” he soliloquized. “It runs that way for a while, and then it changes, and gets worse!”     

  

  

       CHAPTER IV     

 WHEN Jerome returned to his seat, the serious look in Webster's hitherto laughing eyes challenged his immediate attention. “Now what's gone and broken loose?” he demanded.     

W

       “Neddy,” said John Stuart Webster gently, “do you remember my crossing my fingers and saying, 'King's X'       when you came at me with that proposition of yours?”     

       “Yes. But I noticed you uncrossed them mighty quick when I told you the details of the job. You'll never be offered another like it.”     

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