The glowing end of a cigar upon the porch of the adjoining house told Gilman that young Wix was at home, and, full of his important enterprise, he stopped in front of the Wix gate to gloat.

“Hello, Gilman,” said Wix, sauntering down. “Out pretty late for a mere infant of twenty-four?”

“Little matter of business,” protested Mr. Gilman pompously, glancing apprehensively at the second-story window, where a shade was already drawn aside.

“Business!” repeated Wix. “They put midnight business in jail at daylight.”

“Hush!” warned Gilman, with another glance at the window. “This is different. This is one of those lucky strokes that I have read about but never hoped would come my way,” and enthusiastically, in an undertone which Wix had to strain to hear, he recited all the details of the golden opportunity.

[Pg 26]

It was not so much experience as a natural trend of mind paralleling Mr. Daw’s which made Mr. Wix smile to himself all through this recital. He seemed to foresee each step in the plan before it was told him, and, when Mr. Gilman was through, the only point about which his friend was at all surprised, or even eager, was the matter of the three thousand.

“Do you mean to say you can swing that amount?” he demanded.

“I—I think I can,” faltered Mr. Gilman. “In fact, I—I’m very sure of it. Although, of course, that’s a secret,” he hastily added.

“Where would you get it?” asked Wix incredulously.

“Well, for a sure thing like this, if you must know,” said Gilman, gulping, but speaking with desperately businesslike decision, “I am sure Mr. Smalley would loan it to me. Although he wouldn’t want it known,” he again added quickly. “If you’d speak to him about it he’d deny it, and might even make me trouble for being so loose-tongued; so, of course, nobody must know.”

“I see,” said Wix slowly. “Well, Cliff, you just pass up this tidy little fortune.”

“Pass it up!”

[Pg 27]

“Yes, let it slide on by. Look on it with scorn. Wriggle your fingers at it. Let somebody else have that nine thousand dollars clean profit from the investment of three, all in a couple of days. I’m afraid it would give you the short-haired paleness to make so much money so suddenly. Ever hear of that disease? The short-haired paleness comes from wearing horizontal stripes in a cement room.”

For a moment young Gilman pondered this ambiguous reply in silence, then out of his secret distress he blurted:

“But, Wix, I’ve got to do something that will bring me in some money! I’ve run behind on my wheat trades. I’ve—I’ve got to do something!”

Wix, in the darkness, made a little startled movement, the involuntary placing of his finger-tips behind his ear; then he answered quietly:

“I told you to keep away from that game. I tried it myself and know all about it.”

“I know, but I did it just the same,” answered Gilman.

Wix chuckled.

“Of course you did. You’re the woolly breed that keeps bucket-shops going. I’d like no better lazy life than just to run a bucket-shop and fill all [Pg 28]my buckets with the fleeces of about a dozen of your bleating kind. It would be easy money.”

The front door of the Gilman house opened a little way, and the voice of a worried woman came out into the night:

“Is that you, Cliffy?”

“Yes, mother,” answered Clifford. “Good night, old man. I want to be sure to see you before I go to the bank in the morning. I want to talk this thing over with you,” and young Gilman hurried into the house.

Wix looked after him as he went in, and stood staring at the glowing second-story window. Then he suddenly went back up to his own porch and got his hat. Fifteen minutes later he was at the desk of the Grand Hotel.

“Mr. Daw,” he said to the clerk.

“I think Mr. Daw’s probably gone to bed by this time, Wix,” the clerk protested.

“We’ll wake him up, then. What’s the number of his room? I’ll do it myself.”

The clerk grinned.

“If he kicks, you know, Wix, I can’t blame you for it. I’ll have to stand it myself.”

“He won’t kick. What’s his room?”

[Pg 29]

“Number one,” and again the clerk grinned. Nobody ever point-blank refused young Wix a favor. There was that in his bigness, and in the very jollity with which he defied life and its pretended gravity, which opened all doors to him. His breadth of chest had much to do with it.

“The bridal chamber, eh?” he chuckled. “In that case, send up a bottle of champagne and charge it to Mr. Daw’s account. Yes, I know the bar’s closed, but you have a key. Go dig it out yourself, Joe, and do it in style.”

Unattended, Mr. Wix made his way to room one and pounded on the door. Mr. Daw, encased in blue pajamas and just on the point of retiring, opened cautiously, and was quite crestfallen when he recognized his visitor. Nevertheless, he thawed into instant amiability.

“Glad to see you, old scout,” he cried, and shaking hands with Wix, pulled him into the room. “I felt as if the old homestead was no longer home when I didn’t find you here to-day. Sit down. What’ll you have to drink?”

“Wine, thanks,” replied Wix. “They’re getting it ready now. I gave them your order before I came up.”

[Pg 30]

Mr. Daw gasped and batted his eyes, but swallowed quickly and had it over with.

“You see,” explained Wix, as they seated themselves comfortably. “I thought, since we wouldn’t have time for many drinks, that we might just as well make it a good one. I brought up this timetable. There’s a train leaves for the East at five-thirty-seven this morning, and one leaves for the West at six-ten. Which are you going to take?”

“Why, neither one,” said Daw in some surprise. “I have some business here.”

“Yes,” admitted Wix dryly; “I just saw Gilman. Which train are you taking?”

“Neither, I said,” snapped Daw, frowning, “I don’t intend to leave here until I finish my work.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” Wix informed him. “You’re going about the time Gilman is washing his face for breakfast; and you won’t leave any word for him.”

“How do you know so well?” retorted Daw. “Look here, Mr. Wix, this proposition I’m offering Gilman is a fair and square—”

“You say that again and I’ll bite you,” interrupted Wix pleasantly.

“I’ve got a pretty good left-handed punch of my own,” flared Daw, advancing a threatening step.

[Pg 31]

Wix, though much the larger man, betrayed his touch of physical cowardice by a fleeting shade of pallor, and moved over next the door. The Grand Hotel had not installed a room telephone service, still relying upon the convenient push-button. To this, Wix, affecting to treat the entire incident as a joke, called attention.

“One ring, ice water,” he read from the printed card above it; “two rings, bell boy; three rings, maid. I think about six rings will bring the clerk, the porter and the fire department,” he observed; “but I don’t see where we need them in a quiet little business talk like ours.”

“Oh, I see!” said Daw in the sudden flood of a great white light, and he smiled most amiably. “I promised you a rake-off when I spoke about this on the train, didn’t I? And, of course, I’m willing to stick with it. If I pull this across there’s a thousand in it for you.”

“No. It won’t do,” said Wix, shaking his head.

“Say fifteen hundred, then.”

Once more Wix shook his head. He, also, smiled most amiably.

“I guess you want it all?” charged Daw with a sneer.

[Pg 32]

“Possibly,” admitted Wix, then suddenly he chuckled so that his big shoulders heaved. “To tell you the truth,” he stated, “I didn’t know Gilman could put up so big a prize as all that nice money, or he wouldn’t have had it loose to offer you by now. As soon as I get over the shock I’ll know what to do about it. Just now, all I know is that he’s not going into this real silky little joke of yours. I don’t want to see the money go out of town.”

“I saw it first,” Daw reminded him. “I don’t care where he gets it, you know, just so I get it.”

“Wherever he gets it,” said Wix impressively, “it will be secured in a perfectly legitimate manner. I want you to understand that much.”

“Oh, yes, I understood that, anyhow,” acknowledged Daw, and the two young men looked quite steadily into each other’s eyes, each knowing what the other thought, but refusing to admit it.

It was Daw who first broke the ensuing silence.

“Suppose I can’t decide to wing my onward way?” he suggested.

“Then I’ll have you looking out on court-house square through the big grill.”

“On what charge?”

“General principles,” chuckled Wix.

[Pg 33]

“I suppose there’s a heavy stretch for that if they prove it on me,” returned Daw thoughtfully. There was no levity whatever in the reply. He had read the eyes of Wix correctly. Wix would have him arrested as sure as breakfast, dinner and supper.

“Just general principles,” repeated Wix; “to be followed by a general investigation. Can you stand it?”

“I should say I can,” asserted Daw. “What time did you say that train leaves? The one going east, I mean.”

“Five-thirty-seven.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, you may leave me a call for five o’clock;” and Mr. Daw nonchalantly yawned.

There came a knock at the door.

“I’m sorry you have to leave us so soon, Mr. Daw,” said Wix, admitting the clerk with the wine, and speaking with much regret in his tone.

“I’ll clink glasses with you, anyhow, old sport,” offered Daw, accepting the inevitable gracefully, after the clerk had gone. “I don’t know what your game is, but here’s to it! Always remember, though, that I located this three thousand for you. I hate to leave it here. It was such easy money.”

[Pg 34]

“Easy money!” Again that phrase rang in the ears of young Wix, as he walked home, as he stood at his gate looking over at the second-story window of the Gilman house, and as he lay upon his pillow. To dwell in perpetual ease, to be surrounded with endless luxury, to spend money prodigally in all the glitter and pomp of the places that had been built at the demand of extravagance: these things had become an obsession with him—yet, for them, he was not willing to work and wait.

Gilman felt that he had lost vast estates, when, upon calling at the hotel in the morning, he found that Mr. Daw had left upon an early train. He was worried, too, that he had not been able to see Wix before he started down-town. Most opportunely, however, Wix sauntered out of Sam Glidden’s cigar store, opposite the hotel, as Gilman emerged upon the street.

“When’s the funeral?” asked Wix. “You look like a sick-headache feels.”

“Daw has gone, and without leaving me any word,” quavered Gilman. “I suppose he’ll—he’ll probably write to me, though.”

“I’m betting that he has writer’s cramp every time he tries it,” asserted Wix.

[Pg 35]

“But I signed an agreement with him last night. He must write.”

“Does this look anything like that agreement,” asked Wix, and from his pocket drew the document, torn once across each way. Gilman gazed at the pieces blankly. “I got it away from him, and tore it up myself, last night,” continued Wix. “Also, I ran the gentleman out of town on the five-thirty-seven this morning, headed due east and still going.”

“What do you mean?” gasped Gilman. “Why, man, you’ve taken away the only chance I had to get even. I have to make money, I tell you!”

“Be calm, little Cliffy,” admonished Wix soothingly. “I’m going to get it its money. Look here, Gilman, this man was a fake and I made him say so, but his coming here gave me an idea. I’m going to open a bucket-shop, and you’re going to back it.”

“Not a bucket-shop!” objected Gilman, aghast at the very name.

“Yes, a bucket-shop. Do you know how they operate? Of course not, merely having played against them. Well, suppose you gamble a thousand bushels of wheat on a two-cent margin, holding for a two-cent advance. What happens to your twenty dollars? The bucket expert takes out his buying [Pg 36]commission of one-fourth cent a bushel. A straight broker takes off one-eighth cent, but your man milks you for a nifty little total of two dollars and a half, because you’re a piker. If wheat goes down one and three-fourths cents you lose the other seventeen-fifty, don’t you?”

“Yes,” admitted Gilman.

“If it goes up two cents the man closes the deal and takes out another one-fourth cent a bushel for closing. That’s another two-fifty. You get back thirty-five dollars. Your bucket-shop man is practically betting fifteen dollars of his money against twenty of yours on worse than an even break. Pretty good game for the bucket-shop man, isn’t it? But there’s more. He doesn’t take as much risk as matching pennies on a three-to-four shot. Suppose he has one man betting that wheat will go up and another that it will go down. Each man puts up twenty, and one must lose. The man with the bucket runs no chances, and every time he takes in forty dollars he pays out only thirty-five of it. Twelve and one-half per cent. of all the money that passes through his hands stays there. Moreover, the winner puts his right back into the game, and the loser rakes up more, to win back what he lost. Pretty [Pg 37]syrupy, eh? The only trouble with you is that you have been playing this game from the wrong end. Now, you’re going to play it from the inside. I’m going to rent an office to-day. You’re to back me to the extent of three thousand dollars, and we’ll split the profits.”

Gilman’s eyes glistened. He was one who did his thinking by proxy, and reflected enthusiasm with vast ease.

“Do you suppose it would take the three thousand all at once?” he asked with some anxiety.

“No, we won’t need it in a lump,” Wix decided, after some sharp thought over Gilman’s nervousness; “but it must be where we can get all or any part of it at a minute’s notice.”

Gilman drew such an obvious breath of relief that Wix became once more thoughtful; but it was a thoughtfulness that brought with it only hardening of the jaw and steeling of the eyes.