custom to be seen for a short time; and, most of all, that there were certain individuals who were gleeful and declared that luck had played their way when he returned to his office alone at nine o’clock of the autumn evening. He was seated at his desk in his private office when the door opened almost noiselessly and he looked up to see two visitors. The first, a short, red-headed man, grinned sardonically as he said, “Hello, Tom. Glad to find you alone. Didn’t expect us, I reckon.”

“No, of course not, and don’t know that I care to see either of you, as far as that goes,” the boss growled, leaning back in his chair and wondering what misfortune was about to disclose itself. Always unexpected meetings with these two partners had been attended with misfortune. Misfortune seemed to have become a habit where they were involved.

“No use in getting nasty or fussed up about it, Tom,” the smaller man declared with the utmost amiability. “We never look you up because we like you. You know that.”

“Well, what have you come for this time?” Shaughnessy demanded after a moment’s hesitation in which he recovered himself and appeared as cool as if he had neither fears nor apprehensions.

“Why, we’ve come to help you out, just for a change,” David replied as he deliberately seated himself in a chair on the opposite side of Shaughnessy’s desk and motioned Goliath to close and guard the door. “We’ve come to sell you Number Two above discovery on Torren’s Gulch and—Shaughnessy, we’ve talked it over and we think you’re going to pay for it just”—he stopped, leaned forward and with a hard tapping finger to punctuate his sentence said—“seventy-five-hun-dred dollars!”

For an instant any connection between those figures and the amount lost in the stage robbery and so peculiarly recovered did not seem to penetrate Shaughnessy’s mind, and then, veteran gambler and expert dissembler as he was, his face turned slowly red, then white. His eyes lowered themselves under the motionless, fixed, and boring scrutiny of the steel-gray eyes that stared at him unblinkingly, menacingly, mockingly.

“What’s—what has—why seventy-five hundred dollars, and—and how do you happen to cut in on this deal anyhow? You don’t own that mine!” he exclaimed.

“We’re asking seventy-five hundred because we know you’ve got that much in cash down in the hands of the prosecuting attorney of this county marked ‘Exhibit A’ in the Ray case. Second, we’re asking it because we know that in a 

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