od brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?
Think again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sine
die, and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me and
Pickens, we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearned
increment as it incremates."

It costs us $500 for office rent and first payment on furniture;
$1,500 more went for printing and advertising. Atterbury knew his
business. "Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A day
longer than that and we'll have to either go under or go under an
alias. By that time we ought to clean up $60,000. And then a money
belt and a lower berth for me, and the yellow journals and the
furniture men can pick the bones."

Our ads. done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington hand-press
dailies, of course," says I when we was ready to make contracts.

"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause a
Limburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered during a hot summer.
The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and the
Harlem reading-rooms. They're the people that the street-car fenders
and the Answers to Correspondents columns and the pickpocket notices
are made for. We want our ads. in the biggest city dailies, top of
column, next to editorials on radium and pictures of the girl doing
health exercises."

Pretty soon the money begins to roll in. Buck didn't have to pretend
to be busy; his desk was piled high up with money orders and checks
and greenbacks. People began to drop in the office and buy stock every
day.

Most of the shares went in small amounts--$10 and $25 and $50, and
a good many $2 and $3 lots. And the bald and inviolate cranium of
President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel
Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes
so many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany
garbage chest that he calls his desk.

Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without being
troubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast as it came in and kept the
money in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thought
much of banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on the
stock we'd sold, so there was nothing for anybody to squeal about. We
had nearly $50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as high
as prize fighters out of training.

One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the off