've put it up to me but on you
personally, because I like you. I'll head your inscription list with
$5000 and introduce you to some men that will probably take a 'flyer' on
my say-so. If you're still short of what you think you'll need I'll make
up the remainder, all providing"--with a quick grin--"that you go in and
wallop that Greaser!"

Bruce's expression was a mixture of many.

Finally he replied slowly:

"Well, it isn't just the way I'd figured out to interest Capital and I
reckon the method is unique in mine promotion, but as I'm at the end of
my rope and have no choice, one more meal of 'crow' won't kill me." He
went on with a tinge of bitterness, thinking of Sprudell: "Since muscle
is my only asset I'll have to realize on it." Then his dark face lighted
with one of the slow, whimsical smiles that transformed it--"Unchain the
'Spanish Bull-dog,' feller!"

Harrah rang for the office boy and reached for his hat.

"William," he said sternly when the quaking youth stood before him,
"tell those people outside not to wait. I'm called away on
business--urgent, important business and I can't say when I'll be
back."

XV

MILLIONS!

Would the car never come--would it never come! Helen walked once more to
the corner from the shelter of a building in one of the outlying mill
districts where an assignment had taken her.

The day was bitterly cold with a wind blowing which went through her
coat and skirt as though they were light-weight summer clothing. She
held her muff against her cheek and she peered up the street and the
dark background accentuated the drawn whiteness of her face with the
pinched, blue look about her mouth and nostrils. The girl was really
suffering terribly. She had passed the chattering stage and was enduring
dumbly, wondering how much longer she could stand it, knowing all the
time that she must stand it as there was no place to go inside and
missing the car which ran at half hour intervals meant missing the
edition. She was _paid_ to stand it, she told herself, as she stamped
her feet which were almost without feeling. The doctor's emphatic
warning came to her mind with each icy blast that made her shrink and
huddle closer to the wall of the big storage building. Exposure, wet
feet, were as suicidal in her condition as poison, he had told her. She
could guard against the latter but there was no escape from the former
if she would do her work conscientiously for long, cold rides and