A MAN walked into the office of Richards & Tuttle, bankers and brokers, members of the New York Stock Exchange. All he could see was a ground-glass partition, with little windows only a trifle larger than peepholes, over which he read, “deliveries,” “comparisons,” “telegrams,” and “cashier.” If you had business to transact you knew at which window to knock. If you had not you should not disturb the unseen clerks by asking questions that took valuable time to answer. It was a typical, non-communicative, non-confiding Wall Street office.

The man approached the “cashier” window because it was open. He was tall and well built, with unmyopic eyes that looked through tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses. The brim of his high hat, the cut of his coat, the hang of his trousers, the hue of his necktie and the gray, waxed, needle-pointed mustaches proclaimed him unmistakably Parisian.

“I wish to see Mr. Richards,” he said, in a nasal voice, so like the twang of a stage Yankee that the cashier frowned and twisted his neck to see if some down-easter were not hiding behind the Frenchman.

“You what?” asked the cashier, and looked watchful.

“I wish to see,” repeated the stranger, with a formal precision meant, to be rebuking, “Mr. George B. Richards, senior member, I believe, of this firm.”

The cashier, with a frown that belied the courtesy of his words, said:

“Would you be kind enough to tell me the nature of your business, sir?”

Gourley, the cashier, insanely hated book agents, and his one pleasure in life consisted of violently ejecting them from the office. When a man clearly established his innocence Gourley never forgave him for cheating him out of the kicking.

The stranger said, very slowly:

“The nature of my business with Mr. Richards is private, personal, and urgent!”

The stranger might, be a customer, and customers make brokers rich and give wages to cashiers.

“Mr. Richards is very busy just now, sir, with an important conference. It would be a favor if you could let me have your name.”

“He doesn't know me and he has never heard my name.”

“Would any one else do?”

The stranger shook his head. Then:

“Say to Mr. Richards that a gentleman from Paris wishes to give to him—personally—ten letters of introduction, one card of same, and one life secret.” The man's gaze was fixed frowningly on Gourley.

“Ten letters of introduction, one card of same, and one life secret!” repeated Gourley, dazedly. “Here, Otto. Hold the fort. I'll go myself.”

The cashier's place was promptly occupied by a moon-faced Teuton. Presently Gourley, whose misanthropy had in this instance merely made an office-boy of him, returned to the window and said, in the insolent tones of a puglistic agent provocateur:

“He says to send in the letters of introduction.”

“My friend,” said the stranger, so impressively that the cashier was made uneasy, “are you sure Mr. Richards said that?”

“Well—ah—he said,” stammered Gourley, “to ask you—er—would you please send in the letters. He will read them, and as soon as possible he will—ah—see you.”

“H'm!” muttered the stranger, skeptically. Then, as a man rids himself of angry thoughts, he shook his head and, without another word, went out.

“Ha! I knew it all along,” said Gourley, triumphantly, to his assistant, Otto. “It beats the Dutch what schemes these damned book agents get up to see people during business hours. But I called his bluff that time!”

Less than ten minutes later the French-looking man with the down-east voice opened the door, tapped at the cashier's window, and told Gourley, sternly:

“Here are the ten letters and the one card. They are very important! I'll be obliged, sir, if you will yourself give them into Mr. Richards's own hands. The life secret I, of course, will impart to him myself. Make haste, please. I have only five business days and three hours left.”

Gourley laid the letters on Mr. Richards's desk and said, in the accusing tone old employees use when they are in the wrong: “Here are the letters of introduction from the book agent I spoke to you about. He acts damned impudent to me, but I didn't want to make any mistake.”

Richards, a man of fifty, fastidiously dressed, but relieved from even the implication of foppishness by a look in his eyes at once shrewd and humorous, said, with a smile, “Well, he certainly has enough letters to be anything, even a rich man.”

“Funny letters of introduction,” said the cashier—“all sealed and—” His jaw dropped. That made him cease talking.

Mr. Richards had taken from the first envelope not a letter, but a ten-thousand-dollar gold certificate!

The cashier closed his mouth with a click. “What the—!” he muttered.

“Next!” said George B. Richards, cheerfully. He opened envelope number two and pulled out another ten-thousand-dollar bill. One after another he opened the letters until he had laid in a neat pile on his desk ten ten-thousand-dollar notes.

“The letters of introduction are from the Treasury Department,” said Richards, laughing. “Now let us see whom the card is from.”

“I don't care whom the card is from. I know the man is crazy,” said Gourley, in the defiant tone of one who expects not logic, but contradiction. “It is as plain as the nose on your face.”

“Maybe they are counterfeit,” teased Richards; he knew they were not.

The cashier snatched one from the desk, looked at the vignette of Jackson, and examined the back. “It's good,” he said, gloomily.

Richards opened the eleventh envelope and took out a card.

“From Amos Kidder, of the Evening Planet,” he told Gourley, and read aloud:

Dear George,—The bearer, Mr. James B. Robison, of Paris, France, a friend of Smiley, our correspondent there, asked me to recommend some highly intelligent stock-brokers. I, of course, at once thought of you. Deal with him as you do with

Yours,

Amos F. Kidder.

“Maybe it's a set of those French books that are awful until you've signed the contract and Volume I. comes, and they are not awful at all. Those fellows,” said the cashier, indignantly, “will do anything to get your money.”

“You forget I've got his,” suggested Richards.

“That's a new one on me, I admit,” said the cashier; “but I'll bet a ten-spot—”

“I'll have no gambling in this office! Send in Mr. Robison; and if Kidder should happen in, tell him I'd like to see him.”

The waxed-mustached man, preceded by Otto, the moon-faced clerk, entered the private office of Mr. George B. Richards, who rose and smiled pleasantly even as his keen eyes quickly inventoried Mr. Robison.

“Mr. Richards?” twanged the stranger. That Yankee voice issuing from between those unmistakably French mustaches made Richards start; and yet the vague atmosphere of disquietude and suspicion that the ten letters of introduction had created seemed to be dispelled by the man's Yankee twang. It was so genuinely down-east that it humanized Mr. Robison and made his eccentricity less eccentric. Also, the eyes gleamed not with the fire of insanity, but with a great earnestness.

“Yes. And this is Mr. Robison?”

“Yes, sir!” Mr. Robison bowed very low, like a man who has lived abroad many years.

“Won't you be seated, sir?”

“Thank you, sir.” There was another bow of gratitude, and Mr. Robison sat down by Richards's flat-topped desk.

“What can we do for you, Mr. Robison?” asked Richards, amiably polite. His course of action would be determined by the stranger's own words.

“You can help me if you will.” Mr. Robison spoke very earnestly, after the manner of strong, self-reliant men when they ask for favors.

“We shall be glad to if you will tell me how.”

“By being patient. That's how.”

Richards laughed uncertainly. Mr. Robison held up a hand as if to check unseemly merriment and said, very seriously:

“I have lived alone too long to be politic or diplomatic or evasive. I wish to ask you a question.”

“Ask ahead,” said Richards, with an encouraging recklessness.

“Tell me, Mr. Richards—what is the most difficult thing in the world?”

Mr. Robison was looking intently at the broker's face, as if he particularly desired to detect any change in expression. This intentness disconcerted Richards, who had at first intended to answer jocularly. He now said, distinctly apologetic:

“There are so many very difficult things!”

“Yes, there are—a great many indeed. But of all things, which is by far the most difficult?” His eyes held Richards's.

“I shall have to think a little before I can answer that question.”

“Take all the time you wish!” and Mr. Robison leaned back in his chair, his attitude somehow suggesting a Gibraltar-like ability to withstand a three years' siege.

It made Richards do much thinking very quickly: Here was a man who was not crazy; who had lying on the desk a hundred thousand dollars in cash to which he had not even casually referred; who probably intended to do business that would prove a source of profit to the firm of Richards & Tuttle. He might be a crank or a crook, but against either contingency the firm could and would protect itself. It was just as well to humor this man until he proved himself unworthy of humoring. The problem of the moment, therefore, became how to raise the siege politely.

“I suppose,” began Richards, trying to look philosophical, “that telling the truth always and every-, where is about as difficult a thing as—”

“It isn't a question,” interrupted Robison, with a polite regret, “of as difficult a thing as any, but of the most difficult of all!”

“I am afraid I'll have to ask you to tell me what you consider the most difficult thing in the world.”

Brokers have to earn their money in more complicated ways than by shouting “Sold!” or “Take it!” on the floor of the Stock Exchange. They have to listen to potential customers.

“The most difficult thing in the world, Mr. George B. Richards, is for a man to give money—in cash—to a woman who is not his wife or his mistress or a blood-relation or a pauper!”

“That is difficult!” acquiesced the broker.

“It is what I have to do. That is why I am here.”

“You mean you wish us to give this money—”

“No—no! How can you, pray, give money to a lady any better than I?”

“I wondered,” said Richards, patiently. He was beginning to fear that Robison might be one of those mysterious people out of whom no money is to be made.

“Would you mind hearing my story?” Mr. Robison looked at Richards pleadingly.

“Not at all,” politely lied the broker.

“There is a lady in New York—to be explicit, an old sweetheart—” Mr. Robison paused, bit his lip, looked away, bit his lip again and cleared his throat loudly. He did all these things so untheatrically that they thrilled the keen-eyed Wall Street man. Presently Mr. Robison went on in that Yankee nasal voice of his that somehow sounded like the extreme antithesis of sentiment: “The only woman I ever loved! I have never married! She did—unfortunately; and now, this girl, this woman, accustomed to every comfort and every refinement, has to earn her own living! She has five children and she is earning her living!” He rose and walked up and down the office like a caged wild animal. Then he sat down again and said, determinedly, “Of course I simply have to do something for her!”

“I appreciate your position,” said Richards, tenderly. He was a very good stock-broker.

“Thank you. You cannot imagine what she was to me! I came to America to find her. I have found her. I wish to give her money or securities that will insure a comfortable income, and I have to do it circuitously. I'd give half a million to anybody who killed her damned husband! Yes, I would!” He looked at Richards with a wild hope in his eyes. He calmed himself with an obvious effort and proceeded: “Knowing her as I do, and because of—of certain circumstances of our early affair, I know she will never accept any help directly from me. Last night I was calling on her. Other friends of hers were present, among them a man who called himself a lawyer. His name is W. Bailey Jackson. Know him?”

“No, I don't. I think I've heard of him, though.” Richards lied from sheer force of professional habit.

“Well, I led the conversation round to Wall Street and incidentally said I didn't know which was easier for a man, to be a fool or to make money in the stock-market. I, myself, I hastened to add, had always found folly extremely easy—but successful stock speculation infinitely easier. That, I may remark to you in passing, sir, is gospel truth.”

“You are right,” agreed Richards, heartily. It did not behoove a stock-broker to point out the difficulty of making money in Wall Street. Moreover, Mr. Robison showed so quiet a confidence that Richards had lightning flashes of memory, and recollected every story he had ever heard about queer characters who had taken millions out of the Street.

“This Mr. W. Bailey Jackson jeered and sneered, however, until I said I would bet him fifty dollars to fifty cents that I could double a sum of money in the Street in one week, in a reputable broker's office, operating on the New York Stock Exchange in a reputable and active stock—no bucket-shop, no mining-stock, and no pool manipulation. But I made this point: The trick was so easy that it was not interesting. I didn't wish to do it to make money, but if Mrs.—if my friend would accept the profits, I would prove that I knew what I was talking about; and, besides, would keep the children in candy for a month. And, of course, everybody laughed and urged her to consent—especially the Jackson person. In the end she gave in, doubtless thinking I'd win a few dollars—if I won at all. Also my offer was accepted in the presence and by the advice of men and women who could stop Mrs. Grundy's mouth.”

“Very clever!” said Richards, with the enthusiasm of a man who sees commissions coming his way.

“It was love that made me so ingenious,” explained. Mr. Robison, very simply. “I've got her written acceptance in my pocket as well as that damned W. Bailey Jackson's bet, duly witnessed by the two gossipiest women there. And in this envelope you will find instructions for your guidance in case of my sudden death. So I now wish to double the money.”

He looked inquiringly at Richards, who thereupon felt the pangs of disappointment. Neither crank nor crook, decided the broker, but simply Suckerius Americanus; genus D. F.

Mr. Robison evidently was going to ask Richards & Tuttle to take the one hundred thousand dollars and double it for him, which meant that Mr. Richards would have to inform Mr. Robison that the firm was not in the miracle business; and that would make Mr. Robison go away mad. Total—no commissions!

“Well,” Richards said, just a trifle coldly, “did you come to us to ask us to double your money for you?”

“No, indeed,” answered Robison; “I came here to do it.”

“When?”

“In one week—or, rather, in five days and two hours.”

“How are you going to do it?” The broker's curiosity was not feigned.

“I propose to study the Menagerie.”

Richards said nothing, but looked “Lunatic!”

“That way inevitably suggests the combinations to you.” Mr. Robison nodded to himself.

Richards, to be on the safe side, did likewise and muttered, absently, “That's so!”

“Do you care to come with me?” asked Mr. Robison, with a politeness that betrayed effort. “Thank you, no. I am very busy, and—”

“And you didn't cut me short!” said Robison, his voice ringing with remorse. “I'll come in tomorrow morning. Good afternoon—and please forgive my theft of your time, Mr. Richards.”

“One moment. Do you wish this money—”

“I'll get the receipt to-morrow. I am going to see Kidder now. I didn't mean to take up so much of your time.” And before the banker could stop him Mr. James B. Robison was out of the inner office and out of the outer office and out of the building and out of the financial district.

Shortly afterward Amos F. Kidder, financial editor of the Evening Planet, west into Richards's office. He was thirty-five years old, a trifle under six feet, had light-brown hair and the eyes of a man who is a cynic by force of experience and an optimist by reason of a perfect liver—the kind of man who is fooled by strangers never and by intimate friends always. If what he had seen of Wall Street gave him a low opinion of men's motives he had the defect of steadfast loyalty. Having imagination and a profound respect for statistics, he wrote what might be called skilful articles on finance.

“Your friend Robison was here to-day. What do you know about him?” asked Richards. He would not take a stranger's account, but he did not relish losing an account he already had.

Kidder took a letter from his pocket, gave it to the stock-broker, and said:

“Smiley gave him a letter to me and in addition sent me that one by mail.”

Richards read:

The New York Planet, 5 Rue de Provence.

Paris, February 18, 1912.

Dear Kidder,—I've given a letter of introduction to a Mr. James B. Robison, who comes originally from some manufacturing town in Massachusetts, like Lynn or Lowell—I've forgotten which. He is well liked by the colony here and, I am told, has been kind to poor art students and other self-deluded compatriots. He is queer; is suspected of being rich—which he must be because he never borrows, lives well, and says moneymaking is too easy to merit discussion when men can discuss the eternal feminine or the revival of cosmetics. His trip to New York is prompted, he tells me, by the receipt of a letter from an old flame of his whom he warned against marrying her present husband. She would not listen to Robison, accused him in choice Bostonian of being a short sport, and now after long years she writes him, asking for forgiveness, being at last convinced that her husband is all that Robison said—and then some. He is off to try to find her; she is somewhere in New York. Put him in touch with some private detective who won't rob him too ruthlessly.

I don't think he'll want to borrow money, as I know he is taking a letter of credit on Towne, Ripley & Co. for fifty thousand pounds; and they told me at his bankers'—Madison & Co.—that he owns slathers of gilt-edged bonds and that they cash the coupons for him. They also tell me he carries more cash about him than is prudent. You might suggest to him that the New York banks are safe enough. You'll find him a character—odd but charitable. Knowing your fondness for fiction in real life I commend Mr. Robison to you. Regards to the boys. Why don't you make a million and come over to spend it in the company of Yours as ever,

Lurton P. Smiley.

Richards handed the letter back. “He came here with ten ten-thousand-dollar gold certificates.”

“Yes; he got 'em from Towne, Ripley & Co. I went with him. They had instructions to pay any amount he might call for, and they did. He asked for large bills.”

“He got 'em!” said Richards, greatly relieved at seeing no necessity why he should refuse Robison's account.

“What's he going to do?” asked Kidder.

“I don't know. He told me he had found his old sweetheart and that he is going to give her all he makes in Wall Street. He expects to double the one hundred thousand dollars in a week.”

“For Heaven's sake, George, find out his secret! Half a million will do for me,” laughed Kidder.

“He gave me an envelope,” said Richards, taking it from his desk. On it was written:

PROPERTY OF JAMES B. ROBISON

To be Opened by Richards & Tuttle In Case of Sudden Death

“What do you think?” asked Richards.

“You really mean do I advise you to open it, don't you?” asked Kidder..

“Not exactly; but—”

“Of course,” said the newspaper man, “it does not say it is not to be opened in case of living. That is sufficient excuse—that and your curiosity.”

“I don't like to open it,” said Richards, doubtfully.

“Don't!”

“Still, I'd like to know what's inside.”

“Then open it.”

“I don't think I have a right to.”

“Don't, then!”

“Oh, shut up! I won't open it! I don't know whether to take the account. You don't know anything about this man—”

“You broker fellows make me tired—posing as careful business men. All Robison has to do is to go to any of your branch offices or anybody's branch office, say his name is W. Jones and that he keeps a cigar-store in Hackensack or Flatbush, and your branch manager will never let him get away. And afore-mentioned manager will swear, if you should be so mean as to ask who W. Jones is, that he and W. J. went to school together—known him for years!”

“After all,” said Richards, a trifle defiantly, “there is no reason why I shouldn't do business for Robison that you know of?”

“Not that I know of—but if he buncoes you out of a big wad don't blame me.”

“He is welcome to anything he can make out of us,” smiled Richards, grimly, and Kidder laughed so heartily that the broker looked pleased with himself and his witticism. He rang for the cashier, gave him the one hundred thousand dollars, and had the amount credited to James B. Robison, address unknown.

II

After leaving the office of Richards & Tuttle Mr. James B. Robison went to the Subway station at Wall Street, rode up-town as far as Forty-second Street, walked to Sixth Avenue, took a surface car, jumped off at Forty-eighth, walked to Forty-ninth, waited there for the next car, and, being certain he was not shadowed, rode on to Fifty-sixth Street. He got off, walked north on the avenue and, half-way up the block, paused at the entrance of the employment agency of “Jno. Sniffens, Established 1858.” On the big slate by the door he read that there was wanted a coachman—careful driver; elderly man preferred.

He walked up-stairs one flight and accosted the agent.

“Good morning, Sniffens.”

“Good morning, Mr. Maynard,” answered Sniffens, son of the original Jno., very obsequiously.

“Are they here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many?”

“Seven.”

“I've seen fifty-six so far—haven't I?”

“No, sir,” contradicted Sniffens with the air of a man who will tell the truth even if death should resuit. “Fifty-five. You forget you saw the Swede twice.”

“That is true, Sniffens. You are an honest man! Here!” And he gave ten dollars to the agent. “Send in the men.”

He sat down in the inner office and Sniffens went out, presently to return with an elderly man. “This is Wilkinson—worked twenty-nine years—”

“Sorry. Won't do. Here, my man! Take this two-dollar bill for your trouble. Next!”

Much the same thing happened with the next four applicants. The fifth man, however, made Robison listen patiently while Sniffens finished his elaborately biographical introduction. The man's name was Thomas Gray; age fifty-eight; worked twelve years for General James Morris and fourteen for Stuyvesant R. Morris. Very careful. Excellent references. Morris family went abroad to live. Gray had not done anything for five years, but was willing and anxious to work.

Robison, who had been studying Gray keenly, said sharply, and not at all nasally:

“Height and weight?”

“Five foot eleven and a half inches; one hundred and seventy pounds, sir.”

“Deaf?”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“No, sir; but I don't hear as well as I did.”

“Can you hear this?” And Robison whispered, “Constantinople!”

“Beg pardon, sir!” Gray looked at Mr. Robison's face intently, but Robison shook his head and said:

“No fair looking! That isn't hearing, but lipreading. Close your eyes and listen!” And he whispered, “Bab-el-Mandeb!” No one could have heard him three feet away and Gray was across the room. Robison raised his voice and said, “Did you hear that?”

There showed in Gray's blue eyes a pathetic struggle between telling the truth and getting the job. “I—I only heard a faint murmur, sir.”

“Try again. Listen!” Mr. Robison moved his lips soundlessly and asked, “What did I say, Gray?” The old man drew in a deep breath. It was not so much the money, for the Morris family gave him a pension; but he wished to feel that he was not yet useless, that he was still worth his keep. However, he shook his head and said, determinedly:

“I heard nothing.”

“Open your eyes! You get the job, Gray,” said Mr. Robison. “Come here!”

As Gray approached his new employer Sniffens left the room.

“You are not to tell any one for whom you are working, or where, or why, or for how long, or for what wages. There will be no night work. Are you very careful?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You'll have to take some children to school every day—poor children to a public school in the morning. You are not to ask their names. Do what you are told, no matter how queer it seems to you, so long as you are not asked to break the law of the land or the rules of the road.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I shall send people to ask you questions, and I warn you that I'm going to put you to various tests. I want a man who is honest enough to trust with valuables, wise enough to mind his own business, and faithful enough to do what his employer tells him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Until you prove you are the man I want you will be paid by the day—five dollars. You will feed yourself and sleep home. I supply the livery and a second man. If after one month's trial you are found satisfactory you will get your wages by the month. It's big wages, but I want an honest man!” He looked at Gray sternly.

“Yes, sir. I'm careful and honest, sir. I think you will find that to be true, sir.”

“I trust so. The stable is on Thirty-first Street, near Avenue B. Here is the number.” He gave a card to Gray. “Be there at eight sharp. You will drive a coupÉ; quiet horse; New York City.”

“Yes, sir. I'll be there, sir.”

“Here's five dollars for you. You don't have to pay any fee to Sniffens. I've paid him.”

“Thank you, sir. Good day, sir.”

At seven-thirty the next morning Gray was at the stable. It was not a very good-looking place. He rang the bell, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. No one answered. He rang a second and a third time, and still there was no answer. He listened, his ear close to the door. He heard the muffled sound of a horse pounding in a well-littered stall.

At eight o'clock—Gray heard a clock within chime the hour—the door opened. Gray entered. A man was hitching up a dark bay horse to a coupÉ. Mr. Robison was sitting in a sumptuous green-plush armchair in the carriage-room. Behind him, on a mahogany table, was a small valise, opened.

“Good morning, Gray,” said Robison.

“Good morning, Mr. Maynard,” said Gray, respectfully.

Robison took a clean white-linen handkerchief from his pocket and said:

“See that brick over there?” He pointed to a common red brick on a little shelf near the street door.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, wrap it up in this handkerchief—here on this table. No—don't dust it. Just as it is!” He watched Gray's face keenly. The old man's countenance remained English and impassive.

“Put it in the valise.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In yonder box you'll find some tenpenny nails. Fetch three and wrap them up in the sheet of paper you'll find in the valise. Then lay them on top of the brick.”

Gray did as he was bid. If he thought his employer was crazy he did not look it.

Robison then took from his pocket a sealed envelope, threw it into the valise, and closed the valise.

“You will find your livery in the dressing-room—door to your left. Put it on. Then drive so as to be before 197 West Thirty-eighth Street at exactly nine minutes after nine. Compare your watch with that clock. Wait there—Thirty-eighth Street—until a footman in dark-green livery comes out alone. If he asks you, 'James, did Ben win?' you will say to him, 'The answer is inside. Take it!' You will then return to this stable, fasten the horse to that chain, put on your street clothes, go home, and return to-morrow at eight sharp. But—” He paused.

“Yes, sir.”

“Pay attention, Gray! If, instead of the servant alone, the servant comes out of, 197 West Thirty-eighth Street accompanied by a gentleman who gets in, you will drive him to my office.”

“Where, sir?”

“This is my office—here. You will drive back here quickly and disregard everything your passenger may say or whatever orders he may give you. You understand? These are your orders that I now give you. They are not to be changed under any circumstances, no matter what happens. Have you understood?”

“Yes, sir. I'll follow orders, Mr. Maynard.”

“See that you do.” And Mr. Robison walked out of the stable.

At nine-nine sharp Gray stood in front of 197 West Thirty-eighth Street. At nine-fifteen a footman in dark-green livery came out of the house. He was followed by Mr. Robison himself. The man opened the door of the carriage and Gray's employer got in.

“Will you go to the office, sir?” asked the footman. Gray heard him.

“No! Metropolitan Museum!” answered their master, distinctly.

“Metropolitan Museum!” said the footman to the coachman.

Gray was torn by doubt, anger, and fear. Should he drive to the Metropolitan or back to the stable?

He decided to go back to the stable. If he were discharged he would not regret losing so unsatisfactory a job. If, on the other hand, driving back should prove to be the right thing he would greatly strengthen his position.

He arrived at the stable, fastened the horse to the chain, and went to change his clothes. He heard Mr. Robison tap on the glass of the door and saw him beckon to him and then heard him shout, “Open the door!” But Gray went to the dressing-room and changed his clothes. As soon as he was done the second man came in, showed him two envelopes, and said:

“You win! You get the ten dollars! I get the five-spot. That's how he pays. You obeyed orders. You are the first man that's succeeded in holding the job over one day. The Lord only knows what test Mr. Maynard will prepare for you to-morrow! It may be the children's lunch stunt or the runaway lunatic. Run out! Mr. Maynard won't like you to be here when he comes in. You can go out into the street by that door without going through the carriage-room.”

Gray put the ten dollars in his pocket and walked out. “Rum go, that!” he muttered. It was indeed. He nodded his head with a sad sort of triumph to show that though he had not solved the mystery he had at all events grasped the situation and was, moreover, ten dollars to the good.

III

It was after the opening of the stock-market and most of the early orders had been executed. The rush had given place to the calm efficiency of a well-organized broker's office. Mr. Robison walked into the Customers' Room, approached Gilbert Witherspoon, a valued customer, touched his hat-brim with two fingers in the French military fashion, and said:

“Please, where's Mr. Richards?” His nasal twang and his Parisian appearance produced the usual impression of striking incongruity upon all men within hearing distance. Everybody frankly listened.

“That's his private office,” answered Witherspoon, non-committally, pointing his finger at a door.

“Thank you very much!” said Robison and bowed. Then he knocked, heard a peremptory “Come in!” and disappeared within.

Witherspoon, who cultivated a reputation as a wit—there is a buffoon in every stock-broker's office—shrugged his shoulders Frenchily, and, in a nasal voice obviously in imitation of Robison, said:

“Another world-beater!”

“You never can tell,” retorted Dan McCormack, oracularly. He was fat, always played “mysteries” in the market—traded in those stocks the movements in which were unaccounted for—and he did not like Witherspoon.

Inside Mr. Robison had said “Bon jour!” and bowed so very low that Mr. Richards immediately thought of the language of a fashionable bill of fare.

“Wie geht's?” retorted Richards, jocularly. Then, nicely serious, “How are you this morning?”

“Don't I look it?” said Mr. Robison. “I am, of course, perplexed.”

“What's the trouble?”

“The usual trouble when I try to beat the stock-market—embarras de richesses.”

“It is an embarrassment that most people would welcome.”

“Tut! The more elaborate the menu is in a good restaurant the greater your indecision as to which particular dish you will order! Well, I went through the Menagerie!” There was a catarrhal despair in his voice.

“Yes?”

“And I am undecided between four.”

Robison looked anxiously at the broker, and Richards felt such an annoyance as a man might feel if compelled at the point of a pistol to listen to the reading of one hundred pages of the city directory. But he smiled tolerantly, for he had the professional amiability indispensable to men whose business consists of making money and of consoling clients for losing money.

“Four what?” he asked.

“Four sure ways.”

“Which four?” asked Richards. He managed to convey both that he was dying to listen and that the rest of the world did not exist for him.

“The Ant, the Spider, the Beaver, and the Lion. Out of the nineteen combinations in the Menagerie I've narrowed my choice to these four. You know conditions better than I and probably have seen the Cribbage Board. Have you a choice?” He looked at Richards so eagerly, and withal so shrewdly and sanely, that in self-defense the broker said:

“I can't say that I have. Of course I am bullish—”

“Of course. But the question is: Which—in a week?”

Richards had no idea what was meant by this man with the sane eyes who said crazy things through his nose—a man who had one hundred thousand dollars to his credit with the firm. Perplexed to the verge of exasperation, Richards was stock-broker enough—when in doubt, bluff!—to say, with a frown, “Yes, that's the question: Which—in a week?” He shook his head as though he were trying to pick out the best for his beloved Robison.

“I never was so puzzled in my life, and I want you to know that I've made money even in Rumanian bonds!”

“I'm afraid I can't help you much.”

“What does the I. S. Board say?”

“Mr. Robison, exactly what do you mean by the I. S. Board?”

“What? You don't know the International Syndicate Cribbage Board! Then how in Hades do you pick your combinations?”

“We buy and sell stocks on our judgment of basic conditions or for special reasons.”

“Ah, yes—like the public. You base your trades on gas and guess. Well, I don't! I'd play the Ant, but I don't see the Granary full in a week. Jay Gould had a perfect mania for it; it was an obsession with him. And yet he seldom won commensurately with his risks. In the Northwest corner he was tied up over a year and lost more than a million. I guess we'll dispense with the Ant, though it looks so safe for the Granger group.”

Robison seemed to be thinking aloud rather than asking for advice. But Richards, who was a Wall Street man to his finger-tips, said, gravely, “I think you are right.”

Robison nodded, to show he had heard, and went on: “The situation in the Pacific Coast, of course, suggests the Beaver at once. I can see the Dam in Union Pacific; but I don't like to try it so soon after the Rothschilds worked it so openly in Berlin over the Agadir excuse. Too many people who have access to the Menagerie remember it. I realize all this, but,” he finished, with profound regret, “it is such a cinch!”

“Yes. But—” Richards shook his head in sympathy. He felt that he ought to humor this man; moreover, business was quiet, and this man was saying incomprehensible things that would be repeated by Richards, with sensational success, at luncheons and dinners for weeks.

“Of course, the Spider is the oldest stand-by. Personally I never liked it. In the Governor Flower boom and, indeed, up to the Northern Pacific panic, its popularity was due to John W. Gates. But do you know, Mr. Richards, I have always believed that in the first two Steel and Wire coups and in the Louisville & Nashville affair, Gates hit upon it by accident. Else,” pursued Mr. Robison, controversially, “why was he pinched so badly in 1901 and again in 1907? He hit upon it, after he got out of Federal Steel, by accident, I tell you! He was a man of genius and courage, but it was all instinct with him. He was no student, sir—no student!”

“I've always said,” observed Mr. George B. Richards, “that Gates was not a student!” He glared, thereby successfully defying contradiction.

“It leaves the Lion!” muttered Robison. “Should I try it? And which Peg?”

“I'd try it!” counseled Richards, who was not only intelligent, but had a sense of humor.

“Would you, really?”

“Yes, I certainly would!” And the broker looked as if he certainly meant it.

“It's the Dutch favorite,” said Robison, musingly. “And they are a very clever people. You know Van Vollenhoven in his book says that once a year, for thirteen consecutive years, the great Cornelius Roelofs, of Amsterdam, made a million gulden in London by the Lion—the most hopeful pessimist in the history of stock speculation! It comes easy to the phlegmatic Hollanders, but Americans are too nervous to take kindly to it. I once begged the late Addison Cammack to join me in a Lion deal, but he didn't. He was not very well at the time. Anyhow, he was too American.”

“Did you know him?”

“Like a book! Dangerous man to follow! Cynicism sounds impressive, but is wind. You don't win in the stock-market with catch phrases, but with combinations.”

“Do you use charts?”

“A stock speculator is not a navigator, but all commission-houses should have a chart. With some customers, after you have exhausted every other invitation, you can use the chart to get them trading. But not for us, Mr. George B. Richards. I think you will soon realize that I am in this affair not to lose money, but to make it. I shall, therefore, either buy Dock Island, sell Middle Pacific, buy National Smelting, or sell Consolidated Steel. I'll have a pad of special order-slips made so you will not mistake my orders for those of any one else. You will execute for me no order that is not written and signed by me on such a slip. I'll keep up my margin. We'll operate on a ten-per-cent, basis; and I hereby authorize you to sell me out when my margin is down to six points. That gives you ample safety. It is really unnecessary, as I never lose; but I always protect the broker. The sudden death by heart disease of Baron Lespinasse in 1883 sent into bankruptcy the great firms of La Croissade et Cie. and Mayer, Dreyfus et Cie., of Paris, Ver-brugghe FrÈres, of Brussels, and about a dozen smaller houses. Mine, to be sure, is a trifling operation, designed to supply a modest income to an old flame. But I may—who knows?—decide to take a few millions back with me. And your firm, Mr. Richards, will be my principal brokers.”

Mr. Robison said this so impressively, so much as though he had made the firm of Richards & Tuttle rich beyond the dreams of avarice, that George B. found it easy to look grateful as he said, “Thank you, Mr. Robison.” It would be worth while watching this mysterious man, to see, first, if he made money; and if he did, how!

“I'll write it here and now. If my margins are down to six points at any time close me out, for I shall have been mistaken, which is a sign I've gone crazy; or I shall be dead, in which case protect yourself!”

Mr. Robison wrote out the instructions, signed them, and gave them to Mr. Richards. He must have noticed a look of uncertainty or dissatisfaction on the broker's face, for he said:

“I have no desire to pose before you as an unfailing winner, though I assure you I seldom lose. It is not brains, but carefulness. If you know nothing about the International Syndicate's information collecting machinery, why, just take my word for it that there are people in this world who don't work on the hit-or-miss plan. We don't eliminate all possibilities of failure; we merely reduce them to a negligible minimum. We cannot prevent all accidents, but we can and do foresee some of them. This sounds crazy to you, I know—no, don't deny it!—but all I can say is that your natural suspicions don't affect your kindness and courtesy, and I am more grateful than I can say. Of course, my own operations here will be conducted with your approval, in strict accordance with the rules of the New York Stock Exchange.”

“Oh, I am sure I haven't doubted your sanity,” said the broker, who had been much reassured by Mr. Robison's look of frankness and earnestness as he spoke. “I have merely suspected the depths of my own ignorance.”

“Your retort is both kind and clever. I thank you. I shall have to borrow one of your clerks or office-boys between nine-forty and ten a. m., to whom I may give my orders to bring to this office, and also ask you to recommend to me some young man who is intelligent but honest, wide awake but deaf to the ticker.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I shall need a young man who can watch certain developments and at the crucial moment will hasten to me without stopping on the way to take advantage in the stock-market of what he has learned while working for me.”

“I shall let you have one of my own clerks. He'll do as he is told.”

“That is not always to be taken as praise—but I thank you. There will be some telegrams come for me. Will you kindly see that they are held? Good morning!” And he left the room.

An hour later cablegrams and telegrams by the dozen began to come in for Robison, care Richards & Tuttle. But Robison did not return to the office until after the close of the stock-market.

“Any messages?” he asked Richards.

“Not over a hundred!” answered the broker, smilingly. He felt less suspicious after the telegrams began to arrive; they were tools he understood.

“I used the Triple Three,” explained Robison, opening telegram after telegram; the cables he seemed to leave for the last. The telegrams were, as Richards later ascertained, from San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Vancouver, and other points west of the Rockies. Each contained but one word, but always the word ended in “less,” such, for example, as Headless, Toothless, Tailless, Nerveless. All were signed in the same way, to wit: Three-Three-Three.

“No Beaver! I'm just as glad,” Robison mused aloud and took up the cablegrams. They were from London, Paris, Berlin, Frankfort, and Amsterdam. They were in code, but he seemed to have the key by heart. The very last one made him thoughtful.

He handed the cablegram absently to Richards and said, “The Lion after all—and artificial at that!” He seemed to be lost in thought, oblivious of his whereabouts, as Richards read:

Robison, care Richtut:

Mogulgar wind Lloyd Vast Nigger Shaw twice home urban sweet Edward.

“Code, hey?”

“Lion! Oh! Code, did you say? No. Code is too risky. Plain reading! Of course I have more practice than you. Give it to one of your office-boys to decipher. If he succeeds give him fifty dollars and charge it to my account. But what I can't tell is the politics of it. Is it collusion, philanthropy, or fear? Is it wise? After all, the unusual is not necessarily dangerous. I shall double my money within four days and you will make the commissions in a perfectly simple, legitimate way; and you will think I am a pretty sane lunatic; and you will respect me for having such sources of information; and if I can induce Mrs. Le—my friend to take it, I'll make a million for her in a month, and you will get the benefits accruing from having the market named after you—a Richards & Tuttle market, the papers will call it. Thank you very much for your kindness. I'll be down to-morrow before the opening. Good day, sir!”

And Mr. Robison left the office with a calm, confident look in his face. Richards gazed after him, a look of perplexity on his own face. Presently he shook his head. It meant that he gave up efforts to solve the puzzle, but that he would wait until commissions began.

IV

From Richards & Tuttle's office Robison went to the nearest Western Union office and gave a letter to the manager.

“Send this at once! City editor, Evening World, Park Row. No answer. How much?”

The manager told him. Robison paid him and then went to the Postal-Telegraph office and sent a message to the city editor, Evening Journal. Inside of each envelope was a letter. Both read alike, as follows:

Dear Sir,—Three years ago one of your reporters did me a good turn. In return I promised to tip him off if ever I came across a big piece of news. He saved me from being wrongly sent to state prison. Things looked pretty black for me, though I was not guilty. I've forgotten his name. He looked to be twenty-eight or thirty years old, about five foot ten, not very heavy-built, smooth-shaven, dark-brown hair, and wore eyeglasses. He had on a dark-blue serge suit and was always smoking cigarettes. It happened on Chambers Street, not far from the Irving Bank. Ask him if he remembers my promise to pay him back for being good to me. Here is where I do it. Mr. W. H. Garrettson, the banker and promoter, is going to be kidnapped. The plans are all made. He will be held for one hundred million dollars ransom, and no harm will come to him, because he will be sure to pay.

Don't warn the police of this, because the other papers would get it and you would lose your scoop. You can warn Garrettson if you wish, but it will be useless, as in that event we should wait until vigilance relaxes, as it will surely do. Please do not think this is a crazy yan! Don't print anything now. Simply be ready, with photographs of Garrettson, his home, art-gallery, bank, list of his promotions, and corporations controlled by him, and so on. Keep this letter for reference, and just before you throw it into the waste-basket remember this: It costs you nothing; it commits you to nothing, involves no expense; there is no concealed dynamite and no fool joke. Remember my writing and my signature, and wait for the tip I shall send you if I possibly can, so that you alone publish the news.

Grateful Friend.

The city editors thought it was a crank's letter and threw it away, but each made a mental note—in case! Also they did not “tip off” anybody. They afterward stated that they said nothing to Garrettson, because if they acted on every freak missive they received half the city would not sleep. They thus were ready for the kidnapping of the great Garrettson.

At nine-forty-five on Tuesday morning Mr. James B. Robison, accompanied by an office-boy and an order-pad on which was printed “From J. B. R., for Richards & Tuttle,” went to the Broad Street entrance of the New York Stock Exchange. His gaze was fixed steadily on the Subtreasury, or so it seemed to the office-boy. At nine-fifty-two he exclaimed: “There he is!”

The office-boy, Sweeney, looking in the same direction, saw nothing but hurrying pedestrians and a carriage or two. Robison seemed so disappointed that the office-boy out of kindness asked, sympathetically, “Who, sir?”

“Nobody!” answered Mr. Robison, shortly. “Go back to the office and tell Mr. Richards to send me the clerk he promised me—the clerk with the ticker deafness, tell him. I'll wait here.”

The boy left and presently returned with one of the bookkeepers.

“Here is Mr. Manley,” the office-boy told Mr. Robison.

“Thank you. Here is something for you, my boy. Go back to the office.”

The office-boy put the five-dollar bill in his pocket, said “Thank you” in a voice celestial, and hurried away before the crazy Frenchman with the Cape Cod voice discovered the size of the tip. To Manley, the clerk, Mr. Robison said:

“Look across the street—W. H. Garrettson & Co. You can see Mr. Garrettson by the window. See him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, just you stay here and watch him; and if you see him do anything unusual or if anything happens in Garrettson's office that you think strange, run to our office and let me know. I'll be waiting for you. Don't be afraid to say so if you think something unusual is going on, because I tell you now that Mr. Garrettson never does anything unusual.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now what would you call unusual?”

“What would you?”

“If a bareheaded man came out of the office, stood at the head of the steps and threw an egg into the middle of the street, I'd call it unusual.”

“So would I.”

“Especially if I went up to the smashed egg and found the insides were of ink. It might be red ink or black.”

“That would be queer!”

“Exactly. You watch. Go to lunch at twelve-thirty and be back at one. Remember! Watch closely, and if anything unusual happens look carefully and then come and tell me. Here's ten dollars for you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It's only a beginning,” smiled Mr. Robison, promisingly.

Manley, the clerk, put the money in his pocket and began to think he might be able to buy the motorboat next spring if this business kept up.

Between what Sweeney, the office-boy, suspected aloud and what Manley, the clerk, confirmed the office force of Richards & Tuttle discussed Mr. Robison with the zest of the deciding baseball game.

Richards had confided to his intimates some of his experiences, and Amos Kidder, the Evening Planet man, was as interested in the mystery as if he had not been the man who first let loose the flood of surmise by introducing Robison to the brokers.

Nothing happened on Tuesday more exciting than keeping tally on the telegrams and cables received by Mr. Robison, which amounted to thirty-seven in all. The object of so much conjecture—and hero of the office-boy's improvised dime novel—spent the day in an arm-chair looking at the blackboard, making elaborate calculations that convinced other customers he must be a “chart fiend.” At three o'clock sharp he went home.

He stopped long enough to send by messenger-boy a letter to the city editor of the Evening World and another to the city editor of the Evening Journal. They bore the same message and said:

Refer to my letter of yesterday. To-night W. H. Garrettson goes to the opera to see “The Jewels of the Madonna.” He will leave the Metropolitan in his automobile. In it will be his wife, his daughter, and his friend, Harry Willett. And he will not arrive at his house—Lexington Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street. Somewhere between the Opera House and his residence he will vanish! It will be the most mysterious kidnapping on record. Follow the Garrettson motor and have your reporters watch carefully.

Grateful Friend.

Whatever the city editors may have intended to do in the matter is of no consequence, because at seven o'clock messages were received as follows:

Kidnapping of W. H. G. postponed. Will keep you posted.

Grateful Friend.

V

At nine-forty-five on Wednesday morning Mr. James B. Robison entered the office of Richards & Tuttle, sought the senior partner, and said:

“I shall both buy and sell Con. Steel—or possibly sell first and buy later. The order clerk knows about my printed slips. The orders will go to you first. If at any time you are worried about margin, remember to tell me at once, because, as you know, I have not yet used half of my letter of credit; and, besides, the cables are working. I'd like to see Amos Kidder.”

“He's in his office.”

“Would you mind having some one telephone to him? Thank you.”

Mr. Robison promptly left the office, followed by his faithful attendant Sweeney, the office-boy. They took their stand just north of the Broad Street entrance of the Stock Exchange.

It was not long before Amos Kidder, of the Evening Planet, who had received the message, found Mr. Robison in the act of gazing unblinkingly toward the Subtreasury.

“Good morning, Mr. Robison.”

Mr. Robison started as if he had been rudely awakened out of a profound reverie.

“Oh! Kidder! How d'ye do? Ah, yes! Ah—I'd like you to dine with me and a few friends—interesting people. You will—don't be offended!—you will learn why all newspaper articles on the stock-market arouse mirth among the people who pull the wires. What do you say?”

“I say,” replied Kidder, with a good-natured smile, “just this: When and where?” His smile ceased. Mr. Robison had turned his back on his friend. Kidder heard a nasal mumble and made out:

“Here in eight minutes.”

“What do you mean?”

“I shall learn if the Lion ate the man or if it's a case of another day.”

“Mr. Robison, I don't understand—”

“I beg your pardon. I was thinking of the old man who was seen in a front seat at the circus every day. They asked him what he found so interesting, and he said that some day the lion would eat the man and he wanted to be a spectator. Well, one day he was sick. That day the lion ate the lion-tamer. Well, I am here waiting to see Garrettson come out of the cage.”

“Garrettson?”

“The great W. H. Garrettson! I am planning a campaign in Con. Steel. Garrettson's health is important. I must consider the state of his liver as carefully as the condition of the iron trade, because it is not only a question of the dividend rate, but of the price per share—not alone an investment, but a speculation. You can't lose all your mills and furnaces in one minute and you can't destroy all your customers overnight; but Garrettson can die in a second!”

“Of course that contingency has been provided for. His firm would undoubtedly be on the job.”

“So would the undertaker. As a matter of fact everything to-day depends upon the character of Garrettson's life. Have you ever stopped to think of how much depends upon the character of his death?”

“All deaths are alike. You talk like a novelist unaware of the resources of a firm like Garrettson's.”

“And you talk like a plain ass or a bank president, my boy. Is there no difference to the stock-market between the death of Garrettson by pneumonia and his death by lynching at the hands of a thousand indignant fellow-citizens? Stop and think.”

“Oh, well, that will never happen.”

“I cannot swear that it will, but you cannot guarantee that it never will. Stranger things have come to pass. By Jingo! it's three minutes to ten! Would it not be curious if something had happened?”

“How do you mean?”

“I have studied the great Garrettson and his habits, that I may, in my operations in Con. Steel, know on what to bank and against what to guard. He leaves his Lexington Avenue house every morning at nine and arrives at his office not later than nine-fifty. He is like the clock. All his life he has come down-town in his coupÉ, driven by a coachman who has been in his employ thirty years. In this age of novelties that old-fashioned coupÉ suggests a stability and solid respectability comparable to Founded 1732! on a firm's letter-head. However, just as the wireless has introduced a new element into maritime life, so has the automobile changed the character of street traffic. Do you remember the case of James M. Barrier, the famous sculptor, smashed in his taxicab on his way to his studio? You remember the insurance advertisements, and how he carried a two-hundred-and-seventeen-thou-sand-dollar accident policy? Well, it's ten o'clock. In one minute, if Garrettson is not here, I shall sell short one thousand shares of Con. Steel. For each delay of one minute, one thousand shares.”

Robison looked impressive, but the newspaper man was unimpressed.

“You'll have the pleasure of covering when he arrives as usual. Your operation is of the kind that sounds wise.”

“How much do I stand to lose by covering, say, in a few minutes? A fraction! How much do I stand to gain if something has happened? Five or ten points! It's a fifty-to-one shot. I'll take it every time. Here, boy, rush this to the office and hurry back. Tell Mr. Richards I shall need another boy besides you, for a few minutes only.”

Young Sweeney hurried away with Robison's order to sell one thousand shares of Con. Steel “at the market.”

“There are men who will risk money on the shadow cast by a human hair,” observed Kidder, pleasantly. “In assuming that disaster has overtaken Garrettson—”

“I assume nothing. I know that something unusual has happened! What the nature of it is I know not—nor whether it is capitalizable, sight unseen. Here, boy!” Sweeney had returned with a colleague and Robison sent the new boy back with an order to sell two thousand shares of Steel. Watch in hand, Robison stood staring unblinkingly toward the north. Kidder also looked up Nassau Street, expecting and—such, alas, is human nature!—hoping to see Garrettson's familiar coupÉ.

“Here, boy!” And Robison sent off another selling-order. He kept this up until he had put out a short line of ten thousand shares.

At ten-fifteen he said to Kidder:

“Let us go over to Garrettson's office. His nonarrival is news, Kidder.”

“He may have stopped on the way to do some shopping—”

“Well, that's a story! Any deviation from the normal is, even though it may not be tragedy. The delay may mean—”

“Nothing whatever,” finished Kidder, a trifle exultingly. “There comes Garrettson's carriage. I guess you'd better cover!”

And the Planet man laughed.

“Kidder, you'll never be rich! Of course I shall not cover until I know the reason for the delay. Make haste! I ought to take a good look at his face. I want to see how he looks and notice how he walks up the steps to the office. One glimpse of Harriman getting off the train once put a cool quarter of a million in my pocket.”

“Stocks went up when he died. People sold them thinking—”

“When you know a man is dying and you know that the rabble doesn't know it, you don't always sell stocks short, Kidder,” anticipated Robison, with a gentle smile.

“Hello!” said Kidder, and ran forward.

Robison followed. The coupÉ had stopped before the door of the banking firm's offices. The herculean private policeman in gray had hastened to open the door of the chief's carriage and had staggered back as if horrified by what he had seen.

“Murdered!” thought the newspaper man in a flash. “What a story!”

The policeman turned an alarmed face toward the coachman and asked:

“Where's Mr. Garrettson?”

“What!” Lyman, the coachman, who had been in Garrettson's employ thirty-odd years, turned livid. He stared blankly at the big man in the gray uniform.

“He isn't here!” said Allcock, the policeman. Kidder and Robison heard him.

The coachman looked into the coupÉ.

“Good God!” he muttered.

“Are you sure he was inside?” asked Allcock. “Sure? Of course! There's the newspapers. Look at the cigar-ashes on the floor.”

“Did you see him get in?” persisted the policeman. “Of course I saw him! I heard him call to the footman, who was going back to the house without leaving the newspapers.”

“And you didn't stop anywhere?”

“No. I was delayed a little at Twelfth Street and Fourth Avenue, and again—”

“Are you sure he didn't jump off?”

“What would he be jumping off for?” queried the old coachman, irritably. “And wouldn't I have heard the door slam? I can't account for it! My God! Where's Mr. Garrettson? Where is he? Where is he?” He repeated himself like one distraught.

“Could he have jumped out without your knowing it?” queried Kidder.

“Shut up, Jim. That's a reporter!” the policeman warned the coachman. “Wait here and I'll tell Mr. Jenkins.”

The private policeman rushed into the bank, and rushed out, followed by William P. Jenkins, junior partner of W. H. Garrettson & Company.

“What is all this about?” Mr. Jenkins, who had been speaking in a sharp voice to the coachman, caught sight of Kidder. Nothing concerning Mr. Garrettson's whereabouts could be discussed by or before newspaper men.

“Come with me, James,” Mr. Jenkins said, peremptorily, to the old coachman.

“Get on the job!” whispered Robison to Kidder. “Don't be bluffed. You've got enough to raise the dickens if printed. It's the scoop of a lifetime!”

Amos Kidder nodded eagerly. He had ceased to think of Robison's eccentricities and was occupied with the disappearance of the great financier. He followed Jenkins and the coachman into the office, but all efforts to listen to their colloquy were in vain. He could see perturbation plainly printed on the face of Mr. Jenkins, for all that Garrettson's junior partner was one of the master bluffers of Wall Street and a consummate artist at poker. The newspaper man was, moreover, fortunate enough to overhear Mr. Jenkins's private secretary say: “Mrs. Garrettson says Mr. Garrettson left the house about nine-twenty in the carriage, as usual. The butler saw him get in; the footman helped him into the cab. She wanted to know what had happened. I said, 'Nothing that I know of.'”

Jenkins nodded approval of the typical financier's evasion and hastened back to the private office, where the cross-examination of the coachman—a man above suspicion—was carried on by the other partners.

Amos Kidder had heard enough. He rushed out and, accompanied by the patient Robison, telephoned to his office this bulletin:

W. H. Garrettson left his residence in Lexington Avenue near Thirty-eighth Street this morning as usual in his coupÉ, driven by James Lyman, his coachman. Lyman, who has been in the employ of the family from boyhood, declares positively that Mr. Garrettson got in as usual. He was smoking one of his famous $2.17 cigars and had all the daily newspapers. These and cigar-ashes were all that could be seen in the coupÉ when it reached the Wills Building, at Broad and Wall streets, where the offices of W. H. Garrettson & Company are. His partners are unable to say where the multimillionaire promoter is to be found. Mrs. Garrettson is equally positive that Mr. Garrettson left the house as usual. The butler saw him get in. Nobody saw him get out. What makes this remarkable is that Mr. Garrettson is punctuality itself and not once in forty years has he failed to reach his office before ten o'clock. His disappearance from the coupÉ is not thought to be a joke; but, on the other hand, there is no reason to apprehend a tragedy. “It is mysterious—that's all,” remarked a prominent Wall Street man; “and mysteries are not always profitable in the stock-market!”

“How long,” inquired Robison, as Kidder came out of the telephone-booth, “will it be before the Evening Planet, with your account of the non-arrival of Garrettson, is out on the street?”

“Well,” said Kidder, looking a trifle important, “if it had been any one else who telephoned a story of that importance time would be wasted in verifying it, but my story ought to be out in five minutes!”

“As quickly as that?”

“Well, maybe seven minutes—but that,” said Kidder, impressively, “would be slow work for the Evening Planet!”

“Amazing!” murmured Robison, in a congratulatory tone. “And did you make it clear that there was no explanation for the non-arrival of—”

“I said it had not been explained as yet. A man isn't kidnapped in broad daylight in the city of New York—taken out of his own cab and carried away. If conscious, he would have shouted to the coachman; if unconscious, he would have attracted attention. It can't be done!”

“No, it can't,” agreed Robison. “Nevertheless, it has been done.”

“How could—”

“Kidder, the taxicab has introduced a new and easily utilizable possibility into criminal affairs, against which the police cannot yet protect the public. I can see one, two, three, five, ten, fourteen different ways in which Mr. Garrettson could have been abducted from his own carriage, put into a taxi, and carried away. Suppose there are six taxis. Three are in front to prevent the coachman from passing them. The coachman is also compelled to regulate his speed according as they desire. Then put one taxi on each side and one behind. These taxis not only escort the cab; they pocket it and keep out help. At one of the many halts the cab door is opened and Garrettson induced to enter one of the side taxis while the coachman is occupied taking care of his horses because one of the taxis in front threatens to back, which will crush the prancing beasts. Do you suppose the coachman, especially if he is elderly and somewhat deaf, as all old people are, could hear a cry for help with six taxis making all the noise they can, muffler cutouts going, or backfiring, or—”

“Do you think that is—”

“I think nothing! I cited it as one of fourteen—indeed, twenty—possible ways,” said Robison, quietly.

“It's funny—I mean it is a curious coincidence that on the one day you had sold Steel short—”

“My young friend,” interrupted Robison, gravely, “I sold after Garrettson was late! Wisdom is always accused of unfairness. A man whose mind enables him to win steadily at cards is invariably suspected of marking them. I had planned to buy Con. Steel provided Garrettson's health, state of mind, and trade conditions satisfied me! Instead I sold a little because of his delay. Why, man, we did that in London once—Cecil Rhodes and I—when Barney Barnato, at the height of the Kaffir craze, suddenly decided—”

“Wait till I get a piece of paper,” said Amos Kidder. He saw a big story. But Robison said:

“I'll tell you all you wish to know—if you promise not to use names—in Richards's office later, when Garrettson's disappearance is officially admitted. You should hang round Garrettson's office. Don't lose sight of it for one minute! Your office will keep in touch—”

“Yes; they are sending three men down to work under me.”

“Keep me posted, will you? I am going to Richards's office and watch the market.”

Kidder nodded and hurried to the Wills Building. Robison went to the office of his brokers, stopping previously at a telephone pay-station to telephone to the city editors of the Evening World and the Evening Journal. This was his message:

The Evening Planet is getting out an extra about the disappearance of W. H. Garrettson. Send your men to Garrettson's office and also his residence. Hurry!

The Evening Planet story was on the street before Robison returned to Richards & Tuttle's office, and five minutes later World and Journal extras were selling in the financial district. Curiously enough, both papers used the same scare-head, and that fact had a great deal to do with the acceptance of the story by many people. The heading was:

HELD FOR RANSOM!!

And each stated it had information that W. H. Garrettson had been kidnapped and was held for one hundred million dollars ransom. The Wall Street news agencies sent out the news on the tickers. One of them subtly finished:

Those who know Mr. Garrettson state that the two things the greatest financier of our times cannot do are: first, take advice; and second, be coerced. A man who has compelled a President of the United States to come to him for advice, and who has flatly told a reigning monarch, No! is not going to do as he is told by any band of crooks! The worst is, therefore, to be feared!

VI

For one brief dazed moment the stock-market hesitated! Then suddenly the ticker stopped, as it did in the old days whenever a member's demise was announced. The ticker's silence, with its suggestion of death, did in truth strangle bull hopes. Ten thousand gamblers' hearts almost stopped when the ticker did. Then the storm burst, increasing in violence as corroboration came from newspaper extras, from the Wall Street news agencies and the news tickers, from brokers and bankers who had rushed to the offices of W. H. Garrettson & Company and had rushed out again to sell stocks. And for one fatal moment the great house of W. H. Garrettson & Company was guilty of the capital crime—in high finance—of indecision.

The stock-market at times suggests a reservoir—: the selling-power is liquefied fear. Like water, all it asks is one tiny crevice—a beginning!—and it will itself complete the havoc.

Inside support—that is, buying by Garrettson's firm—would have been the only effective denial of the alarming rumors. Therefore, in the brief instant that saw absolutely no “support” forthcoming the flood of selling-orders raged down upon the stock-market, carrying with it big margins and little margins and minus margins, fortunes and hopes and reputations.

The price of Con. Steel declined faster and faster as the volume of selling-orders grew larger. It was the snowball rolling down the hillside. From sixty-eight it went to sixty-seven; to sixty-six; to sixty-five by fractions. Then it broke whole points at a time—to sixty; to fifty-five! In fifteen frightful, unforgetable minutes the capital stock, of the Consolidated Steel Corporation shrank in value fifteen million dollars—one million a minute! A psychological statistician would have figured that this million a minute was the tribute of the moneyed world to the great Garrettson's reputation for financial invulnerability; it was the cost of the blow to his prestige, the result of his partners' inefficiency during the one crucial moment of the firm's existence. The partners would have understood death and could have provided against it, stock-marketwise. It is likely that they even might have capitalized their senior partner's demise had it come from typhoid, tuberculosis, or taxicab. But the disappearance of the great Garrettson, the fatal incertitude, the black ignorance, the fearing and the hoping, paralyzed the faculties of the junior partners of Wall Street's mighty firm. And the costliness of their indecision was raised into the millions by the fact that, just as Jenkins, Johnson, and Lane, the junior partners, agreed that Garrettson, though absent, was well, and were about to take steps to check the gamblers' panic, the telephone summoned Jenkins.

“Hello! Is this Mr. Jenkins? Good. This is Dr. Pierson. Come at once to Mr. Garrettson, Hotel Cressline, Suite D. No, not B—D! Say nothing to the family! Hurry!” And the speaker rang off.

His face livid with apprehension, visibly tortured by the still unrelieved uncertainty, Jenkins turned to Walter Johnson, the youngest and—Wall Street said—the cleverest of Garrettson's partners, and repeated the message.

“Was it Dr. Pierson's voice?” asked Johnson.

“I don't know—yes; I think it was. He said, 'This is Dr. Pierson,' and I didn't suspect—yes; I think it was.” After a second's pause, “I know it was Pierson!”

“Then, for Heaven's sake—” began Lane.

“Your knowledge of Pierson's voice, Jenkins, is vitiated by your obvious wish. Call up Dr. Pierson's office, of course!” said Johnson.

“Meantime we are losing precious time—” Johnson had already gone to the desk telephone and asked for Dr. Pierson's office. To his partner he said, the receiver at his ear:

“We have all eternity before us to solve the problem if—” The emphasis on the conditional particle indicated so clearly his meaning that there was no need to say it. “You need not go on a wild-goose chase, and we hoping and expecting and uncertain if—Hello! Dr. Pierson's office? This is Mr. Johnson, of W. H. Garrettson & Company. Is the doctor there? Out? Where did he go? Speak out—I am Mr. Garrettson's partner. Hotel Cressline, Suite D? Thank you.” Johnson turned and said: “Dr. Pierson was summoned by telephone to the Cressline, Suite D, to attend Mr. Garrettson. Hurry call! I'll get the hotel and ask—”

“And meantime,” said Jenkins, excitedly, “he might be dying or dead; and we—”

“Yes! Go! I'll arrange to have a telephone-line kept for our exclusive use. Hurry!”

Jenkins rushed madly from the office and Johnson took up the telephone once more.

“Give me the Hotel Cressline!” And presently, “Hello! Cressline? This is W. H. Garrettson & Company. Yes—Mr. Johnson, Mr. Garrettson's partner. Is Mr. Gar—... Yes—yes—I want to talk to him.... Why not? Is it our Mr. Garrettson... Here! Hold your horses! You will tell me!—or, by Heaven, I'll... Helloh-Hello! Damn 'em!”

“What did they say, Walter?” asked Mr. Lane, partner and brother-in-law of Garrettson.

“He said I could go to hell!” growled Johnson, his face brick-red from anger; people did not talk that way to the partners of the great Garrettson. “He said a Mr. Garrettson, accompanied by a heavily veiled lady, took Suite D this morning at nine-forty-five, and left orders not to be interrupted under any circumstances—no cards sent up, no telephone connection made, no messages of any kind delivered!”

The two partners looked at each other gravely. In their eyes was something like a cross between a challenge and an entreaty, as though each expected the other to say he did not expect a terrible final chapter. In the veiled woman each feared what was worse than mere death—scandal! Of course, much would be suppressed, as had been done in the case of Winthrop Kyle or of Burton Willett, to whom death had come suddenly and under dubious circumstances.

“William is not that kind!” said Lane, loyally. “He has never—”

“I know that, of course. I don't believe it. I don't! I don't!” repeated Walter Johnson, vehemently.

“Neither do I,” agreed Lane. “But—” He looked furtively at Walter Johnson.

Johnson nodded, and said, “Yes, that's the devil of it!” He lost himself in thoughts of how to suppress the scandal; for these men loved Garrettson, admired his abilities, gloried in his might, and reverenced his greatness. They would rather see the firm lose millions than have posthumous mud flung upon the historic figure of W. H. Garrettson.

That was the explanation of why the ordinary precautions for staving off a panic were not taken by the partners. That was why they denied themselves to everybody who brought no news of Mr. W. H. Garrettson; and such was the discipline of the office that no word was brought to the palefaced partners in the inner office about the big break in stocks or of the newspaper extras.

It was the fatal mistake. By the time Walter Johnson, by accident or force of habit, or possibly subconsciously, moved by the telepathic message of the ticker, approached the little instrument the slump in stocks had taken on the proportions of a panic.

“Great Scott! Fifty-eight for steel!”

“No!” incredulously shouted Lane.

“It'll never do!”

“Yes, but—”

Walter Johnson, forgetting that Mr. Garrettson was a man who liked to do things in his own way, rushed out of the private office and began to give out buying-orders to the better-known of the Garrettson brokers—they kept some of these for the effect of obvious “Garrettson buying.” It was all the firm could do to check the decline. No matter what had happened, the house of Garrettson must not lie about it! Silence, yes; untruth, never! And yet silence might be taken as corroboration of the awful stories. He could not say that the great Garrettson was alive and could not say he was dead. He must not mention Hotel Cressline. A trying situation! To the news-agency men, who would put out the news on the Street, from whom also the daily papers would get it, he said, very calmly and impressively:

“I know of no reason why anybody should sell Consolidated Steel. The iron trade is in excellent shape; the company is doing the biggest business in its history at reasonable but remunerative prices, and we consider the stock a good investment. We deprecate these violent speculative movements. They are designed to frighten timid holders. I advise every man who owns Consolidated Steel stock to hold on to it.

“But about Mr. Gar—”

“Not another word!” he said, firmly, with a smile that was a masterpiece of will-power.

The newspaper men translated it: “Not a word about W. H. Garrettson!” And in the Stock Exchange a similar construction was put upon the message. What was wanted was to know whether the great Garrettson was dead or not—the kidnapping was by now accepted as a fact!—and if so what would be done with the enormous Garrettson holdings of Steel. Wherefore the traders sold more of the same stock—short—and the bona-fide holders could develop no conviction strong enough as to the wisdom of holding on, so long as the price continued to go down.

Jenkins arrived at the Cressline in time to find Dr. Pierson engaged in a fight with the office force, who would not show Suite D to him or send up any message. But Jenkins, who in his youth had been a book agent, succeeded in inducing the management to break open the door after repeated knocking brought no response from within.

They found nobody in Suite D. Mr. Garrettson had vanished! But they found on the bureau a long lavender automobile veil.

Jenkins and Dr. Pierson stared at each other in perplexity. At length Jenkins, red and uncomfortable, said to Dr. Pierson:

“I came up as soon as I got your telephone message; and—”

“I never telephoned you!” interrupted Dr. Pierson.

“Why, you said—”

“I didn't say it. I came up here because I got a message from the hotel—or so the voice said—to see Mr. Garrettson, who had been taken suddenly ill in Suite D. His companion, a young lady, was with him.”

“Damn!” said Jenkins, with ah uneasy look. He bethought him of the office, hastened to the telephone and told Walter Johnson all about the fake messages and Dr. Pierson's story.

“That was to throw us off the scent. Con. Steel has broken ten points, and—”

“It's a bear raid then!”

“Yes. But have the bears got W. H. Garrettson? If so, where? Hurry down!”

Meantime in the office of Richards & Tuttle Mr. Robison was carefully following the course of the stock-market. The lower Steel went the higher Robison rose in the estimation of the firm, the customers, and the office-boys.

In one of the interludes between the slumps George B. Richards asked in a voice which one might say sweated respect:

“What do you think now, Mr. Robison?”

The office had been doing a great business and the big room with the quotation-board that took one side was crowded with customers. These customers, with eyes that shone greedily, drew near and frankly listened to the colloquy. They were all happy because they were all short of Steel, and they were all short of Steel because a mysterious stranger had scented a strange mystery ten minutes ahead of Wall Street.

“Yes?” said Mr. Robison, absently.

“What do you think now?”

“What do I think now?” repeated Mr. Robison, mechanically.

“Yes, sir,” said George B. Richards, in the tone of voice of an office-boy about to ask for a day off. Robison stared unseeingly at the broker. Then, with a little start, he said so distinctly that every listening customer heard very plainly:

“I have not changed my opinion. When I do I'll let you know.”

“It looks to me,” persisted Richards, fishing for information, “that they can't keep on going down forever.”

“No—not forever,” assented Mr. Robison, calmly.

“Maybe the bottom is not far off.”

“Maybe not.”

“If a man bought now he might do well.”

“Then buy 'em.”

“Still, until we know just what is back of this break it isn't safe to go long.”

“In that case,” said Mr. Robison, with a polite nod of the head, “don't buy 'em.”

Richards did not persist, and with an effort subdued the desire to say “Thank you!” in a most sarcastic tone of voice. The disappointed customers drifted away. To be told when to begin making money is great, but any experienced stock speculator will tell you that it is even more important to be told when to stop making it. The tale of the Untaken Profit is the jeremiad of the ticker-fiend.

Con. Steel was down to fifty-five and beginning to show “resiliency,” as financial writers used to say, when an office-boy rushed to Mr. Robison's side. The lad's face shone with pride at being the bearer of money-making news to-the most distinguished of the firm's customers, whose paper profits at that moment were about one hundred thousand dollars.

“Mr. Robison!” he said in the distinct, low voice of one who is accustomed to repeating confidential messages in a crowded room. The other customers, who were still hopeful of getting the tip when to cover, looked at the boy's lips and listened strainingly to catch his whispered words.

“Speak up, my boy. I am a little hard of hearing,” said Mr. Robison through his nose, with a pleasant smile.

The customers, to a man, blessed the catarrh that caused the deafness which would give them the tip they all expected.

“The photographer says the pictures came out very fine indeed.”

The looking and listening customers, to a man, murmured, “Stung again!”

“Wait a minute my lad. Here!” and he gave the office-boy a five-dollar bill and a small envelope.

“Thank you very much, sir,” said the boy. He put the five dollars in his pocket, beamed gratefully on Mr. Robison, gazed pityingly at the customers, and looked at the envelope. It said, “Mr. Richards.”

He gave the envelope to Mr. Richards, who had retreated into the private office. The broker opened it. It contained one of Robison's slips, on which was written:

Buy twenty thousand Con. Steel at the market.

J. B. Robison.

Richards rushed the order to the Board Room. It helped to steady the price. Presently Mr. Richards approached Robison and sat in the empty place beside him. Feeling that they were not wanted, two polite customers moved away, ostensibly not to hear; but they tried to listen just the same.

“Your order is executed, Mr. Robison.” Mr. Richards whispered it out of a corner of his mouth without turning his head, all the time looking meditatively at the quotation-board.

“Got the whole twenty?”

“Yes.”

“Good!”

“Do you think—” began the broker in a voice that would make flint turn to putty.

“I do!” cut in Robison. “I do, indeed! There is no telling what has happened. The sharpness of the break was intensified by two facts.” He had unconsciously raised his voice.

A startled look fastened itself on the seventeen faces of the seventeen customers who were short of Steel. The seventeen owners of the faces drew nearer to Mr. Robison, who, apparently unaware of having any other listener than Mr. George B. Richards, went on, nasally but amiably:

“By two things: First, the mystery. What has become of Mr. W. H. Garrettson? Second: If the great Garrettson has disappeared it must be because of a worse-than-death. Many things can be worse than death, in the stock-market—failure, for instance.”

“Oh, but that's out of the question.”

“Yes, it is! So is the disappearance of W. H. Garrettson, one of the best-known men in America, in broad daylight, in a crowded and very efficiently policed city thoroughfare.”

“Yes; but a failure—”

“When the Baring Brothers failed Englishmen the world over wouldn't believe it. They couldn't fail, you know!”

“Do you think—”

“No, I do not. I was merely objecting to the habit of loose assertions so characteristic of Wall Street. I told you to what two things I ascribed the sharpness of the break. Mystery is the greatest of all bull cards, as you all know. It may also be made to work on the bear side. Now it isn't likely that anything serious has happened to Mr. W. H. Garrettson. There would be no sense in murdering him—not even by a stock speculator; but, even if he is dead, the break in the Garrettson specialties has by now discounted that sad contingency. Therefore I should say prices ought to be touching bottom; and what ought to be generally is, in the stock-market. I fancy we'll hear, one way or another, very soon now. If the news is good the price of Steel will rebound smartly. If it is bad we'll at least know what to look to, and with the elimination of the mystery there should be a cessation of the selling. There will follow a rush to cover and then—There you are! I believe it's begun already. Fifty-nine; and a half; sixty; sixty-two! Get 'em back!”

The seventeen shorts in the room rushed to give their orders to cover and gloomily watched the massacre of the bears as melodramatized in figures on the quotation-board.

Sixty-three! Sixty-five! Sixty-seven! Higher than it had been before the newspaper extras came out! Big blocks were changing hands. W. H. Garrettson & Co. were buying the stock aggressively, even recklessly now. Somebody must pay—-and it wouldn't be the firm.

Amos Kidder rushed into the office. “He's found!” he yelled, excitedly, addressing Mr. Robison.

“Where was he?” asked Mr. Robison, very calmly.

“At home—damn 'im!”

“Why that, my boy?”

“He won't talk—says he was in his library all the time.”

“We know better than that. Don't we, Kidder?” said Robison, with a smile.

“Yes; but you don't have to print the official statement as though it were the truth, and I have. How can I say he lied when I can't prove that he wasn't in his library? If I knew the whole truth—”

“The whole truth?” echoed Mr. Robison, with the shade of a smile.

“Don't you know it?” Amos Kidder shot this at Mr. Robison suspiciously.

“Don't make me laugh, Kidder! Nobody knows the whole truth about anything. Take dinner with me to-morrow night—will you?”

“Yes.” There was a smoldering defiance—it wasn't suspicion exactly—in the newspaper man's voice and eyes.

“Good for you! Mr. Richards, please sell my Steel.”

“Now that Garrettson is—”

“Yes, now—at the market, carefully. Have I doubled my money in a week?”

“Yes.”

“I told you I would.”

“An accident is not a fair test of—”

“An accident is not a fair test of anything, because there is no such thing in the stock-market as an accident! The sooner you let that fact seep in the better it will be for the bank account of your children. I must be going up-town now. Good night, gentlemen.”

As early as practicable the next day, after the interest had been figured out to the ultimate penny, Mr. James Burnett Robison was informed by Mr. George B. Richards that he had to his credit the sum of $268,537.71 with the firm.

“I've won my bet!” murmured Mr. Robison, staring absently at the broker.

“You have indeed, Mr. Robison.” Richards spoke deferentially.

“H'm! I hope I can induce Ethel to—Mr. Richards, I'll thank you to sign this paper. There is a notary public up-stairs.”

This was the document:

To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This is to certify that on July 18, 1912, Mr. James B. Robison opened an account with the firm of Richards & Tuttle, bankers and brokers, members of the New York Stock Exchange, by depositing with them the sum of $100,000. On July 23d he closed this account, which showed a net profit of $168,537.71.

A copy of the itemized statement, showing purchases and sales of stocks and prices paid and received, will be given to any one upon an order from Mr. James B. Robison.

For Richards & Tuttle: George B. Richards.

When Mr. George B. Richards had signed this certificate Mr. Robison said, amiably:

“If you wish I'll give you, in return, a letter testifying to the pleasure it has given me to trade in an office where they let customers more than double their money in one week.”

“Thank you. I hope you are not going to withdraw your account.”

“And I hope you will send and get me a hundred thousand dollars in new, clean hundred-dollar bills to give to the beneficiary of my wager. I told you it was easy to make money in Wall Street. You wouldn't have given me a certificate of sanity a week ago. What?”

“Oh yes, I would. But if you don't think my curiosity impertinent—”

“All curiosity in a stock-broker is a sign of intelligence; and intelligence, my dear Mr. George B. Richards, is never impertinent.” Mr. Robison smiled with such amiable sincerity that Richards felt flattered enough to blush.

“Thank you. But there is one thing I don't understand—” The broker paused; he was about to inquire into the personal affairs of a profitable customer. He did not wish commissions to stop.

Mr. Robison bowed his head acquiescingly and, as though it were his turn to speak, said:

“It is always wise for a man to have a number of things he doesn't understand. It affords occupation during idle moments, gives the mind healthy exercise, and, indeed, maintains a salutary interest in life. Humanity loves knowledge, but is fascinated by mystery. Is life interesting to you? Yes. Why? Because it is so important and you know so little about it. Is death interesting to you? Yes. Why? Because of death you know only the first letter of the first word of the first line of the first chapter of a big, black book—Mystery!”

“Yes,” murmured the dazed broker.

Robison continued, cheerfully: “My dear Mr. Richards, by all means don't understand! I'll drop in later in the day for the hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile pray continue to be mystified and unhappy, but interested, and believe me your sincere friend and well-wisher, James Burnett Robison.” With these words the man who looked like a Paris dude and talked like an actor with the voice of a down-east farmer, whose speech suggested insanity but whose deeds yielded him twenty-five thousand dollars a day, walked out of the office of his brokers.

A few hours later he received ten bundles of hun-dred-dollar bills, which he carelessly stuffed into his coat pocket, and then asked for a check for his balance. When George B. Richards regretfully complied and lachrymosely hoped Mr. Robison would reconsider his decision to close the account, Mr. Robison answered, very impressively:

“My dear Mr. Richards, if you were Rockefeller, would you work in a glue-factory for the pleasure of it? I don't need money and I hate the marketplace. If ever I decide that humanity needs more money than I personally possess I'll come back and take it out of Wall Street through Richards & Tuttle, at one-eighth of one per cent, commission and the state tax. Good day, sir!” And he left, Mr. Richards remembered just afterward and wondered, without shaking hands.

VIII

Amos Kidder dined with Mr. Robison that evening at Mr. Robison's hotel, the Regina.

“Americans,” explained the host, “always flock to the newest hotel on the theory that material progress is infallible and that the latest thing is necessarily the best thing. But cooking is not sanitary plumbing; it is an art! I am here not because of the journalistic, Sunday-special character of the filtered air and automatic temperature adjusters of this hotel, but because I discovered it had the best chef of all New York here. The food,” he finished, with an air of overpraising, “is almost as good as in my own house. Have you any favorite dishes or doctor's diet to follow?”

“No, thank Heaven! I'll eat and drink whatever you'll order,” replied the newspaper man.

“Thank you, Kidder—thank you!” said Mr. Robison, with an air of such profound gratitude that Kidder forgot to laugh. “I was hoping you would leave it to me to order the dinner; in fact, it is ordered. Thank you!” And he beckoned to the maÎtre d'hÔtel, who immediately hastened to the table and covered his face with a mask of extreme respectfulness. “You may begin to serve the dinner, Antoine,” said Robison, simply.

“Dewey at Manila!” thought Kidder, impressed in spite of himself. His Wall Street work and his friendship with millionaires had accustomed him to all sorts of extravagances, but he admitted to himself he had never eaten so unconsciously well in his life. Emboldened by the dinner and the heartwarming wine, and his own growing affection for the curious man who said remarkable things through his nose and did remarkable things in a remarkably matter-of-fact way, Kidder was inspired to say over the coffee:

“I'd like to ask you two questions—just two.”

“That's one more than Carlyle, who said that man had but one question to ask man, to wit: 'Can I kill thee or canst thou kill me?'”

“O king, live forever!” said Kidder, saluting. “Thanks. Shoot ahead.”

“Did you know what was going to happen or were you really betting on the chance that Garrettson's absence meant something serious?” Kidder was looking at Robison with a steady gaze.

“There is, my dear boy, no such thing as chance. Irreligious people have invented chance to fill in a hiatus otherwise unbridgable. Right, my boy!” And Robison nodded.

“Your talks with Richards were mighty mysterious,” said Kidder, with an accusing tone of voice he could not quite control.

“So is the internal economy of a bug mysterious.”

“And your talk about the Lion eating the man and the International Cribbage Board—”

“But not exactly criminal, eh?”

“No; but—”

“Kidder, my rhetorical eccentricities are of no consequence. Suppose you call it a harmless desire to give to myself the importance of the inexplicable, or even an intent to confuse impressions by making the mind of the broker dwell more on the mysteriousness of the customer than on the possible meaning of that customer's trading. Do you wish me to tell you that I have a system for beating the ticker game? Because I sha'n't! But that I go about my business scientifically you yourself have seen. At least you are witness that I have won.”

“Yes; but—”

“What's the second question?”

“There isn't a second if you won't answer the first,” said Kidder, with the forced amiability of the foiled.

“I have answered it. What you really wish is a detective story. Suppose we imagine. The only real people are those that live in our minds. Now let us wonder what happened to Garrettson and why he will not tell. Here is an incident that precipitated a slump which had the semblance of a panic—short-lived though it was—that caused mental anguish to his friends, relatives, and associates; and yet that great genius of finance, Wall Street's demigod, says nothing.”

“He says he was in his library.”

“We know he lies. That makes it more serious. Why does he lie? What compels so powerful and courageous a man as the great Garrettson to lie?”

“I don't know.”

“You ought to; there is only one thing.”

“Do you mean fear of a petticoat scandal?”

“No; because Garrettson does not fear that. Being highly intelligent, he protects himself against all possibility of scandal. No. It is something else. It's fear!”

“Of the alleged kidnappers?”

“No. He doesn't fear men. But he might fear—” He paused.

“What?” eagerly asked the newspaper man.

“Ridicule!”

Kidder aimed what he fondly hoped was a piercing glance at Mr. Robison. He discovered nothing. Mr. Robison had a far-away look in his philosophical eyes.

“It's too much for me,” finally confessed Kidder, hoping that the frankness of his admission might induce Mr. Robison to speak on.

Robison smiled forgivingly, and said:

“You have what I may call the usual type of mind. You look at usual things in the usual way. And yet the application of well-known principles to well-known people seems to benumb your usual mind most unusually. Now what do you gather from the Garrettson episode?”

“Nothing, unless it is that you made a lot of money by what seems to be a most unusual succession of coincidences.”

“Your voice,” said Robison, with a sort of sedate amusement, “exudes suggestions of the penitentiary. The idea of law and order has become an instinct. The lawful is usual. The unusual, therefore, is unlawful. It puts the blessed era of scientific anarchy as far off as the old maids' millennium—or as the abolition of stupidity among bankers and—”

“And newspaper men—what?” Kidder prompted, pleasantly. “Don't mind me. I enjoy it.”

“Kidder, you are a nice chap! That's why I asked your Paris man for a letter of introduction to the financial editor of his newspaper. It gave me what I as a stranger needed in Wall Street. It was easy to get. It is an American failing to give such letters promiscuously, because we are an irresponsible people. I have, I suppose, voiced a suspicion of yours about me?”

“I did not have it. I have it now, however.”

“If we talk about poor me any longer you'll be asking for my aliases and my Bertillon measurements. Now let's get to Garrettson. We know he left his house in his carriage at his usual hour and that he did not arrive at his office. We have the evidence of his coachman—a man above suspicion—of the newspapers, and of the cigar-ashes. We know, for you heard Jenkins call up the house, that Mr. Garrettson was not at home. We know that his disappearance must have been connected with alarming circumstances or his partners would not have been so badly upset as to allow that reputation-shattering slump in the Garrettson shares—led, I am thankful to say, by Consolidated Steel. We know that Jenkins rushed up-town to the Cressline Hotel and found Dr. Pierson, but no Garrettson there, as had been tipped off, thereby increasing the mystery or suggesting that a bear clique was at work and was taking advantage of the obvious possibilities of the situation. Merely out of curiosity I found out that the hotel people had rented Suite D to a man calling himself W. H. Garrettson, who was accompanied by a veiled woman. It wasn't Garrettson, though.”

“How do you know?”

“It was clearly a ruse—having a woman. Don't you see it? The gossip that would—”

“Very ingenious; but—”

“At all events, Garrettson got back. We suspect he scolded his partners, and we know he gave out a statement to the reporters that was, to say the least, disingenuous. We know that, had it been any one but Garrettson, Wall Street would have seen stock-market strategy in his highly inconvenient disappearance.”

“Yes, yes; but—”

“Friend Kidder, let us evolve an explanation that explains. Let us form a syndicate of intelligent men!” He made a motion with his hand as if waving away the necessity of further elucidation.

“Friend Robison,” said Kidder, jocularly mimicking the older man's manner, “you are one of those unusual men whose speeches are better than his silences. Continuez, s'il vous plaÎt.”

“Intelligent men, deprecating alike violence and the immoderate accumulation of wealth by others. To reduce such wealth would be their object.”

“A band of robbers?”

“No; an aggregation of philosophers.”

“None the less crooks.”

“No; since they would take from crooks, annexing only that class of wealth which is called tainted! They would take plunder from the plunderers, themselves pardonable plunderers. That would give to the syndicate a confidence in itself and a faith in its righteousness that would make success easy. How would they go about making Wall Street contribute to the fund? Now they must have seen that Garrettson's life was a bull factor, and his death a bear card. But they had old-fashioned, unphilosophical scruples against murder. Moreover, the sensational disappearance of Garrettson would serve even better than his death. Problem: How to kidnap Garrettson? Or, better still: How to make Garrettson kidnap himself? Simplicity itself!”

“It I am Dr. Watson to your Sherlock Holmes, consider me gazing on you with admiration. And so—”

“The time would be when the Street was full of people long of Con. Steel and the newspapers full of articles showing the greatness of W. H. Garrettson. If I, who merely desired to trade in a few thousand shares, studied Garrettson's habits, think of the syndicate playing for millions! They learn about his daily carriage trip to his office. The rest is obvious, even to you—isn't it?” Mr. Robison gazed benignantly at his guest.

“No; it isn't obvious to me—or to any one else,” retorted Kidder, sharply.

“You still think I am Delphic or a crook? My dear Kidder, how can you ask me to insult your intelligence by filling in the obvious gaps in an obvious way?”

“Insult ahead.”

“Very well. Mr. Garrettson is sane in everything except in the matter of collecting MSS. At five minutes to nine a man goes to his house—an impressive stranger, well-dressed, cold-eyed, with the aristocratic attitude toward servants that sees in them merely pieces of furniture. He tells the footman in a dehumanized voice that he must see Mr. Garrettson. The footman tells the butler. The butler comes out. The stranger says to the butler: 'I am leaving for Europe this morning. Tell Mr. Garrettson he will see me at once or not at all. Give him this paper and show him this sheet. Make haste!' The dazed butler gives Mr. Garrettson the paper, which is apparently the first page of the Knickerbocker History of New York. The memorandum informs Mr. Garrettson: 'I have, in their entirety, the MSS. of this history, Cooper's “Spy,” Poe's “Goldbug,” three love-letters of George Washington to Mrs. Glendenning, and no less than sixteen signed letters of Thomas Lynch, the one signer of the Declaration of Independence whose autograph is really rare.' Of course Mr. Garrettson would see the stranger!”

“The sheet supposed to be the first page of Irving's Knickerbocker History is a forgery, so well done as to writing, paper, and ink as to make Garrettson's mouth water for the rest. He has the stranger taken into the library and shows him various rare MSS., the history of which the stranger knows, thereby growing in Garrettson's estimation, particularly since Garrettson does not know how carefully the stranger has prepared himself for this same selfchosen test. But the man is a lunatic, for he wishes Garrettson to give him fifty thousand dollars and five fifteenth-century enamels for the MSS., sight unseen. They argue and haggle and fight. Time thus passes. While Garrettson and the lunatic are quarreling, the Garrettson coupÉ and the coachman are waiting outside as usual.

“As nine o'clock strikes, which the coachman hears as usual and is the usual signal for Garrettson's appearance, the coachman sees a man running from round the corner, pursued by a well-dressed woman with a horsewhip; also six urchins yelling, 'Give it to him, Liz!' This attracts the coachman's attention. The man stops just across the street from the Garrettson house and the woman lashes him. Of course the coachman has turned his head away from his master's house on the left to the horsewhipping on the right. Suddenly he hears the door of the coupÉ slam—a rebuking sort of slam! He turns round, gathers up the reins and prepares to start. He doesn't have to be told where to go. It's always the office. While he was looking at the horsewhipping Mr. Garrettson has come out of the house and entered the waiting carriage, as he has done every day for thirty years.

“Out of the corner of his eye the coachman sees the footman returning to the house—a bareheaded footman in the dark-green Garrettson livery, a bundle of newspapers in his hands. The footman stops short and turns round. He is smooth-shaved, as all footmen are. The coachman hears him say, 'Beg pardon—here they are, sir!' and sees the footman hand papers to Mr. Garrettson inside; for who should be inside but Mr. W. H. Garrettson? The footman returns to the house and the coachman drives away, sure that his master is within. His customary route has been studied and it is easy to cause delays, so as to make the carriage arrive at the office fifteen minutes late. No Garrettson! Why? Because he was in the library! The footman was an accomplice. The syndicate has in readiness an exact replica of the Garrettson carriage, of the horse, and even of the coachman; and when Garrettson and his cranky visitor do come out, Garrettson sees his carriage waiting for him, gets in, and is driven away—but not to his office! And there you are.”

“Do you really think that is what happened?”

“It is what a gang of intelligent men would do.”

“It is very fine—only it cannot happen.”

“Why not?”

“The coachman would never swallow such a fool trick as that.”

“If you knew the history of our old New York families you would recall the episode of Mrs. Robert Nye, whose old coachman, English and stiff-necked, one day drove the empty victoria round Central Park, thinking he carried his mistress, because the lap-robe had been placed in the carriage by the footman before the old lady had gotten in—and usually the old lady got in first and the lap-robe followed.”

“But he said he saw Garrettson get in,” objected Kidder; “and the cigar-ashes were there on the floor!”

“The ashes were thrown in by the footman for the very purpose of making Argus-eyed reporters make a point of it. That and the crumpled newspapers clinched it, so that the coachman thought he remembered seeing Garrettson get in. It is what psychologists call an illusion of memory.”

“Oh, well—”

“Oh, well, it merely means that progressive people keep posted. Here, let me read you what Henry Rutgers Marshall, an American psychologist, better known to the learned bodies of Europe than to benighted compatriots like you, has to say about this. I copied it:

“Few of our memories are in any measure fully accurate as records; and under certain conditions, which arise more frequently than most of us realize, the characteristics of the memory-experience may appear in connection with images, or series of images, which are not revivals of any actual past events. In such cases the man who has such a memory-experience, automatically following his usual mode of thought, accepts it as the revival record of an actual occurrence in his past life. When we are convinced that this is not the case we say that he has suffered from an 'illusion of memory.'”

“The term 'illusion of memory' thus appears to be something of a misnomer. What we are really dealing with is a real memory-experience, but one by which we are led to make a false judgment—and this because the judgment, which in this special case is false, is almost invariably fully justified.

“A man of unquestioned probity is thus often led to make statements in regard to his experience in the past that have not the least foundation in fact.”

“But, when Garrettson came out of his house do you mean to say he wouldn't notice a different coachman?” Kidder looked incredulous in advance of the answer.

“He wouldn't be looking for a different coachman and, therefore, he wouldn't find one. The imitation was close enough to show nothing unusual, nothing different. A lifelong habit never develops introspective misgivings. No, my boy; Garrettson never noticed. Of course the coachman drove to some place or other and left the great financier a prisoner in the cab.”

“How?”

“By making the door of the coupÉ impossible to open from the inside, so that Garrettson was compelled finally to climb out of the window, a matter of some difficulty to a man of his years and weight. The rest you know.”

“I don't.”

“I don't, either, if you use that tone of voice. But I imagine that, since there was nothing illegal or violent thus far, the syndicate continued to be intelligent. For instance, they might have made it impossible for Garrettson to escape from the carriage-room of the private stable whither he was taken, carriage and all, except by going through a lot of cobwebs and coal-dust and stable litter. As he emerged from the coal-chute a photographer could take pictures of him—no hero of a thrilling escape from desperate criminals, but just a plain chump, full of dirt and soot and mud and manure, hatless, grimy, and unscathed! A quickly developed photographic plate, a print, and a line or two would, of course, make him keep the entire affair mum on the eve of the most gigantic of his promotions—the Intercontinental Railway Consolidation. Indeed, Garrettson can use the break in prices and the recovery of the market to increase his prestige by pointing out how important not only his life is, but, indeed, his physical presence.”

“But the syndicate—”

“It might have been short a hundred thousand shares of the Garrettson stocks, on which it made an average profit of eight or ten points. Well, my friend Kidder, we'll just about have time to see the last act of BohÊme. Come on!”

Amos Kidder, torn by conflicting emotions, grateful for an epoch-making dinner, interested as never before by his host's conversation, talked a great deal about it, but it was only months afterward that he finally knew.

One day he received three photographs. One showed the great Garrettson in the act of emerging from a coal-hole. His clothes were a sight and his face was much more! Another showed Garrettson dusting himself of cobwebs and wisps of stable litter. The photographs explained why Garrettson had not told the reporters where he had spent that fateful forenoon—and why he had not tried to learn to whom he was indebted for his misadventure. Accompanying the photographs was this letter:

Sir,—We send you herewith photographs of the great Mogul of Wall Street in the act of leaving the house whither he was taken on a certain morning. The house number Was removed so he could not identify the house. We are sure you can reconstruct the story of the famous forenoon by what you know and by what you can guess. This syndicate of ours was formed to reduce the tainted wealth of our compatriots, and is still operating successfully. If we ever send you a telegram in code, read it by taking the first two letters of each word—except only the first word, which is always the abbreviation of a name. We take the trouble to tell you this because your paper was of great use to us, as we intended it should be, and because we expect to use you again very shortly. You might compare notes with Mr. Boon, the jeweler. Once more thanking you for your benevolence, we remain,

Respectfully,

The Plunder Recovery Syndicate.

Kidder showed this letter to Richards. “Let us see,” said Richards, “whether we can now read the cablegram that Robison left with the office-boys, with a reward for the successful translator.”

He rang the bell, sent for the message, and applied the test; it worked!

“Mogulgar must stand for Garrettson, the great Mogul of Wall Street,” said Richards. He was one of those men who always are glad to discover the obvious.

“Yes. 'Will vanish two hours Wed.' Well, he certainly did. It proves it really was planned. But I am not sure this was a bona-fide cablegram. Possibly Robison himself faked it.”

“Why don't you find out?” suggested the broker. “I will,” said Kidder, and he did. He learned that neither the telegraph nor the cable companies had any record of the deluge of messages received by Robison in the brokers' office.

“They were fakes, probably to carry out the appearance of reality,” said Richards, with a Sherlock Holmes nod of explanation.

“Yes, yes,” acquiesced Kidder, impatiently; “but what astonishes me is the syndicate's moderation. I wonder what they'll do next.”

“I wonder,” echoed the broker, who really was wondering whether the market was going up or down.

Kidder, however, went up-town and saw Jesse L. Boon. He told Boon all he knew and much that he suspected, and Boon in return admitted that Welch, Boon & Shaw “had lost a few pieces”—but not for publication. Such things are bound to happen, and are charged to profit and loss. Kidder knew better, but all that he could do was to pray that he might again cross the trail of the plunder-recoverer who had called himself Robison.